Wenger

David G. Brooks’ The Grass Library details his life on a farm in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales. On some land he and his partner share, they form an impromptu animal refuge of sorts, taking in sheep, dogs, goats, and living alongside the various animals that populate the area. Through the chapters we get to know the animals as one would good friends. In Brooks’ keen eye and impressively detailed observations, even visiting ducks and unwanted rats become characters whose lives hold deep meaning and whose trials, joys, and deaths are esteemed in Brooks’ worldview as being as weighty as those of humans.

Brooks’ writing is poetic. His language has a certain curious clarity to it. The book itself is not only an exploration of animals and nature, but also a mission and exercise in living in the most ethical harmony with them. At times, though the animals are the book’s focus, we are also allowed into the mind of Brooks himself, a man so strictly concerned with the wellbeing of animals, his life begins to curve around theirs. In a particularly poignant, yet humorous chapter, Brooks and his partner stress over the removal of a rat that has made its home in their kitchen. While they avoid kill-traps, they come against another dilemma: whether evicting the rat is an infringement on its autonomy.

This book is excellent for anyone interested in animal rights, ethics, and nature writing at its most insightful. It will cue the reader to turn inward and examine their own relationship with the living things around them.

Matthew Lysiak’s The Drudge Revolution tells the story of unorthodox media mogul, Matthew Drudge and gives an intriguing history of press in the US. Lysiak’s style is fast-paced and never dry as he delves into the Drudge himself, framing him as a unique individual whose rise to fame lines up with recent changes in American mainstream media. Beginning with his early life, the story follows Drudge through his coverage of the Lewinsky Scandal, up to his involvement in Trump’s election.

This book’s strength lies in its balance between Drudge’s biography and the larger narrative of US media regulation, censorship, and the debate over freedom of press.

Lyisak manages to give a relatively unbiased look at a controversial, and politically charged subject and figure, both of which have increasingly been at the center of public debate. The debate: what is the responsibility of the media to deliver truth and how do we get the most objective truth without preventing the possibility of multiple political and social narratives? The answer to the question is complex, and this book does not shy away from that complexity nor does it make an attempt at any definitive solution. Instead, it presents the facts, and allows the reader to come to their own conclusion.

In a time when the US political climate is so polarized, this book will give readers a different lens through which to examine power, the nature of truth, the owning of narratives, and politics in the US today.

From the Bloomsbury Object Lessons Series, Coffee is a beautifully written meditation on the eponymous caffeinated drink. Dinah Lenney brings her prose to life with an energized style that keeps you zipping from one page to the next. With descriptions that make your belly ache for those sacred beans, you’ll find yourself pausing between chapters to brew yourself a cup.

What is so magical about this book is that it shows how coffee is more than just a way to wake up. It is a ritual, a way of remembering (places, moments, people, conversations), a community, and an excuse to pause and enjoy life’s little things.

This book is a great gift for any coffee drinker. Aside from Lenney’s more personal ruminations, Coffee also includes interesting facts from history and legends, to farming, roasting, and brewing techniques. Even for those who prefer other libations, this quick read has some of the finest prose. The writing is exemplary and would be excellent teaching material for creative non-fiction classes. Get your fill on this book’s language! Sit down with some a cup o’ joe and get to reading.

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Bloomsbury Object Lessons series presents slim books on a variety of objects to get to the heart of “the hidden lives of ordinary things.” Each book is written by a different author whose relationship to their chosen object may be professional, artistic, or personal. In the case of Ocean, though, the author, Steve Mentz, picked an immense object, and it seems to have been too big to fit into this 150 page volume.

Mentz, has spent his life studying and professing literature of the sea. The book, therefore, is academic in style and its approach is based more in literary theory than oceanography.

I read this book hoping to gain new insights into the sea’s history or the chemical makeup of its watery depths. Perhaps for this reason, I was disappointed. Despite its title, Ocean is more about maritime literature than about the ocean itself. Veering off into close-reads of poetry, and even referencing Donna Haraway’s “A Cyborg Manifesto” in a very abstract effort to compare sailors to the cyborgs referenced there-in, this book is not for the casual ocean-hobbyists.

However, and I cannot stress this enough, this book is not about the science of the ocean, nor is it about the myriad creatures it contains; what this book is, is a small collection of literary criticism about books about the ocean. Mentz writes about Emily Dickinson’s ocean poetry, the Iliad and Odyssey, Herman Melville, Rachel Carson’s environmental writing, and other ocean-themed texts. Because of this, some chapters may alienate readers who have not read the work discussed.

Still, some concepts, like that of “wet globalization,” “deterritorialization,” and an obscure reference to a “general theory of autogenous vessels” may capture the more theory-driven reader’s interest. But, even for those like myself who enjoy literary theory, the broad range (from classical to romantic, from poetry to non-fiction) means that unless the reader is already familiar with ocean literature, they will likely find Ocean too particular to access.

Miah Jeffra’s collection is notable not only for its style, but also for its range. It is about the nature of memories, gender, truth, and place. The essays come together as something of a self-exploration, something like art-criticism, and something like a family saga. In it, Jeffra traces their life back to a difficult youth, follows them through relationships, break-ups, and a marriage, and details several moves around the U.S.

Though we learn much about Jeffra’s personal life, the book isn’t simply an auto-biography. It pushes the essay form in a way that calls to mind David Lazar’s “Queering the Essay” in which Lazar writes, “Queer and essay are both problematic, escapable, changeable terms. Both imply resistance and transgression, definitional defiance.”

In a similar vein Jeffra writes, “And what about this book? Memoir. A book of memories. And, also, subsequently, a book about false memories.”

What one can say about the book is that the memories it contains, whether false or true, rose-colored or traumatic, are all written with stunning honesty. Throughout the chapters, pictures of the essayist at various ages track their progress through time and self-understanding. We see the essayist as a child, an adolescent, and even get a glimpse of them with their wedding party.

Reminiscent of Michelle Tea in subject and humor, and of T. Fleischmann’s poeticism in style, this collection continues the work of modern queer essayists. It is irreverent at times and reflective at others, but throughout should keep the reader’s interest as they reflect alongside Jeffra on what memories mean.

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Evan Fallenberg’s third novel may be his best. A page-turner from beginning to end, The Parting Gift is written with exacting detail, a riveting plot, and characters of incredible depth. An epistolary work, the story follows the unnamed narrator as he makes a move to Israel, becomes the obsessed lover of a gruff, hyper-masculine spice farmer, Uzi, and as he slowly integrates into Uzi’s life, work, and family. Jealousy, lust, and ambition drive the thrilling, fast-pace plot.

Like Fallenberg’s other novels, the book discusses the intersection of Judaism, gender, and sexuality. Though the back-cover calls the novel an “erotic tale,” I cannot exactly classify this book (which does have erotic scenes) as a run-of-the-mill romance, nor should it be classified as ‘erotica,’ as the generic name may imply simplistic smut. The book is dynamic and thematically complex, dealing with power, masculinity, family, and desire.

If you’re in need of a quick and engrossing read, I cannot recommend this novel enough.

Though this book is categorized as memoir, it is so much more than the story of one man. As Orloff writes in his introduction, “You can read it as an elegy, apologia, cautionary tale, or social history, but it is also my memoir...” The book ripples out from Orloff’s personal story, coming out as queer and joining myriad misfits in the streets of San Francisco. It recalls drag shows, performance art, poverty, youth, and sex. It can be read as a first-hand history of the city’s ever-changing queer club scene, or as a tale of life outside the mainstream. But, at the memoir’s center is the slow and destructive march of AIDS through the queer community.

Where many recountings of the AIDS crisis graze over the happiness and love that still existed in the community and dwell on the pain, this book chooses to laugh. Disasterama! records the joy and playfulness that queerness was and continues to be despite hardships. Powerfully, the comedy in this book is never overly flippant, but almost reverent. Orloff captures the humor in the darkness and eulogizes his friends with determined laughter instead of ever-lasting mourning.

Even when the book does have its tender moments (I spilled a few tears), it is adamant in its refusal to reduce his friends to martyrs in a larger political game. He insists on the details and on the individual moments that make up people and make up communities. In this way, he acknowledges the personal as political but urges readers not to forget the day-to-day existence of those personally affected by politics and prejudice. This book is a must-read for memoir-lovers, history-nerds, punks, misfits, amateur artists, clubbers, and anyone looking to laugh and learn.

Pairs well with: Tales of the City

This graphic history rapidly overviews the battle for Stalingrad. Each chapter contains a letter from a German soldier, a brief description of the battle’s development, and an illustrated portrayal of the events.

It should be noted here that a major issue in this book is that the authenticity or inauthenticity of the “letters” from the German soldiers is not made apparent. The book’s presentation makes it unclear whether these are excerpts from real letters or simply the author’s personal writing ‘inspired’ by reality.

Despite being played out by a cast of fictitious characters, this history fairly accurately covers the chronology of the battle. Its benefit lies in its utility as an introduction to the subject. However, the story telling can be confusing at times and the plot itself should not be used in anyway as a reliable historical source. This gets to my main qualm with the book: due to the ambiguity of the genre (is it historical fiction? Graphic history? Illustrated history?) and also to the ambiguity of the author’s goal (to inform? Entertain? Humanize?) the reader struggles to parse out reality from the authorial voice and framing.

Additionally, the author’s audience is unclear. The graphic portions could easily be aimed at children and teens while the historical prose seems made for amateur war historians. These sections also seem to be in conflict with each other in terms of tone. While the historical sections vary from calls to sympathy to delivery of objective fact, the graphic portrayal gives an exciting vision of war, one in which gore and death are almost glorified.

I present you with the author’s goals, as stated in a rather oddly placed aside:

“After seeing it…after reading it…after living and feeling it through the pages of this graphic history, there is little left to add to explain how it was at the dramatic battle of Stalingrad…The reader, after submerging yourself in the images and words that make up this graphic novel, should not remain indifferent. You cannot afford it. The emotional charge that sprouts from every corner of this novel is a proposition to deepen the hell that was Stalingrad.”

Though I could sense the author felt emotionally charged by the book, I failed to garner feeling beyond my pre-existing interest in the subject. As to ‘little left to add,’ I would argue that in fact this rendition of the battle has left many holes while it supplied plenty drama.

That said, this is a book in translation, which may explain some of the odd sentence structure as can be seen in the excerpt above. While I try to read generously especially with translated works, this book has other issues that detract from its potential power to interest young readers in history.

One doubts the objectivity of this work. At times the Germans (who were, in this case, the invaders) were made characters for sympathy while the Russians were made out as cruel killers, agents of some invisible Soviet machine. This effect is heightened by the fact the Russian’s words often appear in Cyrillic, therefore unintelligible to most readers. The German soldiers are given a voice while the Russian’s are denied theirs.

Though the genre of graphic history often walks the fine line between objectivity and the excitement typical of a graphic novel, one must be cautious to find reality within the plot lest history be confused with fiction. Graphic histories like this also call into question the responsibility of the publisher to edit for clarity and fact, as well as to be forthright with their marketing in terms of a book’s grounding in historical research. This is not to say there isn’t a place for graphic histories, that there isn’t room for authors to take liberties, nor that historical writing cannot be fun and exciting. Good historical writing should be engaging. However, history is a fragile subject, and war history especially. As publishers, readers, and writers, we must engage with historical stories with objectivity in mind and a watchful eye for bias.

In the end, this reviewer finds that whatever utility this book provides as a historic introduction is trumped by authorial bias and flaws in the structure itself.

Losing Reality combines excerpts from Jay Lifton’s previous work with his new material. Covering Nazi Doctors, a Japanese subway-bombing cult, Communist China, Donald Trump, and the “Apocalyptic Twins” of climate change and nuclear war, this book offers a smorgasbord of historic and modern day cultism. These easy-to-follow case studies show cultism in various scales, countries, and time periods. The book’s introduction (like a ‘Cult 101’ class) familiarizes the reader with the basic foundations and terminology of cult studies that Jay Lifton uses throughout this thin volume.

If you are looking for a history or encyclopedia of cults, look elsewhere. Though the book contains much fascinating material, there are other books on the subject more capable of providing a comprehensive overview. To be fair, this book does not seem intended as “Cults for Dummies.” It has a clear motivation to inform readers of cultism in the past while urging them to be wary of its manifestations in the present. The purposeful arrangement of the chapters presents the reader with historic examples so they may better view modern day nationalism and Trump himself through a cult-colored lens.

Despite agreeing with the author on many of his insights into the psychology of the current president and on the similarities between nationalism and cult mentalities, I cannot help but think the author and publishers could have been more opaque with their purposes. I’d picked up the book hoping to learn about cultism more generally as the title seemed to indicate. Instead, the chapters on Trump (though again, I found them well argued) felt like tacked-on political opinions. I was jarred by the change from the earlier academic excerpts to more speculative commentary on the modern political climate.

This reviewer feels it important to point out my own political biases and sympathies with the author’s point of view. While I found this book informative and interesting, I would not recommend it to readers looking to learn about cultism divorced from contemporary politics. Additionally, readers should be prepared for the academic writing style and possibly unfamiliar subject matter (to those without prior study of communism, Chinese history, or theology).

Even if you disagree with Jay Lifton’s accusations of Trump, there is much valuable and intriguing information here for anyone wanting to learn about cultism.

Trevor lives in Paris, a part-time photographer and the owner of a bike-shop. He spends his time sleeping with women, fawning over his sister-in-law, and trying to pay the bills. His aspiration to become a photographer was stunted, we are informed, by a mysterious accident. So too was his passion for life curbed by the early and tragic death of his father and sister. The book is in two parts. The first section is set against the backdrop of the 1995 French Transport strike, the second takes place five years later.

Despite having a lovely setting and what should be interesting characters (ex-patriots and artists, people marked by tragedy), the book can drag. This is not because the protagonist, Trevor is unlikeable. It is that his unlikability is, at times, his primary characteristic. This is not to say Trevor is totally uninteresting or that he does not develop, it is that he does so at a miserably slow pace for most of the book, and then, seemingly all at once. The first person narrative makes Trevor’s voice inescapable, which wouldn’t be so bad except that he has a tendency to tell us rather than show us his reactions to many of the plot’s main events. This has the effect of leaving very little up for interpretation and even less room for surprise.

Still, Fleming manages to achieve what I feel is the ultimate mark of a good writer. Several days after having finished this book, I kept thinking of lines from it, quirks of characters and small details that stuck with me. Though the story itself nor its characters (the anal retentive brother, the misunderstood playboy, the hated step-father) are original, the book itself is a fast and the prose is overall rewarding to read.

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Cassie was born with a knot in her stomach – not the metaphorical kind one gets from nerves, but a literal tangle tied in her midsection. She grows up on a farm where her parents’ main source of income is a ‘meat quarry’ from which her brother and father pull large chunks of meat to auction like precious stones. This novel, somewhere between absurdist, escriture feminine, and bildungsroman, follows Cassie through her youth where her body others her, through her relationships with men, where she is both an object of fascination and disgust, and through adulthood where she battles to fill her days with something other than an empty bed and a mundane secretarial position.

The book is visceral and heavy, with a strong focus on bodies, discomfort, loneliness, and the pains of being woman and of being different. Once the reader adjusts to the style and plot oddities (written like a prose poem, the book at times feels like a series of vignettes with Cassie as the focus), they will be sure to find a poignant and emotionally complex book about growing older and the search for acceptance, love, and validation in a world that refuses to see you as anything but a broken body.

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This book’s range is such that every reader will find at least one essay of interest to them somewhere in the three thematically divided parts. The first section contains personal essays. Section 2 is the most diverse, containing essays on an artist, a saint, so-called “women’s writing,” and creative writing classes. The final section contains spectacular essays on works by Edith Wharton, Natalia Ginzburg, Kazuo Ishiguro, and more.

Cusk is a writer’s writer, which means even essays that seem at first to be personal, dwell on the power of narrative and on life as an artist. She isn’t just discussing motherhood, she is writing about artist-as-mother. She isn’t just talking about divorce or making a home for oneself, she is talking about creativity. It is the sort of writing that could isolate some readers. And there are moments, especially in the first few pieces which, though beautiful, have a way of flowering (maybe too much) around metaphors. Despite this, once you become accustomed to the idiosyncrasies of Cusk’s prose, you may find what at first felt isolating to be Cusk’s strength.

The essays are undeniably Cusk’s. They are written in a voice that is uniquely and fearlessly hers. Her essays on motherhood are done with an honesty that can, at times, seem almost crass. She speaks about the thin line between rudeness and truth-telling, about gender, and about relationships with a frankness that is becoming rare. Though not every essay in this collection is a gem, there are sections that shine, and will especially gleam for readers who are artists themselves.

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Machine is a novel that dives deep into the pressures of age, gender, and class. The unnamed narrator is complex; the novel is as much, if not more, focused on the damaged psyche of the speaker as the concrete plot points that affect her. Taking the drowning of a local girl as its driving event, the novel’s braided structure pieces together fragments of a wild summer in a resort town as the narrator’s wealthy family falls apart. The story widens its focus from the narrator’s unfaithful father, ‘weak’ mother, hotheaded friends, and drug-abusing brother, to discuss adolescence, sexuality, desire, and privilege.

The experimental style may be jarring at first, but it does well to express the dizzying pace of the summer, the recklessness of youth, and the anger of a narrator who is unsure where to direct her hurt. This novel is not for readers accustomed to orthodox form. However, the language and syntax -alive and poetic- allow what would otherwise be a fairly traditional plot to become something deeper and more emotionally vivid than other ‘teenage summer’ books.

What this book is not is a mystery about a girl drowning. It is not a fun and action-packed read full of summer drama. It is raw book that lives in the interiority of its narrator and dwells on the various ways families, friends, and people can break each other.

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Written in the form of a diary, Costalegre follows an adolescent girl as she, her mother, and a motley crew of ‘degenerate’ artists take refuge from Europe at the onset of World War II. The book is set on an isolated coast of Mexico where the jealous artists and writers are determined to work – though they mostly argue amongst themselves. One needn’t know much about the real Peggy Guggenheim, her daughter Pegeen, or the artists the characters are based on in order to love this story (although an interest in the time period and surrealist painting may deepen the reading experience).

The novel is, at its heart, a coming of age story. It is about the frustrations of being young among adults and striving to be older -or at least seen as such- and understood. The diary form allows the voice of the central character, an intelligent fifteen-year-old named Lara to express herself intimately. Her desires, her aspirations, her fears, and her annoyances written in this way make the 1930s character accessible to a modern reader. We may not understand the unique experiences of the talented daughter of an eccentric art collector raised between Europe and America, but we all know the familiar aches of growing up.

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