Book Reviews: Afterparties, and The Rachel Incident

 Book Reviews

The Rachel Incident by Caroline O'Donoghue

Publication: June 22, 2023; Knopf

Genre: women's fiction, contemporary drama, romance, LBGTQ
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Rachel Incident, a novel about early twenty-somethings in Cork, Ireland gave me a look at the Irish Republic, its people, and its history regarding abortion rights and its fight for women's reproductive rights.

I also loved the story the novel tells of young Rachel and her love for two men, both named James, who play an important part in her life.

The feelings that Rachel has for both Jameses leads her into rocky relationships with her college lit teacher and his wife. All these people interact to make for a compelling story of love in many different manifestations.

Funny, heart warming, amazing characters lead us on a merry dance in this novel of manners, friendships, and some tragedy. The comedy and the drama and even damaging hypocrisy also makes this a thoughtfully unusual book.

 

Afterparties: Stories by Anthony Veasna So

Published August 3, 2021; Ecco

Genre: short stories, immigrant fiction, Cambodian fiction
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

These short stories describe the lives of young Cambodian Americans at home, school, work - their checquered lives, many on the lower income level, their families surviving as relatively recent immigrants and refugees from the Cambodian Civil War and the Khmer Rouge in the mid 1970s, a war called the Cambodian Genocide.

This war and their family history are still alive among these families, as they try to find their way in a new country, sometimes worried about the past finding its way into their present and future. The stories are set in a community in California.

Many of them are heart breaking as the children carry the scars of the past and continue to feel the effects of the sufferings of their parents and families during what they refer to as the Genocide in Cambodia. Adapting to a new country is an added complication for the families and their children growing up American.

I found the stories revealing and necessary for us to understand what some immigrant families face and carry with them in their new country and new home.

What are you reading this week?

Memes: The Sunday Post hosted by The Caffeinated Bookreviewer. Also,  It's Monday: What Are You Reading, and Sunday Salon, Stacking the Shelves, Mailbox Monday

Sunday Salon: Holding Pattern by Jenny Xie; Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa

 

Holding Pattern: A Novel by Jenny Xie

Publication: June 20, 2023, Riverhead Books
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a novel about a Chinese immigrant family -  a mother-daughter and their relationship in the U.S. Rather than an immigrant child/adult having to cope with a demanding, self-sacrificing traditional parent, this is about a mother/parent who has broken the norm or stereotype and found a new way of independent living.

Kathleen disappointed her divorced mom Marissa after dropping out of her academic program in psychology and returning home to Oakland, Ca. But Kathleen finds a new mother on her return: Marissa has changed her outlook and lifestyle, becoming trendy and modern and engaged to a tech entrepreneur, Brian Lin.

The novel has two themes : Kathleen trying to find her own way with her interest in psychology and touch therapy, cuddle clinics, and her mother having a renewed interest in reviving her life. This novel surprised me as it deviates from the traditional daughter-mom pattern of Asian parent-child relationships.

I liked the new Marissa, the mom, who is still concerned about her undecided daughter and tries to help her back to a constructive future, but who is determined to live a satisfying life of her own.

 Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa,

Eric Ozawa (Translator)

Publication: July 4, 2023; Harper Perennial

Rating: 5/5 stars

A familiar trope is used at the beginning of this novel - a young woman's heart is broken in a failed relationship; she leaves her job and returns home to her family. 

The trope ends there as the story that unfolds is heart warming and positive and unique. There are new beginnings for the broken hearted Takako and new beginnings for her Uncle Satoru who takes her in, gives her a job and an upstairs apartment at his family bookstore.

I like that Takako becomes part of her uncle's life in more than one way, helping him with his old bookstore on a street filled with other bookshops. She interacts with Satoru's estranged wife who suddenly returns after five years' absence and helps the wife to heal from whatever has been ailing her psychologically. 

It's lovely that Takako herself finds friendship and affection, as well as family, in the small town, and even a new romantic interest. Her uncle's advice to her: Don't be afraid of someone "warming your heart" as long as you live is especially poignant.

What are you reading this week?

Memes: The Sunday Post hosted by The Caffeinated Bookreviewer. Also,  It's Monday: What Are You Reading, and Sunday Salon, Stacking the Shelves, Mailbox Monday

 

Sunday Salon: Modern Trope of Loss and Returning Home

 Returning home:

I 've been reading books about young women abandoning their job after a breakup with a boyfriend, and returning to their parents' home. This seems to be a popular trope as I've seen it in several  contemporary novels.

However, the stories vary widely once the main character moves back to family, depending on their circumstances and family dynamics. This makes them interesting regardless of the trope.

A Quitter's Paradise: A Novel by Elysha Chang

Publication: June 6, 2023' SJP Lit
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This novel deals with two generations of a family impacting each other - the story of Rita and Jing from Taipei, who emigrate to the U.S. and the stories of their daughters, Narisa and Eleanor, born and raised in New York.

The adult Eleanor, on her own, quits her PhD program in neuroscience; her older sister Narisa disappeared for good while a teen, after one too many fights with her harsh and disapproving parents. And only Eleanor and her mother Rita are left in the family after the father Jing leaves home and forms a new family in Taipei.

After Rita's death, Eleanor has to face the truth of both her parents' lives and her own.

I was left amazed and dismayed at the family dynamics in this novel, especially that created by the parents. I wondered how Eleanor would cope with the history of people leaving/quitting and with the story of her mother Rita, left alone to raise the girls in the U.S. when Jing left the family.

The novel follows two separate story lines, a complex one of the parents and their extended family in NY and that of the girls raised in the U.S. I found both stories fascinating.

Goodbye, Vitamin by Rachel Khong

Published:July 11, 2017; Henry Holt and Co.

Genre: literary fiction, contemporary, family drama, adult fiction

Ruth used to go to Charleston with her boyfriend Joel for the holidays, but no more. After they broke up, Ruth is left with the prospect of going home to her parents in LA, parents she hasn't seen in a while.

While there, Ruth decides to stay and help out as her father is developing dementia and losing coping skills. The novel centers around Ruth and their mother and her brother Linus's attempts to ease their father and themselves into a new reality. 

Written with a lot of humor and pathos, Goodbye, Vitamin tells a story of a family support of a loved one whose personality is slowly changing. I gave this novel five stars.

Sea Change by Gina Chung

Publication: March 28, 2023, Vintage

Genre: family drama, speculative fiction, animal story, contemporary

The story of Ro's friendship with Dolores, the giant Pacific octopus, is a heartwarming one, especially since it's her only connection with her missing science father, who had discovered and captured the octopus which now resides in the local aquarium.

I was a little disappointed when the story veers away from Ro's father never returning and her boyfriend leaving, perhaps forever, on a space exploration trip to Mars.

The novel includes Ro's friends and other young Korean Americans and their lives in the U.S. Their stories don't mesh with the story of Dolores, the giant Pacific Northwest octopus and the sadness of Ro's missing father.

The information about the octopus, its personality and its importance to Ro are the key parts of the novel although at least half of the book is devoted to Ro's other friends. 

What are you reading this week?

Memes: The Sunday Post hosted by The Caffeinated Bookreviewer. Also,  It's Monday: What Are You Reading, and Sunday Salon, Stacking the Shelves, Mailbox Monday

Book Beginning: Radical Love by Satish Kumar

 The Friday 56. Grab a book, turn to page 56 or 56% of your eReader. Find any sentence that grabs you. Post it, and add your URL post in Linky at Freda's Voice.

Also visit Book Beginning at Rose City Reader, and First Line Friday

Radical Love by Satish Kumar, February 7, 2023, Parallax Press

Genre: self-help, nonfiction

About: To see peace in our lifetimes, we have to study love.

 

This is the radical message of this inspirational book .... Author and activist Satish Kumar is well known for his epic 1960s walk for world peace from India to Moscow, Paris, London, and Washington, DC

Book beginning:

Chapter 1- A Monsoon of Love

Life is a landscape of love, and love is the celebration of life. Love is the means and love is the end. Love is our path and it is our destination. Love is the goal. Love is a way of bveing. Love is a way of life. There is not way to love: love is the way. 

Page 56:

"Have I finished all that water?" Gandhi asked, visibly perturbed. 

Thanks to Wiley Saichek of Saichek Publicity for a feature/review copy of this book. 

Sunday Salon: A Mystery and a Memoir

 Just read: 

Now You See Us by Balli Kaur Jaswal

Published March 7, 2023; William Morrow & Company

Genre: mystery thriller, fiction, Asia
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The experiences of three Filipina domestic workers in Singapore in this novel are quite different. 

Corazon works for a wealthy woman who treats her as a family member; Donita is abused physically and mentally by an overly demanding and insulting woman who aspires to rise in society; Angel likes her job as caretaker for a disabled man but is shunted aside when a nurse is hired in her place.

The novel was an eye opener on the varied conditions of Filipina domestic workers abroad, in this case in Singapore. The book is made even more interesting when the three workers get together to clear the name of one of their friends in the murder of her female employer.

Revealing and informative as social commentary, and entertaining as a mystery novel, the book is interesting and important on many levels.

Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City by Jane Wong

Publication: May 16, 2023; Tin House Books

Genre: memoir, nonfiction, Asian American literature

I liked the poetic prose that Jane Wong, a poet and creative writer, uses for much of this memoir. She has a poet's acute and perceptive reaction to her life experiences. 

 
I think of the book as a very personal memoir of her despair and agonies in growing up among those who don't understand or accept her - in school, university, in Atlantic City, where her parents ran a restaurant until her father deserted the family. Of having to field stereotyping, microaggressions, outright hostility, and more.

Her mother is the force that bolsters her as she goes through one heartbreak after another in her life and in her failed relationships with boyfriends. The author does not dwell as much on her rise as a poet and on her academic career as an associate professor of creative writing. But I recall betrayals on her road to that position as well.

In this very honest memoir, the heartache comes through, as does her remarkably resilient self, and her mother who sees Jane through all her responses of dejection and grief.

I was heartened to see that the author is a successful poet, writer, and teacher because of or in spite of all she went through.

What are you reading this week? 

Memes: The Sunday Post hosted byThe Caffeinated Bookreviewer. Also,  It's Monday: What Are You Reading, and Sunday Salon, Stacking the Shelves, Mailbox Monday

Sunday Salon: Mystery Thrillers New and Old

 Recently reviewed:

Sun Damage by Sabine Durrant

Publication: August 1, 2023; Harper Paperbacks

Genre: mystery thriller, fiction, France, literary fiction

I loved reading the suspenseful events leading up to fugitive Ali's arrival as a cook for the vacationing family in the large house in the south of France. I also enjoyed the chance for romance for the wayward, lost soul that she is. 

It was surprising how well Ali carried off her duties as cook, which she is not and only pretending to be, and how fortuitous it was to have a guest to help her with duties in the kitchen.

The ending of the thriller came with a twist that was not a total surprise but it did add more drama to the  story. I liked the more or less realistic ending with Ali not totally changed in her ways but much better, enough that we like her and wish her well, even though she is not totally redeemed.

An Oxford Murder by G.G. Vandagriff, November 6, 2019 publication

Genre: mystery, historical mystery, cozy mystery, romance 

Catherine Tregowyn and Dr. Harry Bascombe, teachers at Oxford, decide to play detective and solve the murder by strangling of Oxford don, Agatha Chenowith.

There are several likely suspects in the world of professors, poets, and their partners, with everything from revenge, jealousy, fear, and secrets for the two amateur sleuths to investigate. 

I enjoyed reading about the famed buildings and rooms at Oxford, and of the rivalries between colleagues that can build up. It was an enjoyable if light read and I would like reding the other books in the series of the two  would be detectives.

The Guest List by Lucy Foley, June 2, 2020, William Morrow

Genre: mystery, thriller, suspense, adult fiction

Setting: an island off the coast of Ireland

About: On an island off the coast of Ireland, guests celebrate two people joining their lives together as one....And then someone turns up dead. Who didn’t wish the happy couple well? 

I am very curious as to why I wrote only one short sentence for a review, after rating the book 5/5. And I'm even more curious about what I said:

Great characterization of a villain, which slowly unfolds as the story progresses.

That sentence intrigues me. Now I'll have to go back and reread the book I read in 2020. Anybody else prone to forgetting books they've read two or more years previously?  

What are you reading this week? 

Memes: The Sunday Post hosted byThe Caffeinated Bookreviewer. Also,  It's Monday: What Are You Reading, and Sunday Salon, Stacking the Shelves, Mailbox Monday

Sunday Salon: New Asian American Memoir/Short Stories and a Book on Censorship

New Books:

I've discovered another memoir by an Asian American/Chinese American who grew up in a restaurant family in the U.S. (See my review of Curtis Chin's memoir set in Detroit in the 1980s) Jane Wong's book is set in Atlantic City, NJ.

 

Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City: A Memoir by Jane Wong

Publication: May 16, 2023, Tin House Books

Genre: memoir, nonfiction, Asian American literature

In her debut memoir, Wong tells a new story about Atlantic City, one that resists a single identity, a single story, as she writes about making do with what you have―and what you don’t.

This is a memoir about family, food, girlhood, resistance, and growing up in a Chinese American restaurant on the Jersey shore. (publisher)

See my review of Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City on goodreads. 

Afterparties: Stories by Anthony Veasna So

Published August 3, 2021; Ecco

Genre: short stories, Cambodian American literature, gay/lesbian fiction

I read the first three of nine stories so far, of the lives of young Cambodian Americans at home, school, work - their checquered  lives, many on the lower income level, their families surviving as relatively recent immigrants and refugees from the Cambodian Civil War and the Khmer Rouge in the mid 1970s, a war called the Cambodian Genocide.

This war and their family history are still alive among these families, as they try to find their way in a new country, sometimes worried about the past finding its way into their present and future. The stories are set in a community in California.

In the first story, "Three Women of Chuck's Donuts," a single mother of two girls works 24 hours a day in her donut shop, part of her divorce settlement from her Cambodian husband. 

The second story, "Superking Son Scores Again," has a badminton genius doing what he loves best - coaching the high school badminton team, while he does what he hates most, managing his parents' grocery store. 

In a third story, "Maly, Maly, Maly" a young gay Cambodian bonds with his cousin, but when she starts growing into a young woman following her traditions in the community, he is left feeling very alone.   

I'm eager to read the other stories by So, this talented,  award-winning Cambodian writer, who sadly died, possibly of drug complications, in his late 20s. 

About the writer: Anthony Veasna So was a graduate of Stanford University and earned his MFA in fiction at Syracuse University.  

In my mailbox:

Stifled Laughter: One Woman's Story about Fighting Censorship

by Claudia Johnson

March 14, 2023, Fulcrum Publishing

About: Pulitzer Prize Nominated Winner of the 1993 PEN/Newman’s Own First Amendment Award for Claudia Johnson’s extraordinary efforts to restore banned literary classics from Florida classrooms. 

Stifled Laughter is the story of one woman's efforts to restore literary classics to the classrooms of rural north Florida. 

Thanks to Wiley Saichek/ Saichek Publicity for a review copy

What are you reading this week?

 

Memes: The Sunday Post hosted byThe Caffeinated Bookreviewer. Also,  It's Monday: What Are You Reading, and Sunday Salon, Stacking the Shelves, Mailbox Monday