Feb 11 2024

The Road by Vasily Grossman

Vasily Grossman is one of the great writers of the twentieth century, and The Road is a very good place to start reading his work. Born in the Ukrainian city of Berdychiv when it was part of the Russian Empire, Grossman experienced the Bolshevik Revolution and the ensuing civil war as a teen. He began writing short stories while studying chemical engineering at Moscow State University, and one of his early stories drew favorable notice from influential Soviet writers Maxim Gorky and Mikhail Bulgakov. He worked for a time in Donetsk, back when it was called Stalino, but by the mid-1930s he was both living in Moscow and able to write full-time.

The Road by Vasily Grossman

He came into his own as a writer when he worked as a war correspondent for the Red Army newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda (Red Star). Grossman witnessed and wrote about the Battle of Stalingrad, the great tank battle at Kursk, and the Soviet campaign to capture Berlin. In Stalingrad, he spent more than three months on the right bank of the Volga (p. 66), where house-to-house fighting between the Red Army and the Wehrmacht raged and the war in Europe was decided. He was one of the first reporters to see the Nazi extermination camp at Treblinka, which he reached in July 1944. Many of his dispatches are collected in A Writer at War, which is probably the other good place to start reading Grossman, as his best-known novels, Stalingrad and Life and Fate are vast epics.

After the war, Grossman increasingly came into conflict with the Soviet state. His work reporting Nazi crimes against Jews was suppressed, and he himself was fortunate to escape the anti-semitic campaign of the early 1950s, which only ebbed because of Stalin’s death. The cultural thaw of the Khrushchev years had its limits, as Grossman discovered when he submitted the manuscript of Life and Fate for publication. The authorities not only refused publication, they confiscated every copy of the manuscript that they could find, going so far as to take the typewriter ribbons that Grossman had used to write the novel. Only Solzhenitsyn’s work was as thoroughly repressed. Grossman died of cancer in 1964 at the age of 58. Life and Fate was not published until 1980; it was not published in Russia until 1988.

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Feb 10 2024

The Dragon Griaule by Lucius Shepard

Before Lucius Shepard had published stories, he had the idea of a dragon who was 6,000 feet long, immobilized but not killed by a wizard’s spell ages ago, now more or less a part of the landscape with towns and villages on and around his body, which was difficult to distinguish from the other hills of the region. This was the dragon Griaule, to whom Shepard would return throughout his career: the first story in the collection, “The Man Who Painted the Dragon Griaule,” was published in 1984; the last, “The Skull,” appeared in 2012, two years before Shepard’s own death. Throughout the stories, Griaule is vast and still, but awake, and malevolent. Some characters perceive his presence as part of the general atmosphere in the places built on his body. Others think that they have more direct access to his will, or perhaps vice versa.

The Dragon Griaule by Lucius Shepard

The stories begin in the register of fantasy tales, with perhaps a bit of industrialization peeking over the temporal horizon. Early on, the towns also want to rid themselves of Griaule’s influence and become more or less normal places. Later, the populace of places close to Griaule appear to have accepted their lot, and some even to revel in it. In the first story, the titular man is a painter who has not met with much commercial success. When he hears of the offer by the town of Teocinte to give a vast sum to anyone who can finally kill Griaule, Meric Cattanay sees an opportunity for a great plan, or maybe a great scam. Griaule will become an enormous canvas, Teocinte will become home to a wonder of art, and the action of the paints will become the dragon’s end, chemicals finally doing what sorcery could not. Shepard sketches the decades that pass, until finally

You decided to paint a dragon, to send hundreds of men searching for malachite and cochineal beetles, to love a woman, to heighten an undertone here and there, and finally to position your body a certain way. He seemed to have reached the end of the process. What next? (p. 29)

Who has outlasted whom?

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Feb 09 2024

You’re Not The Only One F*cking Up by Lane Moore

subtitled Breaking the Endless Cycle of Dating Mistakes.

When I picked up this book for review, I did not realize that it would become incredibly relevant to my personal life. Everything happens for a reason, and I was genuinely pleased to get a little guidance as I navigate a chaotic (and frankly exhausting!) new-again world. But even if you’re not currently in the dating trenches, this short non-fiction book has a lot of great advice for those trying to figure out their own hearts and relationships, as well as the patterns that have brought them to where they are in their emotional lives.

Lane Moore is a bestselling author and comedian whose show, Tinder Live, dissects modern dating with both humor and heart. Wanting to further highlight the universality of the confusing and occasionally self-defeating dating experience, she put out a call for horrific dating stories, several of which form the backbone of this absorbing book. Too often, it’s made clear, people make poor choices almost out of habit, ignoring things they know are bad for them in hope of finally finding The One.

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Feb 08 2024

The Wandering Hour by Zack Loran Clark & Nick Eliopulos

I genuinely did not expect this first installment of the new middle grade horror series The Doomsday Archives to be quite as accomplished as it is but dang, what an impressive series debut!

New Rotterdam is one of those creepy coastal New England towns that definitely inspired H. P. Lovecraft’s Innsmouth (OH! I wonder if Emrys’ name was chosen in tribute to one of the contemporary authors working hard to reframe the Cthulhu mythos without Lovecraft’s rampant racism and biases. That would be really neat!) The sun rarely shines in this foggy, perpetually overcast place, and people seem to go missing with a regularity alarming to outsiders. Folktales and legends abound, almost all of the creepy kind.

Befitting the 21st century, a wiki has sprung up to help keep track of all these stories, making them feel less hallowed and distant, and more creepypasta and — as a result — disturbingly immediate. Called The New Rotterdam Wiki Project, the wiki is written and administered mostly anonymously. Emrys Houtman is one of the contributors to this project, along with his best friend Hazel. The two met at summer camp, and Emrys was super thrilled when his mom got a job that relocated them to Hazel’s town. New Rotterdam is filthy with cryptids and other weirdness, both of which he and Hazel are obsessed with finding and recording. It helps, too, that they live in the same apartment building, along with Hazel’s other best friend, Serena.

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Feb 05 2024

Zodiac: A Graphic Memoir by Ai Weiwei, with Elettra Stamboulis & Gianluca Costantini

This gorgeous hardcover graphic memoir by celebrated artist Ai Weiwei is a must-have for his fans, and a must-read for anyone who cares about modern art and, particularly, its intersection with political protest.

For those unfamiliar, Ai Weiwei is a conceptual artist, sometime designer of architecture and longtime political dissident against the Communist government of China. His father Ai Qing was a famous poet who fell afoul of Mao Zedong and was forced into internal exile, living with his wife and young child in subsistence poverty on the fringes of the Gobi Desert. Despite their hard circumstances, Ai Qing did his best to instill history, folklore and a sense of justice into his only child, who would grow up to be the internationally acclaimed artist that he is today. Now Ai Weiwei has produced a book, illustrated by Gianluca Costantini, that loosely ties stories of the Chinese zodiac with important milestones of his own life.

To those not already familiar with Ai Weiwei’s life story, the chapters can feel a little disjointed: looking up his history certainly helped me process the vignettes and allusions better. Some of the chapters are more loosely tied to the zodiac than others, tho each strives to ground its connection in a brief but usually excellent explanation of the accompanying myth and characteristics. Tho perhaps I say that as someone familiar with the astrology: a friend with a better grounding in Ai Weiwei’s art but less knowledge of the eastern zodiac certainly had the exact opposite impression that I did (hi, Emily!)

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Feb 01 2024

Drawing Deena by Hena Khan

So there are a lot of reasons why this book resonated with me and made me cry for younger me, but foremost among them was the very clear cut, if never fully named, eldest daughter syndrome our main character Deena suffers from. Idk if it’s even a thing in certain cultures, but the expectation she faces to pretend that everything is okay, to soothe her parents by pretending that their choices are her choices, really cut me to the bone.

It’s not a spoiler to say that Deena manages to overcome this. The 21st century, particularly in America, is much kinder to children with mental health issues than it was when I was growing up. Watching young Deena learn to take agency over her own mental health was inspiring, even for an old like me, but especially for an old who wants her kids to grow up without all the unnecessary mental anguish I went through at their age.

The story itself revolves around Deena Rahman, a middle schooler who loves art but who worries that her parents’ constant fighting over money will lead to their divorce. She’s also under pressure to keep her grades up while helping with her mom’s dress business. Her mom is something of a complainer, constantly moaning about the price of things, including Deena’s much needed dental care. Deena, unsurprisingly, takes this to heart, blaming herself for requiring a mouth guard and secretly wanting extra art classes. Her beloved younger brother, meanwhile, pretty much gets to ask her to do all sorts of chores for him but only reluctantly reciprocates (this is a common theme in Hena Khan’s books. I love that the main characters adore their kid brothers but I personally find these younger brother characters irritating.)

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Jan 30 2024

What’s Wrong? by Erin Williams

subtitled Personal Histories of Chronic Pain and Bad Medicine.

After a lifetime of anxiety and self-medication, Erin Williams realized that the American health system had failed her. At best, it focused on symptoms instead of attempting to treat her as an entire person, leaving her to suffer with chronic pain and, finally, to search for answers as to not only how to feel better physically but how to cope with the mental, emotional and spiritual despair that she was constantly told were merely aftereffects of her physical disease. If they were considered at all a source or contributor to her maladies, it was clearly because she was mistaken or, worse, making these symptoms up. If they couldn’t see the problem, the medical system insisted, then the problem couldn’t possibly be real.

One thing before I continue: while the back cover makes it very clear that this is an American healthcare issue, the contents do not. I understand why: the point of the author constantly saying “our” without specifying who “we” is makes the contents feel more immediately relevant to the reader. But anyone with experience of medicine in foreign countries — or at least the countries with decent medical systems like Malaysia, tho anywhere else feels truly exemplary compared to the hellscape that is American medicine with its demon master of for-profit health insurance — will feel immediately how alien and awful the treatment depicted here is. As someone who’s experienced both systems, I can attest to both the veracity of Ms Williams’ depiction, as well as the uniquely frustrating misery of being unable to access life-saving care because of paperwork and price-gouging when other countries somehow manage it just fine!

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Jan 29 2024

Diary Of A Confused Feminist by Kate Weston

You know you’re getting old when British YA diary novels are no longer compared to Sue Townsend’s or even Helen Fielding’s oeuvre.

For all that I am now an old, I thoroughly enjoyed this tale of Kat Evans, the fifteen year-old girl who wants to be a good feminist even as she worries about friendships, boys and school, roughly in that order. She and her two best friends, Millie and Sam, are determined to raise awareness about feminism at their secondary school. But when Millie and Sam both get boyfriends, while Kat’s own budding relationship with Hot Josh is thrown into jeopardy by mean girl Terrible Trudy, Kat fears not only that’s she’s being a bad feminist for her negative thoughts but also that her besties soon won’t have time for her any more. As Kat’s anxieties escalate, will she be able to overcome her concerns about being seen as a baby in order to reach out for the help she desperately needs?

This was a humorous yet realistically drawn look into the life of a typical young woman battling not only the pressures of everyday life in the 2020s, but also mental illness. I loved how matter-of-factly Kate Weston presents anxiety: she deftly shows how it’s not a life sentence but a completely manageable condition. Even without the mental health aspect, it’s great how she encourages teens (and older readers!) to aim for clear communications with friends and family. It’s so easy to stew in one’s own emotions and concerns, letting them build in pressure in your head, when support for most is so easy to find nowadays (as I recently discovered in my own personal life! But also I fully acknowledge how lucky I am to have sensible, supportive friends, new and old.)

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Jan 25 2024

Where The Body Was by Ed Brubaker, Sean Phillips & Jacob Phillips

Gosh, I wish every aspiring literary thriller author who’s planning on writing some heartfelt, wordy, incredibly dreary and often borderline racist tale of suburban scandals would just read this graphic novel and go ahead and reevaluate whether this manuscript they’re working on actually says anything that the Brubaker/Phillips crew hasn’t covered perfectly already.

My day job is the crime beat, and let me tell you, I have read so much junk masquerading as elevated prose applied to the suburban whodunnit that it makes me want to tear my hair out. Grace Metalious’ Peyton Place was the scandalous, trailblazing ur-text of this subgenre, but she definitely did not take it as seriously as some of the authors operating in the field today. Dear modern authors: it’s okay to write entertaining prose that doesn’t aspire to literary greatness via tortured text renderings of a person’s incredibly banal interior life. People grieve, we get it, but y’all writers need to give readers a reason to care about that person before we can care about their sadness. Because sadness? It isn’t unique. Last year was the shittiest year of my life and my grief bored even me, and I say that as someone who actually cares deeply about myself.

In all honesty, if I’d realized that this book was meant to be a suburban thriller, I’d have probably passed on it. I know Ed Brubaker as more of a heist/noir writer, so I was expecting more of that. The 80s setting, crosscut with modern day panels, fit the quasi-historical lens of his that I’m used to, so by the time I realized this was basically suburban shenanigans, I was already too hooked to try to flail away.

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Jan 23 2024

Here In Avalon by Tara Isabella Burton

A large part of me is glad that Tara Isabella Burton was not writing novels back when I was a teenager, because I would have made her books my entire life aesthetic.

Her three novels to date — Social Creature, The World Cannot Give, and now Here In Avalon — revolve around women who are voraciously hungry for large lives lived on their own terms but who feel trapped, and so lash out emotionally, heedless of whomever around them gets hurt. These women are never the main character: that honor goes to the other woman who is, in turn, most trapped in their orbits, loving them and envying them and supporting them and perhaps ultimately destroying them. Usually these central women belong to an in-group that the main characters are curious about before falling headlong into. There is also usually creepiness and crime and most of all a regret for all that was lost in the final pages.

For all that, none of Ms Burton’s books feel same-y. For example, I love Janice Hallett, but was a little baffled at the use of the exact same moralistic framing device in the last three books of hers I’ve read (not including The Twyford Code, which I plan to get to reading and reviewing here #soon.) Ms Burton might use similar base archetypes but all her characters are so unique in their circumstances — even when the books call back to each other — that her stories always feel like they’re exploring new facets of her focus subjects. If there are, arguably, only two stories in all the history of the world, then hers continue the time-honored tradition of telling us new, heart-searching things about ourselves while working from a very particular base framework.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/01/23/here-in-avalon-by-tara-isabella-burton/