Review of THE MAIDEN OF ALL OUR DESIRES by Peter Manseau

 4 Stars

This novel caught my attention because it was recommended to fans of Maggie O’Farrell and Emma Donoghue, two writers I really like.

The setting is an isolated convent in 14^th century England about 20 years after the Black Death.  The duration is 24 hours during which a blizzard rages.  A bishop is launching an investigation because of rumours of heresy.  Mother John, the abbess, does indeed supplement canonical readings with passages from the Book of Ursula, the teachings of the charismatic founder of the order which are not in line with patriarchal dogma.  Father Francis, the resident priest, was exiled to the remote convent as a punishment, and his relationship with the nuns is acrimonious so he cannot be relied on to defend them. 

Both the founder and the current abbess have feminist leanings.  Mother Ursula founded the convent to create a place where women would not be “’at the mercy of cruel men.’”  When seeking permission from the bishop to establish a convent, she commented that she did not want to join one of the existing convents because they “’reek of excess and sin’” and she’d “’sooner sprout flesh and seek Holy Orders than join such a house.’”  Her teachings, which are read daily by Mother John, are “meditations on the value of the nuns’ labor, inquiries into the role of women in the salvation of mankind, and an idiosyncratic accounting of their lives.”  Mother John herself joined the convent because she wanted to make a choice about her life; when her father arranged a marriage for her, she understood that she would be nothing more than a “’breeding sow’” and so said, "’I would don church clothes every morning for the remainder of my days before I would wear the skin of a man of your choosing.’”

If there is a villain in the narrative, that is Father Francis.  Though a priest, he soon earns a reputation as “’the choice confessor of widows’”:  “His clerical robes had provided fine cover for . . .  liaisons.  The older women of the city spoke openly of his skill and generosity in the granting of absolution.”  Once exiled to the convent, he shows little respect for the nuns.  He tires of their “nunnish quibbling” and focuses on woodcarving rather than the spiritual lives of the nuns.  When giving one sister her penance, he puckers his lips and then drops “a yellow-green glob into the center of the purple wine.  ‘Your penance, Sister, . . . Drink.  Then go and sin no more.’”  He bears responsibility for what happens to Maureen but treats her with anything but Christian charity.  He is wracked by guilt for “innocence destroyed because of his failure; goodness defiled because of his sin” but I wondered whether he’d ever cease being selfish and seek forgiveness directly from those he wronged.    

The perspective of various characters is given, most often that of Mother Ursula, Mother John, Father Francis, and Sister Magdalene who was born in the convent and has lived her entire life there.  Flashbacks reveal their backgrounds and explain the reasons for their choices and actions.  The backstories of Magdalene and the bishop’s clerk clearly suggest who they are long before their identities are confirmed at the end.

There are wonderful touches of humour.  Mother John goes to the necessarium before proceeding to the church “lest the necessarium become necessary in the midst of their prayers.”  During his ordination exam, while reciting the Song of Solomon, Francis thought about a woman, so his instructors “could see his passion for the text even through his voluminous cassock.”  Though he has chosen the priesthood, and abandoned his family’s woodcarving tools, Francis says, “’My vocation has not permanently sheathed my blade,’” an apt description from a man who quickly forgets his vows to minister to the physical needs of widows. 

Though set in the distant past, the book has echoes of the present.  The references to a deadly disease, the building of a wall to keep out undesirables, patriarchal authority, and the perceived inferiority of women all had me thinking about modern parallels.  Perhaps the ending also has a message for us:  “Search now for a blessing even in the wreckage  . . . you are given an empty expanse in every direction.  What will you write on this new blank page of creation?” 

This is a thought-provoking book which explores how lives are shaped both by history and by personal choice.

Review of THE PRECIOUS JULES by Shawn Nocher (New Release)

 4.5 Stars

This family drama kept my interest throughout because it is so authentic.

Ella Jules has spent 32 years of her life, since the age of 8, in the Beechwood Institute whose clients are intellectually challenged.  Lynetta, who has been her caregiver for all that time, has applied to be her guardian because the institute is closing.  Then Ella’s parents, Hillary and Stone, file with the courts to have Ella live with them.  On a weekend when Ella is to come for a visit and overnight stay, the five adult Jules children (Jax, Belle, George, Finney, and Tess) arrive at the family home to persuade the parents that having Ella live with them  is not a good idea. 

The Jules family seems perfect.  They are all good looking:  “All that blond hair and blue eyes, their collective athleticism . . . [Lynetta] couldn’t help but wonder if she had walked into a Ralph Lauren photoshoot.”  The Jules are “a moneyed family” whose home is a large house in a wealthy Baltimore neighbourhood; as Belle drives to the house she thinks it feels “like coming home to a Norman Rockwell painting.”  But Belle knows that the “picture of perfection” is deceiving:  “what the world saw of the Jules family hid something deeper.”  Each of the family members is flawed and has struggles and secrets. 

Ella’s removal from the family has affected everyone.  Guilt is a common emotion.  For example, Belle, as Ella’s twin, has “the sense that she has escaped something by virtue of a tragically consequential coin toss.”  Jax says that it’s his fault that Ella was sent away while George is certain “it was his own fault”.  The trauma of Ella’s institutionalization affects the decisions and choices characters make.  George’s wife has an eating disorder but he refuses to place her in an inpatient program, worried about how her absence would affect their daughters.  Similarly, Belle hesitates to place one of her sons in a different school which will address his unique leaning needs because she doesn’t want to separate siblings.  Gradually, as we learn the motivations of all the characters, we come to understand that “They all have scars from Ella, of one kind or another.”

The point of view is very effective in developing characters.  The perspective of each family member is given, as is that of Lynetta.  As a consequence, we understand everyone’s true feelings and motivations.  And there is no difficulty differentiating among the siblings.  For instance, it does not take long to understand that George is resentful and angry because of a childhood incident whereas Finney is more sympathetic because he himself feels “he didn’t fit into the world” just as Ella’s parents seem to want to wedge her “back into this family, shoved to fit in a space that no longer conforms to her.”

It is an outsider that best understands the family’s problem.  Clarissa, a longtime family friend, sees that they each carry “the burden of useless guilts” and so much could be solved if they communicated:  “The problem . . . was everything that had not been said, all the pain that had been privately hoarded by each one of them rather than weighed and divided equally.  This family . . . carried seven times, eight times the pain that should have been allotted each one of them.  They could . . . take all they know, all they carry, and unload it amongst one another, sort through it carefully, dispose of that which held no meaning or truth or consequence.” 

I enjoy novels with dynamic characters, and there is an indication that the family learns that secrets can have detrimental effects and there is comfort in opening up and unburdening oneself of secrets.  (I was reminded of the author’s debut novel, A Hand to Hold in Deep Water, which also examines the effects of secrets and how they lead to misunderstandings.)  It is also heartwarming to see the Jules family stop seeing Ella as “disappointment and tragedy, heartache.  They see imperfection, something lost.”   They come to see her like Lynetta does:   “a jewel of nature, a precious jewel.”

I thoroughly enjoyed this book.  It is heartbreaking, heartwarming, and thought provoking. 

Note:  I received a digital galley from the publisher via NetGalley.

Review of TASTING SUNLIGHT by Ewald Arenz (New Release)

 5 Stars

I know I’m not the first to describe this book as magical, but that is the perfect adjective for it.

Seventeen-year-old Sally runs away from a clinic where she was being treated for anorexia.  She meets Liss, a woman in her forties, who lives alone on a large farm.  Liss offers Sally a place to stay.  Gradually Sally helps Liss with various tasks on the farm and a friendship develops between the two.  As their backstories are slowly revealed, it becomes obvious that both are in need of healing.

Sally likes Liss almost immediately because she doesn’t ask probing questions, accepts her as she is, and expects nothing of her.  She gives Sally peace and quiet and space, all the things she feels she doesn’t have in her life.  She has a difficult relationship with her parents who keep trying to shape her life in a way that is a mirror image of theirs:  “How was it possible to be the child of parents who were just wrong for you, right from the start?” 

Liss sees much of her younger self in Sally.  When she was young, she too was not allowed to make her own choices; she too feels she had not “grown up in the right soil.”  Her father was very controlling:  “’Reading was out of order.  Listening to music was out of order.  Leaving things as they are was right out of order.  You can tie trees to a stake to make them grow straight.  All his life he thought you could do that to people too.’”

The two main characters are so authentic.  Both are flawed; they share an anger at the world which has forced restricted lives on them “Because it’s not acceptable for everything just to grow however it likes.”  Yet there is in them a deep humanity.  For instance, Liss sees Sally’s intelligence:  “it was like she wasn’t doing it for the first time. . . . she grasped what it was about so quickly.  You didn’t often have to show her things.”  For her part, Sally accepts Liss’s reticence:  “to be honest, she didn’t like always being asked things either.  It was OK.  She got that. . . .It was OK.” 

Also authentic is the development of the friendship.  Initially they are tentative around each other.  Liss hesitates to ask questions because “Every question and every answer spun a thread” and “One thread becomes threads and threads become cords and cords are woven into a net.”  For her part, Sally is distrustful since she has found adults to be insincere; she describes their “soft, sympathetic, empathetic voices” trying to hide their “fake wall of professional niceness and warmth and understanding.”  Gradually they come to enjoy each other’s company:  “Sometimes it felt good to work together.  Because the other person ensured that you recognized your own place in the whole.  All of a sudden, you had a significance in a whole, and weren’t simply existing.”

The book emphasizes the power of nature to heal.  As Sally and Liss pick potatoes, tend to bees, pick pears, and harvest grapes, they follow the rhythms of nature.  Sally realizes how the countryside has become real to her:  “Maybe it had been all the points of contact with the earth.  When had she ever had her hands in the soil before?  Bees on her skin?  When had she stood in a tree?”  While on the farm, a beautiful autumn day leaves her thinking “It was as though the world wanted to show her once more how beautiful it could be, how many colours it had, how fresh it could smell.”  The two women who both are non-conformists find comfort in nature:  “’That’s the lovely thing about nature.  It doesn’t conform to what we think is right.  Even if some people try to force it to grow the way they like it.’”  As I read, I often thought of the poems of Wordsworth and Coleridge which have a similar message about the beauty and power of the natural world.

Nature is described in beautiful lyrical prose.  The view from a ruined castle is detailed:  “It was as though you could see across the whole country.  The river was a never-ending ribbon that at some point just melted into the horizon.  Towns and villages lay scattered between the vineyards, which went on forever.  Right in the distance, to the north, rose a row of mountains, a shade darker than the mist.  It was a picture like still water; as if you were quenching a thirst that you hadn’t previously noticed.”  The writing is so evocative that not only can we see the views, we can also feel the wind, taste the pears, hear the cackling of the chickens, and smell the fermenting fruit.  I can’t read German, but nothing seems to have been lost in translation.  Reading the novel is like tasting sunlight, so the title is perfect!

The ending is heart-warming.  The dance scene in the penultimate chapter, especially when the icing sugar is mentioned, made me want to dance along.  Just as the hard work on the farm is not minimized, there is also not an easy solution to all problems, but the “’two will look after each other, yes!’” 

This book will undoubtedly be on my list of best reads this year.

Review of DOG PARK by Sofi Oksanen

3.5 Stars

This is the first book I’ve read by this Finnish writer.  From the beginning, I felt disoriented because the narrative jumps around in time and place and because information is withheld.

The novel begins in Finland in 2016.  Olenka, a cleaning lady in Helsinki, sits on a park bench and is joined by Daria, a woman whose life Olenka ruined and who also ruined Olenka’s life.  As she tries to determine Daria’s intentions, she recalls her life in post-Soviet Ukraine.  In 2006, returning to Ukraine after failing to succeed as a fashion model in Paris, Olenka sold her eggs to a fertility agency.  Subsequently she became a coordinator for that agency; she matched potential egg donors to would-be parents.  Daria was one of her recruits.  Slowly the reader learns what happened to bring an end to Olenka’s career and forced her into a life in hiding in Finland.

Much of the time, I was uncertain about what happened in the past and what is actually happening in the present.   Olenka, the narrator, doesn’t give complete explanations and so keeps the reader in suspense.  She does see Daria’s arrival as a threat; she thinks she is in mortal danger from a number of sources, including a man whom she repeatedly addresses as “you.”  (His identity is not given until almost midway through the novel.)  Who could be chasing her and why is not revealed for the longest time.  Potential readers should be forewarned that not all questions will be answered.  The ending in particular may leave readers unsatisfied.

Olenka is an interesting character who is both victim and villain.  I found my feelings about her changing more than once.  She is determined to escape the subsistence life her mother has and does whatever is necessary to do so.  She certainly manipulates others to achieve what she wants, but often she just does what she has to do to survive.  One message of the novel seems to be that one can rarely escape one’s past:  one of Olenka’s actions as a child has repercussions that would be impossible to foresee. 

The plight of women in an unstable society is emphasized.  Upon her return to Ukraine, Olenka’s options for a job focus on her body:  she can be a model, escort, mail-order bride, surrogate, or egg donor.    

The title refers to a park Olenka and Daria visit, but it also refers to the international market of egg donation which is shown to be the equivalent of dog breeding.  Wealthy clients have exacting specifications so donors’ backgrounds are massaged to meet those requirements.  Donors are drugged to enhance egg production.  Once they are no longer useful, they are left with chronic and terminal illnesses.  And “there were plenty of mentally disturbed donors.”  Both clients and donors are exploited.

The novel references several events in recent Ukrainian history.  The 2014 Maidan Revolution is mentioned.    Olenka’s family lives in Snizhne in the Donbas, in rebel-held eastern Ukraine, so insight is given into life there:   “According to my mother, the Donetsk People’s Republic had taken some people’s homes while offering others a path to riches because the refugees had left behind so much wealth.  Some joined the separatist forces voluntarily, while others were press-ganged, and deserters were shot.  Some joined because otherwise their homes and possessions would be confiscated, and their loved ones would be left destitute.”  The downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 is referenced:  “it later turned out that the Russian crew who transported the missile that brought down the Malaysian aircraft had driven their vehicles through Snizhne in broad daylight.”  Throughout the book, life in Ukraine is constantly contrasted unfavourably with life in Finland; for instance, Olenka mentions being able to drink water “straight from the faucet without any complicated water purification system” in Finland and dreams of building her family a new house in Ukraine “with a water pump and a bathroom.”

This book will appeal to readers who enjoy slow-burning suspense and who are comfortable being left in an almost-constant state of confusion.  I enjoyed it for its glimpses of life in Ukraine after independence.  The Donbas region of Ukraine is often mentioned in the news about the Russo-Ukrainian War, so descriptions of life in that area are enlightening. 

 

Review of FOUR BY FOUR by Sara Mesa

 3.5 Stars

Earlier this year, I read Among the Hedges by Sara Mesa (https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2022/04/review-of-among-hedges-by-sara-mesa.html); it left me wanting to read more by this Spanish writer.  Four by Four proves to be as unsettling as Among the Hedges. 

The book has a tripartite structure.  In Part I, we are given the perspective of several students at Wybrany College, an isolated, elite boarding school where students are educated while protected from the chaos of the outside world.  (The college was founded by a Polish man, and the name of the college translates as Chosen, a word that proves to be perfect for the institution.)  The students are divided into two groups:  the “normals” are the children of wealthy families, whereas the “specials” are scholarship students, usually the children of the college’s staff.  The scholarship students are viewed as second-class.  Celia, one of those students, wants to leave even though the Advisor takes an especial interest in helping her.  Ignacio, another scholarship student, is relentlessly bullied. 

Part II is the diary of Isidro Bedragare, a substitute teacher.  Celia has disappeared and Ignacio is no longer a victim of bullying.  The Advisor has become the Assistant Headmaster.  These changes leave the reader feeling disoriented, but this is obviously intentional.  Bedragare senses that there is something hidden and sinister going on within the school, though he has difficulty discovering the school’s secrets because conversations with staff tend to be deliberately elliptical. 

Part III is a cryptic story written by Bedragare’s predecessor, Garcia Medrano.  His abstract fiction seems to be an allegory for events at Wybrany.  It sheds some light on the school’s secrets.

What stands out is the disturbing atmosphere throughout.  It does not take long for the reader to sense that everything is not as it seems.  The reluctance of staff to speak suggests sinister secrets.  Events like disappearances and the killing of an animal confirm that something is deeply wrong, that there is a heart of darkness.  The school that is supposed to be a refuge may in fact be the exact opposite for some.  It is also made clear that asking too many questions or threatening to speak out can be dangerous. 

Reading the book often felt like trying to piece together a puzzle.  Often there are only impressions and ambiguous conversations so several times I found myself confused.  Potential readers should be forewarned that, even at the end, not everything is explained.

What is obvious is that the book is a criticism of the powerful and privileged and how they retain power and use people for their purposes.  In the novel, there are numerous  examples of people being manipulated and exploited and secrets and complicity allowing corruption to thrive. 

Like Among the Hedges, Four by Four is not a comfortable read.  It suggests that being chosen may not always be a good thing. 

Review of THE GIRL WHOSE LUCK RAN OUT by Gayleen Froese (New Release)

 3 Stars

Ben Ames, a former police officer, is now a private investigator living and working in Calgary.  Kimberly Moy, a university student, has gone missing, and her sister Lauren hires him to find her.  Just as Ben begins his investigation, Jesse, his ex, now a rising rock star known as Jack Lowe, comes back into his life and ends up helping Ben on the case. 

There are two narratives, the missing person case and the relationship between Ben and Jesse.  At times there is more focus on the latter; not only do the two men need to discuss their breakup, but Jesse also suffers from depression and struggles with the pressures of stardom.  Unfortunately, this romance storyline takes attention away from the investigation.

For a mystery, there is not a great deal of tension or suspense.  There is not a lot of action and, except for the predictable climax, Ben is never in any danger, though there are obvious attempts to suggest that a couple of visits with possible suspects could be dangerous.  I dislike the overused trope of the incompetent/ reluctant police investigation which makes its appearance.  It is not difficult to identify the villain of the piece since there are few suspects.  Furthermore, the ending comes very quickly, and the confession is just too convenient. 

Kimberly’s actions are not convincing.  At the end, Ben dreams an alternate version of events, and it describes exactly how I would have expected someone in her situation to have behaved.  Having Kimberly use Fibonacci sequencing and doodles just doesn’t seem authentic either.  And Jesse can solve both so easily? 

I appreciated that the book is unapologetically Canadian.  The author is obviously very familiar with the setting, and there is no attempt to disguise it as a fictional American location. 

Ben and Jesse are both appealing characters.  They are not perfect, but they are decent human beings.  I can certainly imagine the two of them working together on future cases.   I especially loved their dialogue; sometimes it is witty and sometimes it is serious and poignant.  The secondary characters, Luna and Kent, are clearly delineated, and they are obviously positioned to be helpful in this and future cases. 

This is a light, easy read.  Though flawed in some aspects, it is entertaining – a good choice to pack for a summer holiday.    

Review of SEA OF TRANQUILITY by Emily St. John Mandel

4 Stars

Time travel novels do not usually appeal to me, but I made an exception because of the author whose previous novels I’ve enjoyed.

There are four timelines.  In 1912, Edwin St. John St. Andrew is exiled to Canada.  He eventually arrives in British Columbia where he has a strange experience on Vancouver Island.  Standing under a maple tree, he momentarily feels like he is inside a vast interior where he hears the hum of people, violin music, and a whooshing sound.  In 2020, Mirella Kessler attends a concert featuring Paul Smith who incorporates a video recorded years earlier by his sister Vincent under a maple tree; that video suggests an experience similar to Edwin’s.  In 2203, Olive Llewellyn, an author who lives on one of the lunar colonies, is on a book tour on Earth for her novel Marienbad.  In her last interview at the end of the tour, she is asked about a scene in her book in which a character in the Oklahoma City Airship Terminal listening to a violinist suddenly feels transported to a forest.  In 2401 in a lunar colony, Gaspery-Jacques Roberts, named after a character in Marienbad, is a young man who feels adrift until his sister who works at the Time Institute tells him that “moments from different centuries are bleeding into one another.”  He immediately signs up to investigate the anomaly which might be proof that they’re living in a simulation which has a corrupted file.  He makes several trips to interview Edwin, Vincent, and Olive while being warned that he must maintain an “almost inhuman level of detachment” so as not to change the past. 

Though two of the timelines are in the future, Mandel is not concerned with building elaborate futuristic worlds.  Space travel is routine and there is a time machine, but readers will nonetheless feel at home.  Olive’s section, for example, suggests that books and bookstores still exist.  In her timeline, there are hints of an upcoming pandemic so her experiences mirror ours during Covid-19. 

Mandel’s focus is human psychology.  Family dynamics, work/life balance, and relationships are concerns for the characters just like they are for 21^st-century readers.  Characters are searching for a sense of belonging, closure, or meaning, so the technology may be different but humans are still humans. 

I loved the messages in the book which emphasize that we are all interconnected.  Olive speaks of how humans have a tendency to believe that they are uniquely important:  “I think, as a species, we have a desire to believe that we’re living at the climax of the story. It’s a kind of narcissism. We want to believe that we’re uniquely important, that we’re living at the end of history, that now, after all these millennia of false alarms, now is finally the worst that it’s ever been, that finally we have reached the end of the world.”  But what may seem like unique moments repeat themselves:  three of the characters experience pandemics.  And “No stars burn forever”:  three of the characters suffer the painful loss of loved ones.  We are all part of a larger human story.  Someone’s world is always ending, and someday we will all die.  In the meantime, we can find meaning in moments of tranquility:  Living during a pandemic, Olive treasures the time spent with her daughter and concludes “life can be tranquil in the face of death.”  Even if life proved to be a simulation, we can conclude like Gaspery:  “So What!”  A life lived in simulation is still a life.  The rain he experiences on the moon is simulated, but he loves the rain nonetheless. 

This novel is both entertaining and thought-provoking.  I loved the ending which connects all the storylines in a beautiful way that makes perfect sense.  This is speculative fiction at its best.

Review of THREE by Valérie Perrin (New Release)

 4 Stars

I read Fresh Water for Flowers and it was one of my favourite books of 2020 (https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2020/11/review-of-fresh-water-for-flowers-by.html), so I was excited to read Three by the same author.  Like the former, the latter is totally immersive.

Adrien, Étienne, and Nina are ten years old when they meet at school in 1986 in the small town of La Comelle in Burgundy.  They immediately become inseparable.  Their friendship, they believe, will last forever; when they graduate, they plan to move to Paris and live together while they pursue their dreams.  Three decades later, Virginie, a journalist, reports on the discovery of a car from the bottom of a lake in La Comelle; there’s a body inside.  While reporting on the case, she reflects on the friendship of the trio who no longer speak to each other.  Gradually, secrets, lies, and betrayals are revealed, explaining what happened to that friendship. 

From the beginning, there are questions for which the reader wants answers.  Who exactly is the enigmatic Virginie?  What was her relationship with the three friends that gives her such intimate knowledge of their lives?  Why does only Adrien speak to her now?  Whose body is in the recovered car?  Could it be Clotilde, Étienne’s girlfriend in 1994?  What caused the rift which resulted in the three inseparable friends no longer speaking to each other?  Before all these queries are answered, more questions arise.  Only at the end is all revealed, though the fate of everyone is not completely known.

There are certainly some unexpected twists.  One particular revelation had me going back to the beginning to re-read sections.  That re-reading left me impressed with the number of clues the author sprinkled along the way.  Saying any more would reveal too much.

Characterization is outstanding.  All the characters are complex.  All have positive and negative traits.  The reader sees them not only in relationship to the group but also as individuals.  We come to see their personal struggles and desires.  Though I found myself not always agreeing with their decisions, I understood why they made their choices.  Adrien, for instance, harbours a deep secret; he is quiet and wary and distrustful of others; he describes having a wall which doesn’t just separate him from others but “separating him from himself, the one he’s been hiding behind ever since he could breathe.”  Nina was abandoned by her mother and later suffers a tragedy; these shape her decision-making and even explain her dedication to finding homes for abandoned animals. 

The book emphasizes how it is not possible to fully know someone.  Even the three close friends come to see that they did not know everything about their closest companions.  Some events are revisited and the perspective of another character given.  These are not needless repetitions because they serve to show that even shared experiences do not result in identical memories.  The impact of a shared experience is not the same for everyone. 

The novel moves back and forth through time over 30 years, and sometimes the shifts in time can be momentarily disorienting and confusing.  The viewpoints of other secondary characters (Clotilde, Nina’s grandfather, Bernard Roi, Gé and Emmanuel Damamme, etc.) are also occasionally included.  Nothing that is included, however, is extraneous; everything contributes to the development of plot, character, or theme.  In the end, I was amazed at the intricacy employed to present a cohesive whole.

At over 600 pages, this novel asks the reader to invest considerable time.  It is, however, a rewarding experience.  Personally, I think it’s a book to which I will return in the certainty that I’ll be further impressed with its complexity. 

Note:  I received a digital galley from the publisher via NetGalley.

Review of NIGHTCRAWLING by Leila Mottley (New Release)

 4 Stars

At the beginning of the novel, Kiara Johnson is just three months short of her 18^th birthday.  She and her brother Marcus live in an apartment in East Oakland.  Their father is dead and their mother is in prison.  Their rent is doubled, and Kiara fears they will be evicted.  Marcus, though older, is unwilling and unable to hold down a job; his focus is on becoming a star rapper, though his talent is questionable.  Kiara tries to think of a way to find rent money, but being a high school dropout, she has no luck finding a job.  Desperate, she stumbles into nightcrawling (sex work) which provides enough money to pay the rent and help her look after 10-year-old Trevor, whose drug-addicted mother has abandoned him.  Then she quickly finds herself part of a sex-trafficking ring servicing members of the Oakland Police Department. 

This is not an easy read.  Much of it is heartbreaking as Kiara faces one problem after another.  The book touches on several heavy issues:  police corruption and brutality, sexual exploitation and violence, racism, gender inequity, poverty, misogyny, family dysfunction, child neglect and abandonment, and the unfairness of the justice system.  To describe the book as intense and gritty is almost an understatement.  The Author’s Note indicates that the story is based on real events (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/07/oakland-police-officers-fired-sexual-misconduct-scandal) and that makes the story that much more disturbing.

Kiara is an amazing character.  Though she has virtually no one supporting her, she refuses to give up and be crushed by the problems she faces.  She is abandoned by family and society, but her tenacious spirit means she remains resilient.  An especially admirable quality is her fierce protectiveness of Trevor.  It is not difficult to conclude that she sees herself in Trevor so is determined that he not suffer as she has.  A friend tells Kiara, “’you got too much heart to be a sellout, Ki, you ain’t cruel enough for none of that.  I know you wouldn’t go leaving Marcus or Trevor or me just to make bank.”  Kiara’s challenges would leave many strong and determined people totally devastated.  What is also amazing is that Kiara is able to find moments of joy amidst the pain she experiences.

A particular focus of the book is how women, especially racialized women, are expected to put others first.  In her Author’s Note, she mentions, “Like many black girls, I was often told growing up to tend to and shield my brother, my dad, the black men around me:  their safety, their bodies, their dreams.  In this, I learned that my own safety, body, and dreams were secondary, that there was no one and nothing that could and would protect me.”  Kiara is forced to grow up quickly because “these streets open us up and remove the part of us most worth keeping:  the child left in us.”  She describes herself as feeling “stuck between mother and child.”  She realizes “how sacred it is to be young” and wishes for comfort from her mother but a visit to her shows her mother “asking me to fix her up.”  Kiara lets her older brother pursue his dream and protects Trevor however she can, feeling she is expected to “hollow myself out for another person who ain’t gonna give a shit when I’m empty.”  Though she admits feeling she is being asked “to wring myself dry of everything I got":  “I’m tired of it.  Tired of having to be out here thinking about all these people, all these things to keep me alive, keep them alive.  I don’t got no air left for none of it.”  Kiara is one of many black woman expected to sacrifice for men; in the process she becomes “vulnerable, unprotected, and unseen.”

Though used to describe some horrific scenes, the language is very lyrical.  Of course, this is not surprising because the author was once Oakland’s Youth Poet Laureate. 

This is an emotionally raw novel which is difficult to read but is nonetheless a necessary book.

Note:  I received  a digital galley from the publisher via NetGalley.