Oh, is it already May? I have … too many books that I didn’t review in March and April, but I’m going to try sharing a few at a time. The school year is almost done, and among book people I think it’s fairly common that many of us still live our lives by both the calendar AND the school year. Here we have: a fascinating literary memoir, a decent family saga, and one of those strange gems that make reading widely so enjoyable.
To Name the Bigger Lie, by Sarah Viren
After I read this book, I pulled my old copy of The Republic off my shelves (and here it still sits, on my desk, because I’m no longer a college student who reads on deadlines). This memoir was initially meant to be the story of Viren’s experience with a high school teacher that never sat right with her. Viren took a course called Theory of Knowledge, something I was also fortunate enough to take in high school. It’s a mini-philosophy class for high school students, a way to expose students to different modes of thinking. Viren has reason to question what she herself was exposed to under her teacher’s watch. Viren’s teacher taught Plato’s allegory of the cave from The Republic (hence the text on my desk), and Viren often returns to that text as she explores her own understanding of what it means to know something. This meditation on truth is timely for a nation contemplating Fake News, but for Viren’s it’s personal as her wife is accused of sexually harassing a student at their university. The accusation is timed to endanger a job prospect for Viren (and her wife), which makes the pair grow suspicious of the motives of the accuser. This memoir was excellent, both thoughtful and personal.
Family Lore, Elizabeth Acevedo
This was an enjoyable book but overall it wasn’t a memorable reading experience. It had many elements of a great book – excellent writing, intriguing female characters, the family lineage angle which I love. I appreciate a touch of magical realism, and it isn’t that this one wasn’t done well – it just didn’t quite land as a stand out for me. A family of women are gifted in different ways – some can sense death, or birth, one can even use the power of her vagina to set the mood of a room, like a dirty take on Encanto. Family secrets are uncovered over generations, through multiple points of view. As a reader, I literally both laughed and cried – so there’s humor and heart. But, only a little over a month after reading this novel, I had to look it up to remind myself of some plot points. It was a great in the moment read, but not one that stuck with me.
Shark Heart: A Love Story, Emily Habeck
Did I mention I enjoy magical realism? This was one of my five star reads. What a weird little gem of a novel. It turns out people around the world are catching diseases in which they mutate into animals. Some transitions can take years, but ultimately the human with the disease will become the wild animal. The protagonist’s husband is mutating into a shark – thus the title – and this is an occasion for her, and the reader, to contemplate the nature of love. It is deceptive in its depth – one minute, you’re swimming on the shore, in a simple love story with a little animal mutation tossed in on top. But before you know it, you’re swirling in the depths of the ocean, uncovering grief and fear and embracing whatever that thing is that is more than falling in love but remaining in love with an imperfect person. When someone you love grows gills and begins to long for the ocean, your romance relocates to the beach and maybe the oceans beyond.