“To See and See Again” Book Review

“A compelling and intimate exploration of the complexity of a bicultural immigrant experience, To See and See Again traces three generations of an Iranian (and Iranian-American) family undergoing a century of change–from the author’s grandfather, a feudal lord with two wives; to her father, a freespirited architect who marries an American pop singer; to Bahrampour herself, who grows up balanced precariously between two cultures and comes of age watching them clash on the nightly news.” – Description from Amazon.

This is a story of a woman trying to find herself. It appears she felt as though she never fit in one mold or the other. That leads her on a quest to discover her heritage and the impact that it had on shaping her as a person. This is a story of trying to find home. It asks the question of what exactly is a home? Does it change as we enter new stages of our life or the physical world around us change? Does our perception change said home? Tara comes from a family with an American mother and an Iranian father. With that American element, this is unlike any other Iranian book that I have read. It really dives into the immigrant experience. With her family dynamics, it really shows how displacement impacts each person differently even if they are all in the same family. Before recent years, I was ignorant and didn’t think the events by world leaders had an impact on me as a person. The more that I read and the more that I grow, I have come to realize that that isn’t true. Books like these show how big cultural and historical moments affect our lives.

The structure was jumbled. I do really like how it starts with the family moving to the United States and then jumping back to what life was like before. As the book progressed that structure didn’t work and I was finding myself confused when I would get to a new section and be told information about the previous years that we did not get in previous sections.

The writing style was very descriptive. It was a lot to take in and is at a slow pace. That isn’t to say it was bad. I have never felt so immersed in Iranian culture as I did in this book. It really paints a perfect picture of the country in the times that the author was speaking of. That even translates to the author’s teenage years in 1980s Portland. This is told in a narrative style and doesn’t read like a typical memoir. We are seeing the day to day life of the author so much so that it reads like fiction. This was a good book and if you are really wanting to see what Iran and its people are like this would be a book to pick up for that.

3.25 out of 5 stars.

‘The Potbellied Virgin’ Book Review

“In an unnamed town in the Ecuadorian Andes, a small wooden icon—La Virgen Pipona (the Potbellied Virgin)—conceals the documents that define the town’s social history. That history recently has been dominated by the women of the Benavides family, a conservative clan and, not coincidentally, the caretakers of the Virgin. Their rivals are the Pandos, a family led by four old men who spend their days smoking in the park across from the Virgin’s cathedral and offering revisionist versions of local and national events. When a military skirmish threatens the Virgin (and the secret in her famous belly), the Benavides women must scramble to preserve their place as local matriarchs—without alerting the old Pandos to the opportunity that might enable them to finally supplant their rivals.” – Description from Amazon.

This short little book might be small, but there is a very large cast of characters and we are introduced to them rather quickly. I had a hard time keeping track of who is who, especially with this being about two feuding groups of people who share the same last names. They got to be a bit interchangeable. The sisterhood and the Benavides family, I really wanted to explore more of their relationship dynamics with one another, but that is not prevalent in this book. Doña Carmen is the only distinguishable character and I did enjoy her as a character. She’s one of my favorite kinds of people if she sees something that needs to be done. She’s going to go off there and do it.

The atmosphere is quite different from a lot of popular books. This is taking place in the Andes in Ecuador. The tone is very fairytale-esque with folktale vibes. There is nothing magical about this story but by the way it is told it feels like it could be one of those two things. At the start, there is a lot of world building and info dumping with that. I read the introduction of the book and that told me a lot about Ecuadorian history and culture, but then we would get basically the same thing told to us in the book and that made it overbearing, and I don’t think it was necessary for the story.

The writing style is long-winded with paragraphs that go on for pages. I had a really hard time following the story. It isn’t dialogue heavy. We would get maybe two lines of dialogue every couple of pages.

The author is very creative with how she handled this plot. This is a story of the impact that colonization and colonialism have on the modern world. She takes two families and personifies European colonizers and indigenous peoples of Latin America. There’s a fight between who gets to tell history; those are some great themes. I really wish I connected with the book more. The author even dives into what it was like for an isolated community in the last century, seeing all the rapid changes of our modern day and age and how the smaller rural communities evolve, even if it is slow.

I was confused for a lot of this book, but I also want to have a disclaimer that I did start this book while having a migraine and I wouldn’t recommend doing that. It was a disservice to the author and the work of fiction. I do plan to reread this book at a later date and hopefully it will work out better for me then as it didn’t do a whole lot for me this time around.

2.25 out of 5 stars.

‘The Details’ Book Review

“The Details is a novel built around four portraits; the small details that, pieced together, comprise a life. Can a loved one really disappear? Who is the real subject of the portrait, the person being painted or the one holding the brush? Do we fully become ourselves through our connections to others? This exhilarating, provocative tale raises profound questions about the nature of relationships, and how we tell our stories. The result is an intimate and illuminating study of what it means to be human.” Description coming to us from Amazon.

The character building of ‘The Details’ is seeing a character through the significant relationships in her life. I think our main theme even falls back on that. That being relationships shape us into the person that we become. I do feel like I know our nameless narrator and know the people that she shared her relationships with. Yet, I don’t feel a strong connection whatsoever to the character.

I am actually shocked as I sit here and come up with my rating for this book that the atmosphere really did stand out to me, especially in the Alejandro chapter. It was magical at times, immersive, nostalgic are words that I would use to describe it. It’s not what you would typically get out of a fever dream story. Fever dream-esque books often leave me feeling confused and dazed, but this one had clarity as we look at the character’s life. I do appreciate that as this is a new take at that trope.

The writing is where this does get a little bit tricky. There were beautiful sentences about the human experience, a love of literature and going through the mundane events that make up life. In the English translation, and apparently in the original Swedish as well, it’s very much a stream of consciousness, long run on sentences .For me personally that convolutes the story and makes it lose its meaning as I get lost in all the words without a break.

It is hard to say that there is a plot. It falls back on being a character study on the relationships that we make in our lives. This is definitely a character driven book even though I didn’t feel a connection to the characters. There may even be slight themes and ideas about relationships and how they impact the human experience. I didn’t feel much while reading this book, but there were some things that I liked, relatability and as I said, the immersive atmosphere with the occasional bit of beautiful writing, this was a fine book.

2.75 out of 5 stars.

‘Kick the Latch’ Book Review

“Kathryn Scanlan’s Kick the Latch vividly captures the arc of one woman’s life at the racetrack—the flat land and ramshackle backstretch; the bad feelings and friction; the winner’s circle and the racetrack bar; the fancy suits and fancy boots; and the “particular language” of “grooms, jockeys, trainers, racing secretaries, stewards, pony people, hotwalkers, everybody”—with economy and integrity.”

To my understanding, ‘Kick the Latch’ is based off of a real woman named Sonia. Why is this book listed as contemporary fiction? I’m not sure. Maybe the author did embellish some of Sonia‘s story. I wish I could have gotten more out of this. This is very much the surface level of a woman telling the reader her memories. I’m asking myself: What is the point? I wish there would have been more in building as to why the story is being told rather than being thrown right in.

The atmosphere was not an overall big part of the story. The word I would use to describe it is rustic. It’s very Americana and we are seeing an example of the American dream at play. The writing style is very blunt and straightforward, therefore accessible and easy to read. It reads how people really do talk therefore making this a quick reading experience and I do think it would probably translate well on audiobook, but I did read this on my Kindle.

The plot is very unique and different. It was fascinating to see all the faucets that make up the horse world. Most Americans only think about this lifestyle on the day of the Kentucky Derby and forget about it for the rest of the year. This was an informative piece about the lifestyle of all the different people that it takes to train a horse and get it ready for a race. The pacing moved along well as I said before it was a very quick read. I read this in two days, but I never felt a major connection to the story. This did read very much like non-fiction where I did learn a lot, but I didn’t connect. However, the character arc does make perfect sense and shows that life isn’t perfect. It isn’t only going to wrap up with a bow on top. This was very much a go with the flow kind of story for me. Since it read so quickly I was never bored, but it didn’t do a whole lot for me either as I didn’t have a strong connection to the book and its character. It wasn’t a bad book.

3.25 out of five stars.

‘The Magic Fish’ Book Review

“Tiến loves his family and his friends…but Tiến has a secret he’s been keeping from them, and it might change everything. An amazing YA graphic novel that deals with the complexity of family and how stories can bring us together.“

‘The Magic Fish’, shows the power of storytelling. Books and stories are so important to every single culture around the world. We can find ourselves in stories, making us realize that we are not alone in this world. You can go through terrible things and these books will get you through that journey, it will put words to feelings that you had but didn’t know how to express. A good story can even help you find yourself.

To me that is the main theme of this book. We see a young person who is trying to find himself and trying to express himself to his immigrant family. His family might not have the words to understand what he is trying to say and who he is as a person. Literature helps him do that, art helps him do that.

I didn’t expect several things that we got in this book, rather that be, getting a multi-perspective story as we also see the character’s mom’s perspective. I also didn’t expect the fairytales to actually be shown. This is going to be a crazy comparison, but if you like Mistborn, I think you might like this book. One of the stories really reminds me of the characters in Mistborn. A common problem that I have while reading graphic novels is that the transitions can be choppy and make me feel like I missed a page that happened here. I was having to go back and see if I had accidentally skipped a page. No, it was just choppy.

We do get a note from the author at the end of the book and more notes explaining the stories and so on. As an adult reading this book, I thought that was a bit much but at the same time this is intended for a middle grade audience whose media literacy may not be as developed as an adult so I do think it could work well for them. This is a good book and I’m happy that there’s a story like this out there. I just don’t see myself rereading it in the future.

‘Stone Fox’ Book Review

“Based on a Rocky Mountain legend, Stone Fox tells the story of Little Willy, who lives with his grandfather in Wyoming. When Grandfather falls ill, he is no longer able to work the farm, which is in danger of foreclosure. Little Willy is determined to win the National Dogsled Race—the prize money would save the farm and his grandfather. But he isn’t the only one who desperately wants to win. Willy and his brave dog Searchlight must face off against experienced racers, including a Native American man named Stone Fox, who has never lost a race.”

This is such a wholesome cast of characters. They were my favorite part of the book. We are really immersed into the shoes of Little Willy and can view the other characters how he does. This book might only be 83 pages, but you get such a good feel for what kind of people and animals the characters are.

Believe it or not, the atmosphere didn’t play a huge part in the story to me, but I do think it is very important in showing how the race will be raced as this is the hometown of Little Willie and his dog Searchlight. The atmosphere is important to the story, but didn’t leave a big impact on me. This would be a good winter read though.

The writing is short, blunt to the point, which is typically my kind of book. This book is short and fast paced. The writing was cinematic for me and I could definitely see a movie playing out in my head. However, at the end of the book I was left wanting more.

This is a story of sacrifice. Sometimes in life you have to give it your all. It is hard and it hurts. I feel so bad for little Willy, for everything that he had to go through in this book. That’s sadly how life is for some people. I do think this is an important story to teach sometimes to gain something, to get something back: You have to lose something in return. I did read this book as a child, and it is viewed as a classic in my mind. It reads very much like the works of Steinbeck or Hemingway as it’s so classically American. You are going to have to suspend your disbelief for some of this, but the author does seem to be self-aware about that as I said the ending was very sudden and I can’t believe it wasn’t built upon more. This is a good book and I would maybe recommend it.

3 out of 5 stars.

‘The Sisters’ Book Review

“This is the story of a close, loving family splintered by the violent ideologies of Europe between the world wars. Jessica was a Communist; Debo became the Duchess of Devonshire; Nancy was one of the best-selling novelists of her day; beautiful Diana married the Fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley; and Unity, a close friend of Hitler, shot herself in the head when England and Germany declared war.”

I went into this book, not knowing anything about the Mitford sisters. All I knew was that I had read a book about a king of France by Nancy Mitford. That is to say you can go into this book knowing little to nothing about the family, but still loving your experience reading this book. You will exit knowing all about these sisters. It really shows that what we’re going through in America right now isn’t new, that politics and ideologies have always been a source of division in families. That being said, even if you’re not an English noble woman,you can still find relatability in these pages.

I am so glad that I have read works by Ken Follett and other World War II historical fiction books because it gave me knowledge going into this one, knowing what was happening in the world at this time. But now seeing it through the eyes of women who were raised in nobility, there’s a lot of appeal to this book if you’re somebody like me who reads a lot of historical fiction or is fascinated by Britain in the 20th century or even if you are a fan of reality TV and love gossip culture there’s so much drama in this book you’ll love it.

One of the things that I loved about this book is that it’s not an opinion piece. It is simply just the facts. Sometimes fact is better than fiction. It would be so easy to write what one likes or dislikes about the women and their beliefs.This is an intriguing story and all these women could have their own book about them. I would really love to see what an author like Taylor Jenkins Reid could do with writing a book about Diana. The author makes a point in the preface that she is letting the reader make their own opinions on the views that the sisters held rather than putting her own opinions into the book. I really like that an author is letting us think for ourselves rather than being too on the nose.

I will admit at times I did get confused, especially in those years after the second world war on which sister we were following who they were having a relationship with and where we were. The writing style was my least favorite part. There were so many adjectives, adverbs, and descriptions. In my non-fiction and really my fiction too. I don’t need all of that detail. This book could’ve been 30 pages shorter. If all those words have been cut, those descriptions made me skim through the book. This is over 500 pages, but I did fly through it. I finished it about three days before I expected to.

I do want to talk about the tone. There’s such a romantic and dream like tone to the book. I think that is really fitting for the sisters. I can see a lot of them being dreamers and hopeless, romantic, and that ultimately falls on how their mother Sydney and their father David who raised them. I’m really thinking of their mother. She let them go down whatever paths they wanted to in life and of course, not all those paths were easy, but Sydney was always there to be there for them when everything fell apart, all parents should be like that.

3.75 out of 5 stars.

‘Jawbone’ Book Review

“A young woman has one minute to speak on a submission video to win a one-way trip to Mars, a location she views as the ultimate escape. As she barricades herself in a cottage by the sea and prepares to record, she examines her fixation on the colour red, shame, guilt, a dramatic breakup with her boyfriend, and the breakdown of her relationship with her best friend. There is another problem however, her jaw has been wired shut for a long time, and she’s having trouble speaking. A passionate story about queer love and loneliness and a dazzling debut from author Meghan Greeley..”

The main character, the second one who is a nameless narrator this month, is relatable but not a standout. She reads like any other character you see in this era of ‘weird girl lit’ books. She is a young woman who is trying to find herself and make sense of her friendships and love-life. Simply, she does not know what she wants.

The atmosphere did not play a big part in the story. I am not even sure where this takes place. I pictured Toronto. I do think there was potential, with the setting of the cottage by the sea, at the very beginning of the story but that was quickly diminished.

The writing has a comedic, dark sense of humor to it. Again, very popular with this era of literary fiction. A lot of the younger ( twenty-somethings) crowd will eat this style up. It is dark and vulgar in tone. The pacing is very fast and was one of those styles that made me feel like a pinball being shot around the machine. It took a little while to get used to but I eventually did. It was hard to follow at first.

This book did not bring anything new to the table. I thought this was going to be a piece of sci-fi speculative fiction, I believed this because of what is stated on the back of the book. The blurb I listed above if you are reading on my blog. However, this was really a piece of contemporary or literary fiction. It is about a young woman having to adjust to adulthood. She has to find out what relationships she wants in her life. It is a story that I have read plenty of times.

I kept waiting for Mars and space travel to come up but it never did. There was potential for a great story here but that intrigue was never settled. I am even still confused about the ending and the title of the book. How did her jaw come to be like that? This book was fun to read but it most likely will not stick with me over time.

3 out of 5 stars.

‘I Who Have Never Known Men’ Book Review

“A young woman, imprisoned underground with thirty-nine other females and guarded by silent armed men, must navigate freedom after escaping her cage in a ravaged world.”

One of my favorite questions that science fiction can ask us is what makes us human. Usually, I see this in stories with cyborgs and aliens but here there’s none of that, at least there doesn’t seem to be. In this book we see humanity stripped down to its core. A young girl who is a nameless narrator, has only known life in a windowless bunker with thirty-nine other women and a handful of male guards. She has no parents and she has never seen the sun. She’s had no schooling. She has no idea what planet earth is like. How can somebody in that situation be human other than biologically?

This book reinvented that typical science fiction question for me. I have never read anything like this. Womanhood is another huge piece of this character work. The main theme is what makes us human but also what goes into being a woman. There is also the question of what the world would be like without the patriarchy. This goes great with some of the other feminist literature that I have read in the last eight months.

With this story being set in a windowless, colorless bunker, you probably wonder how I found this beautiful. We go from there to a world that is gritty and rocky. It is all desolate and bleak. There is no civilization, it is a wasteland. I just had so many questions and had such an easy time imagining these scenes. I loved to see these women make their own society without the constraints that our world has on women.

The writing is where I very much questioned what I would rate this book. It is a stream of consciousness that isn’t for everyone and typically isn’t for me. I do highly recommend following along with the audiobook as that does break the story down in parts. Our main character is a young girl for the start of the story and has to be taught things like grammar and math. Those scenes were tedious and went in one ear and out the other. That can kind of go back to the mix of character work and plot, there are so many little things in our lives that we take for granted. Those lessons that we have learned. They have to be in detail for the narrator but for us, those are things that we already know.

I cannot say this is a character driven story or a plot driven story. It is all so interconnected. The characters are exploring this world and they are even coming to terms with what it means to be a human and what it means to be a woman. We, the readers, are not the only ones who are on this realization journey. That just shows how much you can be immersed into this story.

The intrigue was one of my favorite parts. When I would be away from the book, I was wanting to be back in its pages. I have had so much fun reading this with my book club and coming up with different theories of what the author was trying to do or what had happened to this world. Even questions of is this a human story? Are all of our characters humans or some other beings and what has happened to them. I am typically someone who does not like an open ended book. I am a logical person who likes to have answers and know why things work the way that they do. You are not going to get that here. Our characters are going through the same questions that we are. I think that is part of what makes this work for me. It is one of the points of the story.

I loved the questions and thoughts that this book presented to me. It is one that I will be thinking about for a long time. I highly recommend that you give this book a go.

5 out of 5 stars.

‘The Only Plane in the Sky’ Review

“At once a powerful tribute to the courage of everyday Americans and an essential addition to the literature of 9/11, The Only Plane in the Sky weaves together the unforgettable personal experiences of the men and women who found themselves caught at the center of an unprecedented human drama. The result is a unique, profound, and searing exploration of humanity on a day that changed the course of history, and all of our lives.” Description from Good Reads.

If you know nothing about 9/11 other than the basic facts, this book is going to knock your socks off and possibly be the best nonfiction you have read in a long time. I am someone who is incredibly fascinated by that day and the impact it has had on all of our lives. There is even a chapter that is about the youth on September 11th. There was still so much information that I did not know or had never thought about before. Examples of that would be how little I knew of what happened at the Pentagon and that the people on the ground at what would become known as Ground Zero had very little idea of what was happening around them. How big of an event it was. They did not have the privilege to be watching events unfold on television like so many around the world did.

I have to warn you that this is so much to take in. It is dense and draining as you are filled with emotions and information. I am not saying that as a fault of the book. There were chapters where I could not let a breath out until the chapter was through. Some of this was straight up horror that I hope we never see the likes of again.

We, the readers, are hearing from nearly five hundred people and what their experiences were that day. I love that this touched on so many different kinds of people: from the vice president all the way down to parents in the midwest worried about the future for their children. This is a day that touched all of us and had a massive impact on our world. I always talk about how nonfiction is a humanizer. This is humanizing this traumatic event in history. Showing the real everyday people that were true heroes. I cannot imagine how long it took the author to put this book together.

There were times reading this that I wanted to get onto the next, I almost felt selfish saying this, I was just curious what was going with other ‘plot lines’. As I said before this is a lot to take in. I almost wish the sequencing was done in another manner but I do not have an exact suggestion on how I would do it.

Writing was the only place where I had real issues. At the start, I was very confused and overwhelmed, it is like boom boom boom, getting all these names and what they went through. I was having a hard time keeping straight on who was who, what their role was, who they were related to, what city we were in. I was confused, overwhelmed by the numbers of people, overwhelmed with information. I was constantly having to turn back a page to see what was going on. I wish it was a more gradual lead into the book. It did get better the more time I spent with the book. I read this on my Kindle and wonder if it would have been different if I read this in another format. This is a great book, one of the best that I have read this year. I recommend it.

4.5 out of 5 stars.