Wandering Stars and My Friends (Impressions)

 

"A nation is not conquered until the hearts of its women are on the ground. Then it is finished, no matter how brave its warriors or how strong their weapons." 

Pros:

• Memorable Characters - especially, as indicated by the above quote, the women.
• Part One is solid historical fiction from the Native American perspective
• Tommy Orange writes very readable historical fiction.

Cons:

• Part Two (set in 2018), the aftermath of the tragedy that ended Orange's There There, makes for tedious reading well before it is over. 
• The novel offers little that hasn't already been said just as well in numerous other similar novels written by Native Americans.

"The trick time plays is to lull us into the belief that everything lasts forever, and, although nothing does, we continue to live in that dream."

Pros:

• Well developed, complex characters
• Seamlessly ties together Libyan history from the 1980s through the aftermath of the Arab Spring of 2011
• Excellent prose style
• Vividly captures the paranoia that Libyan exiles lived with for decades
• Satisfying and somewhat hopeful ending

Cons: None that are worth even mentioning

These are the seventh and eighth 2024 Booker Prize nominees that I've read. My Friends is one of my favorites so far, Wandering Stars one of my least favorites - with five still to go.

A Booker Prize Update and...

I've decided on a quick (probably rather mysterious) note to any of you who may have been wondering why I haven't posted in the last ten days or so. For a combination of reasons, I find myself so mentally fatigued at the moment that I cannot summon the energy to write even the shortest of book reviews. I don't know when, or even if, I'll resume doing so. No one thing is responsible for the way I feel right now; it's more of a perfect storm kind of thing.

In the meantime, I plan to "scribble" a note or two when I have a thought to share with you guys. I don't want to disappear, and I won't. The notes will be partially for my own record keeping / journalizing, but I hope you find them interesting enough to comment on every now and then. 

Booker Prize Update:

I've read eight of the thirteen Booker Prize nominees now, and I've decided that I like this year's list, taken as a whole, better than last year's. This is how I personally rank the eight I've read so far:

*The Safekeep - Yael Van Der Wouden - 5.00 stars

My Friends - Hisham Matar - 4.75 stars

*James - Percival Everett - 4.50 stars

Wild Houses - Colin Barrett - 3.75 stars

Headshot - Rita Bulwinkel - 3.50 stars

Wandering Stars - Tommy Orange - 2.75 stars

This Strange Eventful History - Claire Messoud - 2.50 stars

*Orbital - Samantha Harvey - 2.00 stars

* on shortlist

This leaves me with five of the thirteen nominees still to be read - and three of those five are on the shortlist. Next up is likely to be Held by Anne Michaels since I have a copy of that one on hand. 

Although, I'm not doing formal reviews of my reading right now, I will be happy to discuss the books via comments here on the blog. Please do holler at me. 

Wild Houses - Colin Barrett (2024 Booker Prize Nomi ee)

 Colin Barrett's Wild Houses is a solid example of psychological crime fiction, and I recommend it to anyone who, like me, enjoys this subgenre of crime fiction. But for this exercise, my rating scale is a little different from what I use when personally rating non-Booker Prize nominees. In this instance, I am doing as much of a forced ranking exercise as I am an awarding of "stars" to the book. And of the thirteen books nominated for this year's prize, I see Wild Houses fitting solidly in the upper half of the thirteen-book pack, producing a relative rating of something like 3.75 stars. Just something to keep in mind.

Dev lives alone on the outskirts of a small Irish town, seldom leaving his property other than to attend to his basic needs. He quit his job after his mother died, and now lives alone in the family home with his dead mother's old dog. And he likes it that way, so when his two cousins bang on the door late one night with a battered teenager they want to stash somewhere for a few days, Dev is not at all happy about it. But Dev, huge a man as he is, is not the type to put up much of a protest about anything, so he suddenly finds himself with three uninvited guests - two of whom he knows could explode into violence at any moment.

As Dev will learn, it's all part of a revenge plot his cousins have hatched against the teenager's older brother, a man who owes their boss a considerable amount of money. Dev is a simple enough man, but he is far from stupid, and he knows that the likelihood of his rather dim cousins pulling off something as complicated as a kidnapping for ransom and revenge is pretty low - and that he will go down the drain with them when it all blows up. 

So there they are. Three cousins, two of whom are brothers, and a teenager who desperately wants to escape the situation he mysteriously finds himself in. Dev's old house becomes a pressure cooker, and as the hours creep by, it becomes more and more likely that someone is going to explode. Dev and his cousins' prisoner can only hope they are not destroyed by the blast.

Barrett has written a character-driven crime novel here, but one in which he doesn't limit himself to exploring the past of only his four main characters and how each is reacting to what looks more and more like a life or death situation. Instead, Barrett alternates chapters set in the old farmhouse where the boy is being held with chapters showing what the teen hostage's mother and young girlfriend are going through as they reluctantly team up to find the missing boy before it is too late to save him. The best things about Wild Houses are the six or seven characters at its heart, each of them memorable and very real in their own way.

Wild Houses is likely to be one of the best crime fiction novels I read this year - but the Booker Prize competition is stiff this year. And everything is relative.

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Updated Personal Ratings of 2024 Booker Prize Nominees:

The Safekeep - Yael Van Der Wouden - 5.0 stars

James - Percival Everett - 4.5 stars

Wild Houses - Colin Barrett - 3.75 stars

Headshot - Rita Bulwinkel - 3.5 stars

This Strange Eventual History - Claire Messoud - 2.5 stars

Orbital - Samantha Harvey - 2.0 stars

2024 Booker Prize Shortlist Announcement

 

Well, the 2024 Booker Prize shortlist dropped just over an hour ago, and it's left me with mixed emotions. On the one hand, I've already read three of the six finalists; on the other, Orbital, the book I think the least of so far, made the cut along with the Australian entry Stone Yard Devotional, a book that may or may not ever be published in the U.S. as far as I can tell. This already reminds me of last year when the Booker Prize winner, Prophet Song, was not published in this country until after it won the prize. As Yogi Berra supposedly once said, "it's deja vu all over again."

Here are the other five finalists to go along with that wonderful cover of Stone Yard Devotional:

So there are now two American authors (James and Creation Lake), one British author (Orbital), one Canadian author (Held), one Dutch author (The Safekeep), and one Australian author (Stone Yard Devotional) still in the running. Of the ones I haven't read yet, I'm seeing the most positive comments about Held, so I hope to get my hands on that one soon.

Question: now that Book Depository has closed it's doors forever, does anyone know how I might obtain a copy of the Australian entry without breaking the bank on postage...and shipping time. I don't think I can buy an e-book version in the U.S. unless the book is published here. Am I wrong (I hope) about that?

What I'm Reading This Week (September 15, 2024)

 

I finished three books last week, two from the 2024 Booker Prize longlist and a collection of science fiction short stories. I was relieved to enjoy both the Booker nominees, easing my concern that this year's Booker list was going to be a bit of a dud (Orbital and This Strange Eventful History had me thinking that way). I've already posted reviews for both The Safekeep and Headshot if you are interested in learning a little more about those two. It turned out to be Cixin Liu's To Hold Up the Sky that disappointed me last week - more on that one in a few days.

Because of set-in-concrete due dates at my library, I did focus last week's reading primarily on Booker Prize nominees, but now the only Booker novel I have on hand is Tommy Orange's Wandering Stars so I'll likely be returning to some of the already partially read books I tabled in their favor. When I'm done with Wandering Stars, I will have read seven of the thirteen Booker nominees, and I'm fairly pleased to be this far along before tomorrow's shortlist announcement. I'm hoping that I'll have read at least two or three of the six finalists announced then. Can't wait to find out. 

Wandering Stars is both a prequel and a sequel to Tommy Orange's previous novel There There (as in "there's no there, there"). I read the prologue (a really emotional opening) and the first three chapters of the book this morning, and I can well understand its appeal to the nominating committee. I've heard that the prequel parts work best in this new one, and based on my experience with There There I can believe that. Perhaps Orange is a better writer of historical fiction than he is of contemporary fiction. I'm looking forward to answering that one for myself.

Just when I thought I had read just about everything published by Larry McMurtry, I learn about Literary Life, a second volume to his memoir. I've only read about ten percent of this one, and so far there's not a lot that's new or surprising to me. I am, however, enjoying McMurtry's understated sense of humor as he takes the reader on his journey from young cowboy trainee to a long life devoted to books, bookstores, and reading. McMurtry was one of the most passionate book-lovers I've ever heard about - at least from the modern era. This is a relatively short, almost conversational, kind of read, a nice change of pace.

And because I can never get enough Larry McMurtry, I've been ending each day by reading a chapter or two from Pastures of the Empty Page. That limits me to 15-20 pages a day from this collection of author memories of McMurtry's influence on them individually, so I'm surprised to see that I'm a bit over halfway through this one already. I've heard many of these stories before, so it's the ones from people who barely brushed shoulders with McMurtry at some point in their lives that I'm finding most interesting.

I decided to begin Marie Tierney's Deadly Animals last week because I didn't want to have to rush through it later as its publication date gets closer. The main character of Deadly Animals is an almost 15-year-old girl who is fascinated by...wait for it...road kill. She's always on the lookout for fresh kills she can study for the impact of environment and weather on their decomposition. This kid has her own Body Farm going on, and no one knows about it. And then one day she finds the stashed body of a neighborhood bully who's been missing for a couple of weeks. Now what will she do?

There's a possibility that I'll get my hands on My Friends (another Booker nominee) this week, and in fact, I thought I'd have it before now because it's officially been in "in transit" status at my library for a whole week now. Usually when that happens, something has gone wrong, and the book never shows up at all, though, so we'll see. I also want to get back to the French novel by Indrajit Garai, The Man without Shelter, that I started a few days ago...and I see that The Rich People Have Gone Away  is now shown as "in transit" by the library. That one might shake up the plan a bit, too, if it turns out to be as interesting as it looks from afar. 

What I'm most looking forward to are the ones that are not even in my world at the moment, the ones that always seem to come from nowhere. Have a great reading week, everyone!                          

Headshot - Rita Bullwinkel (2024 Booker Prize Nominee)

 

I don't remember ever having watched a women's boxing competition before I began reading Rita Bullwinkel's Headshot. I simply had no interest in the sport, and would almost certainly not have read this one had it not been part of the 2024 Booker Prize longlist. And I would have missed out on a really good book for that reason.

Rather than get bogged down in the mechanics of the sport and this particular tournament, Bullwinkel chooses to go inside the heads of the eight young women competing in Reno to be "the best in the world at something." How the girls, all of them between fifteen and eighteen years old, got it into their heads that winning a competition in Reno that only they, a handful of family members, their coaches, the paid judges, and the gym owner even know about is another story...but they all believe it. And winning it is the most important thing in their lives - until all of a sudden it isn't.

The tournament begins with eight competitors, four matches on the first day leaving four winners to move on to the semi-final bouts the next morning. The second day's first two matches determine which two girls will fight for the tournament championship later in the day. Headshot presents chapter-like segments covering each of the seven, total, fights. 

Bullwinkel sets the novel's overall tone early in the first match:

"This imagined winning in front of people who will never see her win, even if she does win, is symptomatic of the fact that Artemis Victor, like Andi Taylor, is more than anything, delusional. The desired audiences will never see them win. Even if they were to go and box professionally, hit some women in bikinis in the basement of a casino in Las Vegas, they wouldn't impress the people who they encounter in their lives outside of boxing. They would only impress each other, other women who are trying to touch someone with their fists."

In each of the first four matches, the reader learns who these girls are, where they come from, and the whys and hows that explain their presence in Reno, Nevada to pay so dearly for the chance to go home with a cheap little plastic trophy - along with the right to think of themselves as "the best in the world at something." Readers are made privy to the innermost thoughts of the eight competitors, their doubts, jealousies, resentments, goals, and hopes. Headshot is very much a character-driven novel, one that happens to take place almost entirely inside a shabby gym's shabby boxing ring.

The girls, as different as they may look to outsiders and even to each other, are really more alike than they are different. They are all emotionally fragile and for them boxing is their best chance of being "seen" by their peers and family. They just want others to acknowledge that they are real and valuable people. Only one of them can leave Reno feeling that she's accomplished what they all come there hoping to achieve, but every single one of them is going to learn something important about herself while she's there.

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Personal Ratings of 2024 Booker Prize Nominees:

The Safekeep - Yael Van Der Wouden - 5.0 stars

James - Percival Everett - 4.5 stars

Headshot - Rita Bullwinkel - 3.5 stars

Wild Houses - Colin Barrett - 3.0 stars

This Strange Eventful History - Claire Messoud - 2.5 stars

Orbital - Samantha Harvey - 2.0 stars