Things Fall Apart

Things Fall Apart

By Chinua Achebe

It is a classic narrative about Africa's cataclysmic encounter with Europe as it establishes a colonial presence on the continent. Told through the fictional experiences of Okonkwo, a wealthy and fearless Igbo warrior of Umuofia in the late 1800s, Things Fall Apart explores one man's futile resistance to the devaluing of his Igbo traditions by British political and religious forces and his despair as his community capitulates to the powerful new order.

I'd always heard about Things Fall Apart, but been a little reluctant to read it because, you know, who wants to spend their free time basically taking lessons in English literature, but I happened to already have this on the shelf, and the challenge was a good kick in the pants to do it.

Don't fall into the same mistake!  It's actually a very simple, easy read - it's much shorter than I thought it would be, and the style is very matter of fact and not torrid or melodramatic at all.  Things Fall Apart centers around Okonkwo, a warrior whose greatest feats lie behind him, and who sees nothing but weakness in the changes coming to the village.

I don't know why great literature is so obsessed with tragic heroes.  Or tragic figures, since I don't think Okonkwo is ever really a "hero" in Things Fall Apart.  Protagonist, surely, but from Chapter 1, we know that he's too worried about his standing in the village hierarchy to suffer pangs of conscience when he beats his sons for not being manly enough. And it is somewhat tragic what happens to him, but the tragedy hanging over the book is that we, as readers from the future, know what lies in store for Umuofia and Mbanta: the loss of cultural traditions and the breaking up of tribes, the insidious takeover by the white Christians.  And while the people have survived, and while I can't argue that all of their original cultural traditions were super great, still, it is a tragedy that it is lost.  Notre Dame cathedral burned today, and while Catholicism hasn't always been a force for good, still it's hard to see this thing that has lasted for centuries burned away in a night, and it feels like that in Things Fall Apart as well.  I could try to stretch the analogy further by allowing that the cause of destruction was not intentional but caused in both cases by some cold and crucial indifference to the existing structure, but I'm already too sad already. 

I suppose it is a talent of Achebe's that you're not actually rejoicing when Okonkwo dies. Considering he kills three people in the course of the book, including his own foster son, and random a sixteen year old, you'd definitely forgiven for hoping he gets what he deserves.  Of course, for what we might consider morally the worst of those - murdering his foster son even though he's been excused from attending the killing at all - there is no punishment at all, except for his own semi-guilty conscience.  And for the murder we might consider the most excusable - the attempt to stop a hostile takeover of Umuofia by the Christians - he submits himself to the worst punishment, death. That's how you know it's a tragedy, when the villain dies for the wrong reasons and it's not fair.  

I did appreciate some of the negative reviews on Amazon. "There are endless discussions in the novel about the cultivation and economics of yams. I don't get why the author spent so much time discussing yams." Let's be real, there was a lot of yam-talk. But for a book that's kind of about the destruction of native cultures and traditions via the onset of Christianity, it's a pretty soothing, easy read.  There's not a lot of character development - we hear very little about the rest of the family, and they exist only as two-dimensional ideas for Okonkwo to butt up against, but this book really only works as an allegory, and not as, like, a thriller.  

What's interesting is that although the point of the book seems to be Okonkwo's downfall, we spend very little time on the events directly leading up to it.  I almost feel like this would work just as well as a short story.  The first two sections of the book, in which Okonkwo lives in Umuofia and then becomes exiled, and then lives in Mbanta until his exile expires, are so much scene setting.  It's interesting, since it's a relatively uncommon setting for a book, but does have the sense of nothing really progressing, narratively.  It's also a little disjointed, as the book is more like a series of vignettes than a more typical a then b then c.  But overall, an enjoyable enough way to wallow in shitty missionary history via a great author.


32: A Book Written By An Author From Asia, Africa Or South America

Hey Ladies!: The Story of Eight Best Friends, 1 Year, and Way, Way Too Many Emails

Hey Ladies!: The Story of Eight Best Friends, 1 Year, and Way, Way Too Many Emails

By: Michelle Markowitz & Caroline Moss

Hey Ladies! is a laugh-out-loud read that follows a fictitious but all too familiar group of eight 20-and-30-something female friends for one year of their lives  Told through a series of email chains, text messages, and illustrations, this book takes you along for the roller coaster ride of holiday celebrations, book clubs, summer house rentals, wedding showers, Instagram stalking, brunches, breakups, and, of course, all the inside jokes and harsh truths that only best friends share.

I think this book was supposed to be funny, but it just made me sad.  Maybe I'm too close.  Maybe we're intended to just laugh at how ridiculous and over the top (OTT!) everything is, but the authors have intermittently spaced actual thoughtful conversations at various points throughout, so by the final month, when Gracie calls Ali and Jen out on making every single thing about them and the wedding, including her own birthday, all I felt was horrible that (1) everyone then turned on Gracie and (2) that Gracie didn't burn the wedding to the ground. The final email from Gracie celebrating her own engagement with these shitheels did not give me a "Haha, here we go again!" zany laugh, but the feeling of watching an abused person return to their abuser.  As I said, maybe I'm too close.

The book is a breezy and quick read, with a cute design. It's a modern day epistolary novel, using email chains, texts and some graphic pictures.  We're dealing with eight women in their late twenties.  Although it seems like a lot to keep track of, most of the women are paper thin caricatures and the bulk of the messages are between just four of them: Jen, the bride-to-be, Ali, the type-A Maid of Honor who constantly books things and asks for reimbursement, Katie, the one who keeps hanging after this shitty guy who pukes on one of them during a weekend in Portugal, and Morgan, who has no real characteristics except to be "the voice of reason" every so often when Jen, Ali and Katie are becoming extremely unlikeable again.  That happens frequently throughout, as each of them are completely self-absorbed.   

The other four are: Nicole, whose storyline basically just involves her trying to make the bridesmaid dresses and then going bankrupt, Caitlin, who is a lifestyle/diet/yoga guru who sends thinly veiled marketing emails, Ashley, who is in Connecticut and never has service, and the aforementioned Gracie, who lives in Brooklyn and has a separate life and therefore does not participate in the shenanigans.

 I think there's plenty of comic relief in the idea, but the execution left me with a bad taste in my mouth.  Partly is the unlikeability of most of the "main" characters combined with the shitty way they treat the few likeable people in the book.  Second is the limitations the format has on the action: we get the lead up and the planning each time, but almost never hear anything about how the actual party/night out/bachelorette weekend/friendervention actually went, except for one or two details or comments.  What that does is create the feeling that the friendship consists entirely of crappy emails, and not of any actual fun.  It leaves you struggling to answer the question of why these people are even friends at all, and maybe that's a point the book is trying to make, but it's not one you can really hit hard while you're also trying for laughs.  The last two pages make that very clear.  

I will definitely cop to being part of a group chain of six friends from school, but it just makes the question of why the ladies in Hey Ladies are so awful even more glaring.  There's plenty of comedy to mine without backing into clownishness. And parts of it were funny!  But it felt like they were using a hammer for the comedy - it wasn't enough to make the joke, we have to drive it into the ground - and in the process, really reiterate again and again that I could be reading House of Leaves for this prompt instead and I'd probably be less grossed out.   Much as I wanted to like this book, it just wasn't for me.  Send it off to someone who will appreciate it!  Send it to someone who can treat it right; I'm sure there's plenty of readers out there who'll love it.

46: A Book With No Chapters/Unusual Chapter Headings/Unconventionally Numbered Chapters

The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

By Stuart Turton

Evelyn Hardcastle will be murdered at 11:00 p.m. 

There are eight days, and eight witnesses for you to inhabit. 

We will only let you escape once you tell us the name of the killer. 

Understood? Then let's begin...

***

Evelyn Hardcastle will die. Every day until Aiden Bishop can identify her killer and break the cycle. But every time the day begins again, Aiden wakes up in the body of a different guest. And some of his hosts are more helpful than others...

Talk about a weird ass book. Did you have any idea what was going on?  I did not. I was like Aiden, except worse, because I, as a reader, had no incentive to remember anything, so I was constantly surprised by things that had already happened and therefore should not have surprised me.

Also, not really relevant to the story, but can you believe that this book and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo came out within nine months of each other?  It's like when Antz and A Bug's Life came out back to back, like we really want multiple movies about bugs talking, only here, it's titles about at least seven things relating to Evelyn H.  Anyway.

So, I have to talk about the SPOILERS.

The idea that the whole thing is a prison is something that could easily be explored in a book all by itself, but he kind of casually tosses it in there, like, oh, this is why everything has been happening. I mean, let's unpack that!  First of all, it seems ridiculous that allowing murderers to atone for their crimes by solving other crimes is a legitimate justice system.  I mean, that's basically the premise of Silence of the Lambs, and we know how that ends (Hannibal kills more people).  Honestly, if they have the technology, it seems like it makes more sense to wipe them down and let them wander off with new personalities, without warping them by playing murder mystery games with them. 

I'm not entirely sure any of that was adequately explained.  [I mean, I'm pretty sure it wasn't explained at all, but I will acknowledge that I sometimes overlook important paragraphs].  For example, the most unpleasant part of the process (for Aiden at least, since Anna was under the radar this go-round) was the other prisoner/player.  Without him, there's really no urgency or difficulty aside from the regular difficulty of waking up in a body not your own and trying to solve a murder.  But who was the other person, and how did they end up in the worst of the worst simulation - especially when it seems like Aiden kind of had to petition to get in?

Not for nothing, but why is anyone listening to Aiden at all?  Why do they let him compete in this whole charade, why does the Plague Doctor let him decide when Anna is rehabilitated?  I mean, Aiden doesn't even fucking remember himself anymore, we should probably not allow him to convince us he knows someone else so well after, basically, a week's acquaintance, that they should be let out of prison.  Especially when like, uh, more people than just Aiden's sister were hurt by her. If we're doing the whole restorative justice thing, shouldn't we be giving the other victims a voice too?

Leaving all that aside (and really, it is very neat way of explaining the set-up, even if does completely make no sense) I will say that this whole thing is meticulously plotted.  At one point, I almost made an excel chart of where everyone was at different times and who was interacting with who.  It would have been a very satisfying chart.  Turton does a good job at atmosphere making a very moody, suspenseful mystery.  There's quite a bit of violence (although again, it didn't seem to be incredibly inherent to the mystery so much as it was to the prisoners) and rain, always rain.  I know some of the reviewers were put off by the confusing, repetitive and drudgy nature of the first half or so,  but I do think it's one that you would want to re-read for clues, now knowing the answer and the future.  At the very least, it's a very exciting and unique take on the genre, and really adds to it.  

Also, there's a book club list of discussion questions in the back and can someone please explain to me how Evelyn Hardcastle died 7.5 times?  I mean, Aiden has eight lives, and she died in seven of them, and then in number eight we find out it's actually her friend she sets up to die, so Evelyn didn't die in any of them...? Except then she definitely gets murdered in day eight, so.... does that count as a half-life? Someone please help me, I'm not smart enough for this.


24: A Book That Takes Place In A Single Day

Comic Bonanza

Here's a round-up of a couple of kid-friendly(ish) comic books I've been reading:

Courtney Crumrin, Vol. 1: Courtney Crumrin & The Night Things

By Ted Naifeh

Courtney's parents have dragged her out to a high-to-do suburb to live with her creepy Great Uncle Aloysius in his spooky old house. She's not only the new kid in school, but she also discovers strange things lurking under her bed.

This one is why I'm calling these "kid-friendly (ish)" emphasis on the "ish".  Courtney is a somewhat darker take on the beginning witchcraft dabbler tale, both figuratively and literally.  I mean, everything is kid-appropriate, but at one point a changeling takes away a baby that Courtney is watching, and although she tries to get it back (being captured and sold herself) her uncle basically tells her in the end, "Forget about trying to get the baby back, these things happen, his parents won't even notice." And they don't!  That was a more chilling story than I expected it to be.  Anyway, these are set up as four short stories, all in black and white.  I would have loved to have them in color, but I suppose it sets the mood.  Courtney herself is an entertaining little curmudgeon.  The last story finds her losing energy, only to realize she's been replaced by a doppelganger who is living her life (and doing much better at it apparently).  In the final confrontation, you think that Courtney will let the doppelganger just take over since everyone seems to prefer it to her, but she comes out swinging hard with a "fuck everyone else, I'm a difficult and unpleasant person, and that's exactly how I want to be!" that completely saps the doppelganger.  Good on you, Courtney.  I would never want to meet you in real life, but bless your confidence. 

Goldie Vance Vol. 1

By Hope Larson and Brittney Williams

Sixteen-year-old Marigold “Goldie” Vance lives at a Florida resort with her dad, who manages the place. Her mom, who divorced her dad years ago, works as a live mermaid at a club downtown. Goldie has an insatiable curiosity, which explains her dream to one day become the hotel’s in-house detective. When Charles, the current detective, encounters a case he can’t crack, he agrees to mentor Goldie in exchange for her help solving the mystery.

This one is a lot of fun to read, colorful, bouncy, basically Nancy Drew in 60s Florida, if Nancy weren't so lily white.   Whereas Courtney was a loner and preferred it that way, Goldie has a colorful cast of supporting characters, including friends, enemies, potential ladyfriends, adults who seem to exist mainly for spoiling fun, and also: aliens!  Yes, I was really getting into the story when it took an abrupt right turn into Martian colony weirdness.  This was set up so the mini-stories merged into a longer connected story, so we'll have to see if all of the mysteries end like that.  It was a little off-putting, but I (a) enjoyed the rest of it enough to keep reading and (b) can kind of see where they're going with the 60s cold war and space-focus (one of Goldie's friends wants to be an astronaut) so I will allow it for now.

The Lost Path

By Amélie Fléchais

Three young boys set off from Camp Happiness, map in hand, determined to be the first to find the treasure before anyone else. But the shortcut they take leads to something far more spectacular and sinister! All manner of magical beasties live in these woods, and the kids find themselves caught between warring Forest Spirits. Will the three boys find their way out of trouble? Get your map and ready, set, go!

This was something I picked up and bought during my sojourn on Free Comic Book Day solely because of how beautiful it was, and that definitely panned out.  It is gorgeous, done in multiple color and drawing styles.  I would have liked something 100% in color, just because the coloring that was there was so beautiful, but, I acknowledge that (like Courtney) the black and white was an appropriate style choice for those sections - when the three boys are simply wandering in the woods.   I agree with a lot of other reviewers that felt the story-line was lacking in comparison to the illustration.  The story is good, but it felt oddly incomplete and only half explained.  We wind up in the middle of fighting forest spirits, but it was hard to tell who was on what side and why.  A crown/hat becomes a Chekov's Gun that never goes off, and when I got done, I went to look if this was intended to be a stand-alone story or not.  So far it is, which is a let-down.  Overall, a beautiful, but otherwise somewhat empty, little book. 

Truly Devious

Truly Devious

By Maureen Johnson

Ellingham Academy is a famous private school in Vermont for the brightest thinkers, inventors, and artists. It was founded by Albert Ellingham, an early twentieth century tycoon, who wanted to make a wonderful place full of riddles, twisting pathways, and gardens. “A place,” he said, “where learning is a game.”

Shortly after the school opened, his wife and daughter were kidnapped. The only real clue was a mocking riddle listing methods of murder, signed with the frightening pseudonym “Truly, Devious.” It became one of the great unsolved crimes of American history.

True-crime aficionado Stevie Bell is set to begin her first year at Ellingham Academy, and she has an ambitious plan: She will solve this cold case. That is, she will solve the case when she gets a grip on her demanding new school life and her housemates: the inventor, the novelist, the actor, the artist, and the jokester. But something strange is happening. Truly Devious makes a surprise return, and death revisits Ellingham Academy. The past has crawled out of its grave. Someone has gotten away with murder.

Holy Shit! What the fuck did I just read?!  Take a secluded high school campus, a bunch of high-strung "genius" kids, a cold case 1930s Lindbergh-adjacent murder/kidnapping mystery, an actual dead teenager, the most dangerous game of Never Have I Ever ever, and end it on a bunch of frigging cliffhangers, and you'll get Truly Devious. 

You know what, I knew this was a bad idea.  This series is clearly identified as a trilogy, and only two of them have been published so far.  But the prompt!  And it sounded really cool!  So I stepped off into the pool and now here I am, hung out to dry, waiting on the next one to come out WHO KNOWS WHEN.  God, I hate WIPs.  This is going to be awful.

Suffice it to say, this got me out of the serious-book blues. And perhaps not surprisingly, I've already read the second book too, so we can talk about both in this review.  As you can tell, I did very much enjoy the book.  It can be confusing, and be aware that unlike many trilogies, this one is actually more like a single book than a series - things are mentioned and dropped, to be picked up (hopefully) in later books.  Questions are asked in Truly Devious that don't get answered until The Vanishing Stair, and others are left for the third. 

The lead character, Stevie, is not always very sympathetic, and there were a few times I was surprised by her actions (particularly romantically) which is a little odd, considering it's being narrated by her.  I also think the first book is stronger than the second (which is parodied in The Vanishing Stair, as Nate, the resident blocked author bemoans having to write a sequel - can't you just do a set-up and a denouement?) but given how closely intertwined and plotted out everything seems to be, I have faith that the author isn't artificially bloating the story or going to wind up writing the mystery into a corner.  It helps that people keep DYING, honestly, if we weren't following Stevie around I would probably have arrested her by now. It's not a good look to discover three bodies in a matter of a few weeks.  Especially since it's also her first semester at boarding school.  You gotta pace yourself, man.

I was also recently re-reading Murder on the Orient Express, which is also loosely inspired by the Lindbergh kidnapping, and it's interesting to see how each author has taken the story and molded it into very different murder mysteries.  Christie set up a classic revenge novel with the people whose family and friends were affected, and by the end, it's a visceral, cathartic feeling to know they'll get away with it.  In Truly Devious [And SPOILERS for The Vanishing Stair], the actual intended victims, Alice and Iris, are barely fleshed out, and our sympathies ride on Dottie, the clever, poor girl, who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.  The mystery is a puzzle, not a tragedy.  Although we do get some of Ellingham's sorrow afterwards, the way Truly Devious sets it up, it honestly sounded like he faked his own death, again alleviating some of the tragic consequences.  Now The Vanishing Stair seems to counter that, having him die in a confrontation with the kidnapper, but the whole picture probably won't come out until the third. 

It does feel a little cheap that after teasing the tin box in Truly Devious, we find out that Frankie and Edward are only very distantly involved in the kidnapping and then only by coincidence - they happened to write a threatening letter, as a prank, and Frankie's comments seemed to trigger the whole plan (accidentally), and it's also unclear to me how Stevie determines that they had nothing to do with the kidnapping, since I don't think the mere fact of their being students would eliminate them.  They could just as easily have hired minions to do the dirty work as the actual kidnapper did.

I can definitely see how it would get tiring to read three books all hashing out the same mystery from different perspectives, but Johnson does a pretty good job not just of giving new clues and insight, but also of creating large new mysteries to focus on, while leaving Ellingham in the background.  It's kind of the same problem that Veronica Mars, another excellent teen detective story, had, especially in the second season, and I don't think there's really a good around it, while still keeping the flow right.  In the third season of Veronica Mars, they went to several mini-arc mysteries instead, and that's not really doable here.

Overall, I am certainly intrigued and ready for the third book.  We still have to find out who projected the message on Stevie's wall (and what it means), where Alice is, or was, what actually happened that night, who killed Fenton, why Johnson seems to be trying to make Jenny Quinn a person of interest, whatever happened to Hayes and Ellie the night he died, how Ellie knew about the tunnels but couldn't get out again, and whoever is assisting Johnson on her legal references, because this whole nonsense about a secret codicil is in fact that: nonsense.  You can't prove up a will and leave out the codicil.  It's a public document.  Everything gets filed.  Now, it's possible that he wrote a trust and the "codicil" is actually a trust amendment, but in that case, everyone is calling it the wrong thing.  It was definitely possible for someone in that time period to do a trust, so I don't know why not just say it's a trust instead, and leave me some peace of mind, but all it does is bother the heck out of me.  Maybe book three will involve a discussion of why Vermont law in 1938 didn't require the filing of the will and codicil, which would be both hilariously specific to my interests as well as genuinely appreciated by this estates and trusts attorney. 



30: A Book Featuring An Amateur Detective

The Cruelest Miles

The Cruelest Miles: The Heroic Story of Dogs and Men in a Race Against an Epidemic

By Gay Salisbury and Lainey Salisbury

When a deadly diphtheria epidemic swept through Nome, Alaska, in 1925, the local doctor knew that without a fresh batch of antitoxin, his patients would die. The lifesaving serum was a thousand miles away, the port was icebound, and planes couldn't fly in blizzard conditions—only the dogs could make it. The heroic dash of dog teams across the Alaskan wilderness to Nome inspired the annual Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race and immortalized Balto, the lead dog of the last team whose bronze statue still stands in New York City's Central Park. This is the greatest dog story, never fully told until now.

I was actually set to read something else for this prompt (Overnight Float, if you must know) but as the Iditarod rolled around and I found myself reading the Wikipedia page about the original Serum Run and sobbing, I thought, well, why not just completely wallow in it?  What better than to really immerse yourself in the shared terror of small choking children slowly dying without life saving medicine which is only available through gale force winds, 60 degree below zero chills, and the luck of some dogs' noses?

Actually, the Iditarod truly is a phenomenal feat of athleticism, by both dog and man.  It is also one of those things which, avoiding excessive commercialism and set in some of the country's wildest territory, manages to still feel pure in the sense that watching the World Series definitely does not. The Cruelest Miles manages to take the story and bog it down with facts and history and reality, which all distracts from the feel-good sports win mentality of the thing.

That can be a difficult thing with books about specific historical events: you want to get more detail and background than you can with, for example, a deep dive through Wikipedia, but you also want to keep things zippy, or else you're going to lose readers.  Killers of the Flower Moon kind of runs into the same problems: it's an incredibly interesting situation and events, but in an effort to make it novel-length, the pacing can get dragged out and lose suspense.  Which I know is a ridiculous thing to say about a non fiction account of a historical event that you can definitely just look up and see how it ended.  But still!  One I read last year, Destiny of the Republic, manages to straddle this line well, I think partially because it really did take that long for Garfield to die (spoiler alert!), but it too got draggy there towards the end.

Anyway, if you want to know all about turn of the century and 1920s Nome, this is the place to start.  Honestly, nothing about how it is described sounds appealing.  Not only are you encased in snow for seven or eight months months and cut off from outside contact, contagious diseases also run rife through town.  

Once we skip past the introductory information and get to the dogsled race against death, it does pick up the pace, pun very much intended.  What's interesting is that, because the authors were working with whatever historical materials were available after the race, you can kind of see how some of racers get overlooked for the "celebrity" ones.  I have to assume that some of this was probably because of the native heritage of the non-celebrity dogsledders.  (I know that there is a better term for that but I already returned the book to the library, so we're sticking with "dogsledders").  There were twenty plus racers on the route, but only a few are highlighted.  Maybe the Salisburys had more they didn't want to include for fear of bogging it down, but I would read all twenty racers' recollections and not be satisfied.  From the accounts included, a lot of them also felt that it was simply a necessary task, and perhaps didn't know at the time just how much publicity it was getting in the lower 48, but stoicism is the bane of the historical record.  You gotta get out there and get those memories down, because everyone dies. 

The dogs get their proper dues in the book as well.  Due to the kerfuffle between Balto and Togo (and Seppala and Kaasen), the authors definitely have to explore that aspect of it, but since they don't really come down on one side or the other, I think in an effort not to tarnish anyone's efforts or memories, it doesn't really add much to the story.  The authors do discuss the second batch of serum, but don't really go into that relay at all.  There's definitely also a sense that they spent a lot of time on airplanes for nothing, since they were never used in the Serum Run, and I can see that they were trying to foreshadow the Serum Run as the last hurrah of the sleddog era, but it's an unnecessarily long detour away from the real action.

Anytime you have sleddogs and unforgiving nature, you want to spend as much time as you can on that story.  You have only to look at this year's race, where the front-running team decided to go on strike to realize that the dogs, loyal, clever, and brave, are the real heroes.  Which is what Seppala was arguing about all along - without them, would Nome still be on the map? Or would it be another ghost town, a cautionary tale about living beyond the edge of the world?


Cancer Ward and The Cruelest Miles have been, well, not depressing, exactly, but definitely not as light and frothy as some of my other selections (ahem, My Lady's Choosing) have been.  As a preemptive strike against gloominess, I'm now reading two very silly books: a YA crime mystery and a chick lit epistolary novel.

21: A Book By Two Female Authors