All the books I read in February and what I thought of them

This month I read four books, which isn't a lot, but the reviews are long, so from your perspective I assume it comes out to the same thing.

✨✨✨

Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar

rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐✨

I kept seeing this book everywhere on the internet, and then I also saw it in the library, so I had to read it. Who could possibly have predicted that when everyone is talking about a book, it's because the book is fantastic?

Our protagonist Cyrus is sad and lonely and obsessed with death. He has a hard time feeling alive (as opposed to numb to everything) and he wants to die in a way that his absence will mean something. So, basically, this is like those books I love/hate about self destructive women, except this is about a self-destructive man, and also it didn't make me feel empty inside. Cyrus is just a little guy and I want to give him a hug.

Cyrus starts from a really awful place mentally, but, throughout the book, he starts feeling significantly better, and it's believable. It's not like he magically stops being a sad alcoholic, but the people around him give him a lot of support and, by the end, he seems to have learned valuable lessons. It's nice to read about. The persistence of the human spirit, you know? Martyr is trying to sell the idea that you need to stop artificially trying to make your life/death grand and meaningful and instead fill the emptiness inside of you with something that will make you happy, and then you can stop asking silly questions about martyrdom. I don't think this is a groundbreaking major epiphany, but I agree with it. I fill the infinite void with lentil soup and gossip. 

I really liked the chapters take place in Cyrus's dreams wherein two guys talk to each other about the meaning of life and stuff. I have mixed feelings about the 20 page span which the author devoted to taking shots at Donald Trump, but I'm never going to tell someone not to take shots at Donald Trump. The part at the beginning of the book where Cyrus really enthusiastically roleplays a dying woman for medical students to practice giving terrible news and he just (in character) antagonizes the medical student was very funny because it reminded me of how my friend PJ tells jokes. I strongly recommend  recruiting your friend PJ to do a dramatic reading of the first chapter with you.

There is a really soap-operatic plot twist at the end that I wasn't completely on board with, but it made me gasp in delight and shock when I figured it out, and I think the last few chapters really sell it. I also loved the fever-dream-esque reconciliation between Cyrus and his friend at the very end. This book started strong, and it ended strong, and the middle was pretty great, too. 

✈️✈️✈️

Democracy by Henry Adams

rating: ⭐⭐

There are major spoilers in this review, but please do not worry because this book is not good at all, and I am really doing you a favor. I read this book so you didn't have to.

My professor kindly recommended me this book. He asked me, what genres do you like? And I said, magical realism and sad women, so it is not entirely clear to me why he told me to read this book. He said the protagonist Madeleine was not so much sad as restricted, but I didn't really see her as being either. The beginning of the book describes her as being so smart (relative to most women :o because she knows the names of the three branches of government) but I think she's kind of dumb. She clearly does not know very much about politics and she moves to Washington, D.C. to understand how the government works, and she mostly just reminds me of myself when I'm in conversations that I'm vastly unqualified to be a member of. But at any rate, 75% of the book is not about her; it's about her associates Ratcliffe and Carrington and Sybil and ten million irrelevant men.

Her sister Sybil, on the other hand, is sort of delightful?? "I hate ruins, but I fancy you can buy delicious things in Constantinople." Girl I like ruins and I assume I must love whatever delicious things you can buy in Istanbul. I am always down for the plot point of girl being jealous of her sister's love interest because she's insecure and worried the sister will be taken away from her, and I'm also so down for the plot point of girl realizing she doesn't have a crush on someone, she just wants him to be her brother-in-law.

HOWEVER I DO NOT LIKE THE IMPLICATION THAT THE CONFEDERATE GETS THE GIRL. OH WE ALL HAT RATCLIFFE BECAUSE HE'S CORRUPT. BUT THE CONFEDERATE? THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH HIM!! BESIDES BUYING VOTES AND OVERTURNING ELECTIONS, YOU KNOW WHAT ELSE IS A CRIME? SECESSION. SLAVERY. TREASON. CARRINGTON SHOULDN'T BE STEALING GIRLS FROM NORTHERNERS, HE SHOULD BE HAVING HIS HEAD FORCIBLY DIVORCED FROM THE REST OF HIM.

In my professor's defense he had not finished the book when he told me to read it and he said, I hope the ending isn't tragic so I didn't waste your time. Unfortunately, this is a very tragic ending. But my biggest problem with Democracy is that it should feel like a soap opera, but it doesn't. The corruption is so vague, and there's not enough of it, and it isn't interesting. This book isn't incisive, it's just cynical. The love triangle is boring. There's so much drama just simmering under the surface of mundane socialite conversations. Where is the excitement?? On a lot of levels, I just couldn't get on board.

🗳️🗳️🗳️

The Warm Hands of Ghosts by Katherine Arden

rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

If you have been stalking my reviews fastidiously or have a photographic memory, you may remember my recent review of The Winter of the Witch (which I love) in which I complained that the magic system was "vibes-based to the point of being kind of silly" because it worked very well as a metaphor for dual faith and preserving traditions, but not very well as, you know, a part of the plot. I do not have this same grievance with the magical aspects of The Warm Hands of Ghosts because the book really leans into the figurative elements and balances them with the realistic plot progression. The book is largely an exploration of how people process traumatic experiences, and I thought it was great how part of the book is based around the actual plot, but there was sort of another dimension that was written in a more abstract, emotional way that explores how trauma feels. So the one part works as a logical narrative, and the other part works as a meditation on trauma. If I had trauma, I think I would feel either extremely seen or extremely triggered.

This book is about a nurse looking for her missing brother while the brother trauma bonds to a fellow soldier on the front lines of World War I and then gets stuck in a magical hotel. Both in terms of the themes and the actual content, it is very The Master and Margarita coded. It's too bad the cover is not nearly as pretty.

I loved how the author wrote the trauma bond between Freddie and Winter. They are the only ones who can understand each others' problems, and their association is the only thing keeping them from mentally falling apart. But, quite apart from them effortlessly being each other's "other half," their affection has to be a conscious choice because they have the alternative option of oblivion and complete forgetting. It's unclear to me exactly what this oblivion would entail in real life (perhaps wallowing in depression or substance abuse, or suicide, or just giving up on connection and isolating oneself—maybe it could be different things for different people), but there is a strange magical hotel which is an alternate plane of existence written in a more abstract, emotional style. By remaining in the magical hotel, the characters are accepting oblivion in response to their trauma. Throughout the book, we are always hoping the characters will choose to keep living and believe the people they love still want them around, no matter how scarred they are. So I really enjoyed reading about Freddie and Winter's mutual struggle to let their affection triumph over their desire to forget everything awful that ever happened to them.

My only personal gripe is that I know the author is capable of writing interesting books that aren't stressful; I like the Winternight trilogy because it avoids a lot of unnecessary stress by making the whole atmosphere interesting rather than using plot escalation to create excitement. This book does not do that. The atmosphere is great, but it also definitely has a plot pyramid, and, let me tell you, the plot pyramid sure is pointy. Maybe I wanted to be happy. Anyway, I can't wait to add this book to my annual-ish Katherine Arden reread cycle and destroy myself emotionally.

🛎️🛎️🛎️

Anatomy of a Disappearance by Hisham Matar

 

rating: ⭐⭐⭐

My professor (different professor) kindly recommended this book to me because I told her Georgian English makes my brain hurt (sorry Jane Austen). She is entirely correct that this author's writing style is pleasant in that it did not make my brain hurt. 

Allegedly (according to my professor), this is a political novel. I am realizing I don't know what a political novel is, and, at this point, I'm too afraid to ask. Anyway, nothing political about this book was interesting to me. There is a kid named Nuri whose mother dies and his father remarries and he is so obsessed with his stepmother. This kid is so attracted to her and it's annoying. He is being dramatic. Then his father disappears; his reaction to this is much more reasonable. One could say this is a political novel because his father gets disappeared by the government for being a dissident, and the book clearly thinks this is a bad thing which should not have happened. But I have never met anyone who disagrees with such a sentiment, so the author may be preaching to the choir. 

I think it is a disservice to call this book a political novel because none of its political commentary was interesting; I'm inclined to think that the author didn't intend for the political statement "disappearing dissidents is bad" to be a main focus of the book. The interesting part is how Nuri processes his father's disappearance. When his mother dies, he receives a lot of support from his extended family and his father, and he definitely handles it better than he handles his father's disappearance. Perhaps the uncertainty and emotional instability of not knowing what happened to his father messes with Nuri mentally. When his father disappears, his extended family seems to not know how to handle it, and Nuri becomes unable to connect with other people or process his loss. He stops being obsessed with his stepmother, which is a great choice from my perspective, but obviously it would be better if it were a symptom of developing good sense as opposed to a symptom of deep sadness.

It's possible I just don't like political novels because I always expect more than is reasonable to say in a few hundred pages when you are also focused on writing a good story (see also my review of Democracy whose commentary I've heard a million times from average disaffected Americans who think all politicians are corrupt, which may be true, but sounds to me like the easy way out of voting). If I wanted to read about Libyan politics, I would read a books about Libyan politics. Notwithstanding the fact I have written 450 words about this book, I am withholding final judgment until I have finished reading the author's memoir, which is also about his father getting disappeared by the government, because I want to see how much better it is than this book.

When I asked my professor what part of the novel was political, she said that it will become apparent when I read the rest of Hisham Matar's body of work. I enjoy her confidence that I will continue taking her book recommendations because her confidence is well-placed. Today she brought my class doughnuts because tomorrow is spring break. The political science department is just full of wonderful people who have done so much for me.