Rainbirds, Aetherial Worlds, Demi-Gods, Ghost Boys
Staff Review Round-up, 4/25/2018
Welcome to Literati Bookstore’s round-up of recent staff favorites, and an occasional place for useful links and news from around the literary web regarding upcoming events at the store.
Ghost Boys, by Jewell Parker Rhodes
A powerful, affecting book written for young readers, but one we should all read. I don’t often read this genre, but from the first page, I was swept up by Rhodes’ urgent, heartbreaking, and necessary telling of a 12–year-old Jerome shot by a police officer. I read it in one sitting. It has stayed with me since. — -Mike.
Demi-Gods, by Eliza Robertson
An unsettling investigation into the ways in which a single person — perhaps a single incident — can have a lasting impact on another person’s life. It’s the 1950s, and young Willa and her older sister are forced to spend a largely unsupervised summer with their new step-brothers. In the weeks and years that follow, Willa’s life is forever troubled as it weaves inextricably with that of the younger of the two boys. Here, we watch as Willa works, against all odds, to possess her own agency apart from the boy who has so dangerously imprinted upon her. This book has captured something peculiar, disturbing, and fascinating about the emotional landscape of girlhood as well as the morbid curiosities that simmer within us all. — Claire
Aetherial Worlds: Stories, by Tatyana Tolstaya
I didn’t seek this book out. I knew nothing about it, and expected nothing. Even if I had, I never could have expected the stories here. I can obviously only speak to my experience, but each of these stories articulated sensations that I’ve never paused to give name to — sensations I’ll probably measure my life by in the end. This collection’s common thread is the line between the everyday & the dreamlike, between “here” and “there,” which proves illusory. The line I used to walk like a tightrope, giddy and terrified, in childhood. For someone else to resurrect this strange and lost feeling somehow lessens the inevitable, impassable distance between souls, an experience I value above all else. — Madison
Auntie Poldie and the Sicilian Lions, by Mario Giordano
Meet Aunti Poldi, a sassy 60-something widow who retires to Sicily to live out her days imbibing vino, savoring good food, and admiring a view of the sea. That is until the handsome handyman who is helping her renovate her villa goes missing and then is found murdered. Poldi emerges as an amateur sleuth — but her snooping into the lives of the townsfolk proves irksome to the sexy police inspector in charge of the investigation. Giordano, a writer of both novels and screenplays, has a knack for cinematic writing with snappy and dialogue and page-turning plot twists. For fans of international mysteries set amid beautiful landscapes and filled with quirky, lovable characters. — Hilary
Rainbirds, by Clarissa Goenawan
After I finished this novel, I felt a great silence in the aftermath. The book is so deeply, yet subtly layered that reading it is like falling asleep under soft snow and waking up completely buried. Ren Ishida’s sister has been murdered in Akakawa, a small town in Japan. He moves there an assumes her life’s routines, partially to find to her killer, but mostly to feel close to the person he loved most. But the town is not without its unsettling idiosyncrasies — a hand model gone missing, a politician’s mute wife. Goenawan’s writing is spare ,yet full of feeling and she delivers gut punches and gentle caresses in equal measure. A winner for any fans of disquieting, atmospheric noir. — Lillian
The Book of the Dead, by Muriel Rukeyser
I first read this in a college creative writing class. We were learning about how flexible the poetic medium can be, and Rukeyser’s poetic nonfiction of the Hawk’s Nest Tunnel Disaster stayed with me. The disaster was the greatest industrial catastrophe in American history, causing an estimated 700–1,000 migrant worker deaths by silicosis in an effort to divert a portion of the New River under a mountain through a 3-mile tunnel. In this new edition, which includes an excellent introduction by Catherine Venable Moore (I recommend reading the intro after you finish the book), the power of history and poetry attempt to unveil a truth that has been overgrown by time and prejudice. “Knowledge is power,” as they say, and The Book of the Dead pulses with it as a haunted beacon of truth, a pinprick of light shining through the shrouded history of our own country. — Charlotte
