BBC radio broadcaster Elms (The Way We Wore) delivers an effusive if haphazard ode to concerts and other live musical performances. Casting a wide net, he rhapsodizes over the pleasures of clubbing as a teenager (“You watch each other rather than a band... the music is the soundtrack to your story”); bemoans a disappointing show during which Al Green spent most of his time “handing out roses ‘to the laydees’ and praising the Lord”; and reflects on a more recent Paul Weller concert that fostered “a tangible feeling of unity, which gets so much rarer as we get older, more distanced, more alone.” Such moments vividly capture the appeal of live music, though they’re hampered by the author’s tendency to name-drop (Amy Winehouse sent him a platinum copy of Back in Black as thanks for having her on his radio show) and veer into tangents, including a series of strained comparisons between music and soccer. The result is more a hodgepodge of anecdotes than the focused study the title suggests. Readers will need patience to separate the wheat from the chaff. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 05/17/2024 | Details & Permalink

Journalist Sanghera follows up Empireland, his study of how Britain was shaped by its imperial past, with a comprehensive if occasionally off-key look at imperialism’s legacy abroad. Sanghera aims to bridge the “gap” between Britain’s limited sense of its global impact and the former colonies’ far more extreme perceptions of that impact. His position isn’t simply anti-empire; though he comes down in favor of Britain paying reparations and points to ongoing harms (like how international charities continue to finance businesses in former British colonies with indentured servitude–like conditions reminiscent of imperial plantations), he meditates repeatedly on the impossibility of weighing imperialism’s negatives against its positives. Instead, he focuses on establishing a baseline of facts that will help further “dialogue” between Britain and its former colonies. His analysis is fascinating insofar as it delves into the empire’s systemic ramifications, especially in chapters on its agricultural and legal systems. But the argument at times verges on absurdity in its search for balance (“It’s entirely natural that the residents of, say, Jamaica, would be exercised about Britain leaving its population impoverished after slavery, even while they benefit from another imperial legacy such as, say, the introduction of cricket”); this is likely due to the ongoing British “culture war” over scholarly work on this topic, which Sanghera touches on briefly. By turns informative and confounding, this reveals even more about Britain’s present than its past. (May)

Reviewed on 05/17/2024 | Details & Permalink

This sharp-witted collection from Sarris (How a Mountain Was Made) comprises stories told by “crow sisters” about the Southern Pomo and Coast Miwok homelands of northern California. Question Woman and Answer Woman, the twin granddaughters of trickster Coyote, live as crows. Their stories, loosely anchored in creation myths but also firmly grounded in place and time, are enigmatic and open-ended, and nearly always center people who have learned, to their peril, to ignore their connections to the land and each other. In the evocative “A Man Follows an Osprey,” a troubled man hopes an osprey will lead him to a legendary box of gold. The field worker heroine of the mysterious “A Woman Meets an Owl, a Rattlesnake, and a Hummingbird in Santa Rosa” finds her life forever changed when she’s drawn night after night to a camp where three shape-shifters tell stories by the light of the moon. In the poignant “A Woman Invents a Lover,” a gaggle of gossips watch as good-hearted Marlene falls in love, is abandoned, and must perform a series of fairy tale–like tasks to reconnect with her family and her past. These incandescent stories will linger in the reader’s imagination. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 05/17/2024 | Details & Permalink

Mexican writer Tarazona’s inventive English-language debut follows an author whose consciousness splits into two separate realities. The break takes place after the unnamed protagonist, who is grieving her mother’s recent death and whose brain feels as if it’s full of stalactites, is found to have abnormal brain rhythms. One version of the woman returns to her daily routine in Mexico City, while the other runs away to a remote island, where she plans to end her life (“It doesn’t matter that you each inhabit a different body,” Tarazona writes. “Conjugations are irrelevant”). Interspersed throughout both narrative strands are dreamlike and at times apocryphal stories about the woman’s mother and grandmother, who practiced yoga together for decades with a powerful swami who might have been a “con man.” While readers may feel disoriented at the outset, the free-flowing, philosophical narrative, expertly translated by Davis and Dunn, builds to a masterful and deeply meaningful conclusion about the woman’s two selves. It’s a triumph of experimentation. (Apr.)

Reviewed on 05/17/2024 | Details & Permalink

Mount Shasta, Calif., high school senior Izumi Tanaka is a normal 18-year-old American girl: she enjoys baking, watching Real Housewives, and dressing like “Lululemon’s sloppy sister.” But Japanese American Izzy, conceived during a one-night stand in her mother Hanako’s final year at Harvard, has never known the identity of her father. So when she and her best friend find a letter in Hanako’s bedroom, the duo jump at the chance to ferret out Izzy’s dad’s true identity—only to find out he’s the Crown Prince of Japan. Desperate to know her father, Izzy agrees to spend the summer in his home country. But press surveillance, pressure to quickly learn the language and etiquette, and an unexpected romance make her time in Tokyo more fraught than she imagined. Add in a medley of cousins and an upcoming wedding, and Izzy is in for an unforgettable summer. Abrupt switches from Izzy’s perspective to lyrical descriptions of Japan may disrupt readers’ enjoyment, but a snarky voice plus interspersed text conversations and tabloid coverage keep the pages turning in Jean’s (Empress of All Seasons) fun, frothy, and often heartfelt duology starter. Ages 12–up. Agent: Erin Harris, Folio Literary Management. (May)

Reviewed on 05/07/2021 | Details & Permalink

Kelkar’s (Bindu’s Bindis) novel features Oceanview Academy middle schooler Sonali, whose stoicism contrasts with her love of Bollywood movies’ melodrama. Stuck in a Los Angeles home with constantly arguing parents and her sensitive nine-year-old brother Ronak, Gujarati American Sonali, 11, tries to make sense of her world through the Hindi movies she’s seen all her life. Ever since an earnest public attempt five years ago to stop her parents’ fighting led to widespread embarrassment in front of family, Sonali has resolved to hide her emotions and do her best to ignore her parents’ arguments. But her efforts prove futile when her parents decide to try the “nesting” method of separation, where they take turns living in the house with Sonali and Ronak. The contemporary narrative takes an entertaining fabulist turn as Sonali’s life begins to transform into a Bollywood movie, with everything she feels and thinks made apparent through her “Bollywooditis.” Sonali’s first-person perspective is sympathetic as she navigates friendship and family drama, and Kelkar successfully infuses a resonant narrative with “filmi magic,” offering a tale with universal appeal through an engaging cultural lens. Ages 8–12. Agent: Kathleen Rushall, Andrea Brown Literary. (May)

Reviewed on 05/07/2021 | Details & Permalink

When she was six, Justice Kasric watched her blue-eyed merchant father play chess with the Faerie King. Now 15, Justice believes the event was merely a dream. She spends her days yearning for adventure, watching from the sidelines while her 16-year-old sister Faith, as slender and golden-haired as Justice but not as curious, becomes the toast of Victorian London society. One night, however, their father shatters their comfortable lifestyles when he forces the family—Justice, Faith, their younger brother Henry, and their constantly medicated, distant mother—into a locked carriage that takes them to a shadowy mansion. Justice’s discovery that the Faerie have invaded the human world and are targeting her family gains further urgency when she learns that her parents are on opposite sides of the conflict. Together, the Kasric siblings—including older brothers Benedict and Joshua—must find a way to save their family. While characters lack depth at times, and insufficient historical details don’t fully evoke the Victorian setting, Klaver’s (the Supernatural Case Files of Sherlock Holmes series) rich, lyrical descriptions augment the fantastical source material in this engaging series starter. Ages 13–up. Agent: Lucienne Diver, the Knight Agency. (May)

Reviewed on 05/07/2021 | Details & Permalink

Nine years before this novel begins, eight-year-old best friends Esme Randal and Kayla Price snuck out of their cabin at Camp Pine Lake in Texas. They swore never to discuss the terrible events that followed, but when the girls, now 17, return to the camp as counselors-in-training from their hometown of Lewisburg, Pa., that proves easier said than done. Someone begins sabotaging camp activities, and ominous—and increasingly public—threats appear, referencing that fateful summer. The only other person who knows Esme and Kayla’s secret is a local girl named Lillian Campbell, whom they left to fend for herself that night in the woods. They’re loath to voice their suspicions of revenge lest they get in trouble or look bad in front of hunky fellow counselors Jake and Olly, but as events escalate, they realize they may not have a choice. Narrating from Esme’s increasingly apprehensive first-person perspective, Preston (The Twin) pays homage to classic summer camp slasher films. The underdeveloped, predominantly white cast relies heavily on stereotype, and the clichéd tormenter’s motive feels unearned, but horror fans will likely appreciate this paranoia-fueled tale’s gruesome, shocking close. Ages 12–up. Agent: Jon Elek, United Agents. (Mar.)

Reviewed on 05/07/2021 | Details & Permalink

Inspired by her own family’s refugee journey from Vietnam to Hong Kong, Văn’s (If You Were Night) spare picture book, powerful in its deliberate simplicity, follows a black-haired, pale-skinned child as they, their guardian, and two younger siblings join other asylum seekers for a perilous maritime voyage. In a third-person voice, Văn anthropomorphizes objects, relaying their wishes: “The dream wished it was longer,” one spread reads, as a balding, mustached guardian holds the protagonist close, and a guardian with a bun rouses the second child to dress them. “The clock wished it was slower,” the subsequent pages read, as the two children tearfully hug their mustached guardian goodbye. The narrative continues as the now family of four make their way onto the boat and beyond. A final-act switch to first-person perspective drives home the journey’s personal nature. Intricate, lissome fine-lined art by Ngai (Dazzle Ships) recalls classical Asian compositions, Japanese woodblock prints, and an evocative sensibility in a gradated, surrealistic color palette. A seamless interweaving of elegant prose and atmospheric art marks this affecting immigrant narrative. Back matter includes heartfelt author’s and illustrator’s notes. Ages 4–8. (May)

Correction: A previous version of this review misquoted the book's text.

Reviewed on 05/07/2021 | Details & Permalink

In a straightforward picture book debut by Meloy (the Apothecary series), a red-orange octopus is “happy in his cave,” until a human, portrayed as a pale hand, tricks the cephalopod into occupying a glove and subsequently takes him to “a glass house that wasn’t a cave.” Though the octopus is offered interactive tests and activities—including building blocks, a jar to unscrew, tight passages to navigate, and a camera to photograph visitors to his aquarium home—his days lack differentiation, and the pining octopus soon devises an intrepid plan to return home. The sympathetic prose is rhythmic, allowing readers to see the octopus’s perspective at every step of the process: of the glass house, “There were no waves. No little shivery ones. No big tumbling ones.” Sala (Green on Green) contributes vibrant art rendered in gouache, watercolor, and pastel on paper; particularly effective are spreads of the sinuous subject’s ocean life, with its richly varied flora and fauna. The Finding Nemo–esque adventure follows a predictable arc, but the tender narrative is gratifying and may serve as an effective jumping-off point for discussions about animal captivity. Ages 3–7. (May)

Reviewed on 05/07/2021 | Details & Permalink