Freya Sachs

FictionHistorical FictionComing of Age

The Great Reclamation

Review by Freya Sachs

There are magical islands in Rachel Heng’s Singapore, replete with fish; there are competing political factions and questions of power and control; there are familial relationships and love interests in a world that is being dissolved and rebuilt. This is the realm of Heng’s second novel, The Great Reclamation, upon which she casts a remarkable story.

In 1940s Singapore, British rule is drying up—but so, too, are the fish in the novel’s small village. A curious boy named Ah Boon discovers that he has the unique power to see lively, wondrous islands that are invisible to other people. When he shares his discovery with his family and community, their fortunes change, and the fishing village is able to thrive. Ah Boon, though, is focused on Siok Mei, the spunky neighbor girl, and their lives remain entangled while growing up, pursuing education and confronting their changing political realities and global climate.

Layered beneath all of Ah Boon’s adventures and experiences are the rich landscape and the ways humans measure their lives in, around and because of it. From the magical islands’ plethora of fish to the proposal of land reclamation, the landscape acts and responds, speaks and listens, and Heng highlights these interactions in beautiful and surprising ways. Her prose is alive; each character is rich with complexity and depth, each snapshot brimming with imagery.

Heng captures the individual and collective challenges of being human, evaluates pretense and power shifts, explores what a modern country might become after the disruption and displacement of World War II, and explores our concepts of family and home—and every bit of it is a delight to witness and revel in. The best novels teach us something new and ask us to engage in worlds beyond our own. For me, The Great Reclamation did just that. I don’t remember the last time I finished a nearly 500-page novel in one day, but I could not stop reading. It’s a remarkable journey.

The prose in Rachel Heng’s second novel is alive. Each character is rich with complexity and depth, each snapshot brimming with imagery.
FictionLiterary FictionHistorical Fiction

The Weeds

Review by Freya Sachs

The Roman Colosseum is full of wonders and history and secrets—and plants. Observing, cataloging and communicating with these plants is the heart of Katy Simpson Smith’s impressive novel, as the narrative connects two women across time who are both performing these archival acts. Set in 1854 and 2018, The Weeds  moves between the voices of these two women, interlocking their lives as they document the presence of (or absence of) plants. 

In 1854, a woman was caught stealing, and her misbehavior has led to her being indentured to English botanist Richard Deakin; he sends her into the Colosseum to catalog the flora and their uses. She also tells her own story and meditates on the ways that society impinges upon her selfhood. She speaks to her missing love, a woman who is off on a boat, now married to a man. In 2018, a woman has run from the entrapment of her life, but she finds herself newly hemmed in as she seeks the plants on Deakin’s list, makes notes, begrudges the presence of tourists and wonders what her next step might be. What will science, and her male adviser, allow? 

The novel moves in quick (and often blurry) shifts between these centuries and women. They mirror parts of each other; they both encounter violence at many turns and scales, and each reacts to the ways their voices and choices are constrained in their societies. The plants around them produce their own forms of tension and elements of violence; they are undoubtedly characters in their own right.

Just as the plants in the Colosseum ask of the women, The Weeds requests the reader to observe and look for connections, to question structures and patterns, and to discover new ways of seeing. Each detail is carefully attuned and revealed, and each seed opens at the moment it needs to bloom and stretch. Patience is necessary, but close attention reveals infinite rewards.

Read Katy Simpson Smith’s Behind the Book feature on The Weeds: “Women and unwanted plants have an uncomfortable amount in common.”

The Weeds requests the reader to observe and look for connections, to question structures and patterns, and to discover new ways of seeing.
FictionLiterary Fiction

My Murder

Review by Freya Sachs

Starting with its title, My Murder, Katie Williams sets up her second novel after Tell the Machine Goodnight with a handful of classic crime fiction questions: Whose murder? And who knows what? But readers will discover a subversive twist within.

Lou, the young mother and wife who narrates the novel, is back from the dead. As part of a government project, she and other victims of a serial killer have been resurrected with cloning technology and placed back into their homes, marriages and jobs. Yet things don’t quite fit for Lou: She can’t remember the days surrounding her murder, can’t connect with her child in the same way and feels distant from her husband. Lou’s confusion and curiosity guide the reader’s experience; she’s figuring things out just as we are, and the revelations of certain details, intentionally paced by Williams, are fresh and surprising. As Lou investigates unexplained moments from her previous life, it’s apparent that she won’t find peace until she makes some sense of them.

My Murder engages with a violent subject without gore, and probes how technology infuses our days and engages our attention, often without our awareness. The plot is certainly rich and appealing, but Williams’ layered considerations are even more compelling and yet never heavy-handed. What happened to Lou? Is she who she was? What makes humans who they are, and how does technology impact these definitions? With a singular voice and a winning narrative that will stay with you for days, My Murder speaks to the construction of the self and the filters we apply. It’s about what it means to survive, to be reborn and, ultimately, to live.

With a singular voice and a winning narrative that will stay with you for days, My Murder speaks to the construction of the self.
FictionLiterary Fiction

Reproduction

Review by Freya Sachs

Louisa Hall’s fourth book, Reproduction, brings together many threads—the COVID-19 pandemic, Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, friendship, pregnancy, miscarriage and birthing trauma—within a novel about trying to create a novel, about literary and scientific discovery and, most importantly, about a woman trying to write her way back to herself. 

Louisa Hall headshot
Read an essay from Louisa Hall on writing labor: “How can other people know what they are asking of us, what we endure in the course of childbirth, if there are no words to describe it?”

Hall’s unnamed narrator sets out to write a novel about Mary Shelley and Frankenstein with the intention of engaging with the book’s literary history. During the research process, she discovers how miscarriage and pregnancy haunted Shelley and her novel. As our narrator navigates her own crises surrounding pregnancy—her experiences with it as well as her feelings about it amid the political, societal, health and climate challenges of our day—she realizes that perhaps this is not the novel she needs to write. Instead, she borrows the frame structure of Frankenstein to launch and linger in a tale of herself and her newly reappeared friend Anna, a scientist who works in a lab, wants to have a child and is willing to explore genetic modification and all the questions, ethics, opportunities and challenges that come with it. 

Amid these large and lofty questions, Hall’s prose is taut, each word impactful, each short chapter a meditation on what could be. Throughout this slim novel, she continually returns to the evolving conversation between art and science, and to the enduring truth that no action or reaction exists in a vacuum. 

Hall doesn’t always provide reasons for what happens in Reproduction. Instead, the novel is a series of what-ifs, possibilities, surprises and moments of wonder. These short chapters build a complex web of interconnectivity, showing the ways that our actions are shaped by the threats of pandemic and climate change as well as the politics, bounds and potential of scientific inquiry.

Throughout her slim fourth novel, Louisa Hall continually returns to the conversation between art and science, and to the enduring truth that no action or reaction exists in a vacuum.
FictionHistorical Fiction

Learned by Heart

Review by Freya Sachs

With novels like The Wonder, The Pull of the Stars and Haven, Emma Donoghue has proven herself a masterful storyteller of historical worlds populated with deeply imagined characters. Though the universes she creates seem like they could expand infinitely, she builds small, confined spaces at the center from which grow rich possibilities. This is all especially true of her latest biographical novel, Learned by Heart, a story of risk, love and two young women discovering themselves by way of each other.

In 19th-century York, England, Eliza Raine is an orphan heiress living at an all-girls boarding school. When Anne Lister becomes her roommate, Eliza’s world shifts—and along with it, her understanding of herself and who she might become. The story moves between the year they meet at school and a series of letters that Eliza writes to Anne some years later. In these shifts, the reader witnesses the ways that the past shapes and haunts the present, that stories are made and unmade, and that love surprises and overwhelms.

The language here—of deep friendship and longing, text and subtext—is captivating. Sentences sing, and details shine. Donoghue has a remarkable ability to hold you in a moment, allowing you to see as a character does, knowing the questions each breath contains. Throughout, she keeps the narrative intimate while still allowing for commentary on wider considerations of societal constraints and expectations.

After reading this wonderful story with its countless discoveries, perhaps the greatest surprise of all is in the author’s note, in which Donoghue shares how she meticulously researched and reimagined this true tale. While Anne Lister’s story has been brought into our contemporary awareness, most recently through the HBO series “Gentleman Jack,” Eliza Raine’s story—and their story together—has not. Donoghue investigated their personal histories for years, focusing on Lister’s secret journal and Raine’s letters (the ones she was able to find). This rich saga gets its bold and dazzling moment at last.

A masterful storyteller, Emma Donoghue brings her dazzling talent and imagination to this historical novel based on a true story of risk, love and two young women discovering themselves by way of each other.
FictionComing of Age

Demon Copperhead

Review by Freya Sachs

Appalachia is a place that’s often ignored, forgotten or written over. When the region does become the subject of a book, as rarely as that may be, it’s frequently misrepresented. Barbara Kingsolver brings a notably different energy from her previous work to Demon Copperhead, a novel that dwells in the challenges of impoverished southern Appalachian communities and honors the ways in which our landscapes shape us. She does all this through a tremendous narrative voice, one so sharp and fresh as to overwhelm the reader’s senses.

In many ways, Demon Copperhead is a novel of survival—of finding one’s way through the mess of it all and living with dignity. Demon is born into poverty with only his teenage mother to call family, though she later becomes entangled in an abusive relationship. He faces such challenges as the foster system, child labor and his own desire to find success and a meaning for his life. At each turn, he finds ways to make things work. He’s willing to take risks, he cares about his people and community, and he often looks for the best in a moment, even if he doesn’t fully understand what he’s facing. With each choice, Demon’s spirit comes through, and it is haunting. It’s the reason the pages keep turning, as it’s imperative for the reader to find out how he’s going to get out of the latest mess or scrape, how he’s going to find his family and his own story.

Demon’s story—a tale of growth, challenges, sorrow and surprises—is both a retelling of and in conversation with David Copperfield, Charles Dickens’ novel about an orphan surviving in Victorian England, which was inspired by the author’s early life. Similarly, Kingsolver’s Demon is spunky and full of life as he navigates a complex, uneasy world. But Kingsolver has made this story her own, and what a joy it is to slip into this world and inhabit it, even with all its challenges.

Barbara Kingsolver’s novel is inspired by David Copperfield, but she has made this story her own, and what a joy it is to slip into this world and inhabit it, even with all its challenges.
FictionHistorical Fiction

Shrines of Gaiety

Review by Freya Sachs

There’s a certain joy in opening a Kate Atkinson novel—a feeling that every element matters and that each surprise and delight will ultimately make perfect sense. Her latest novel, Shrines of Gaiety, takes us to London in 1926. The shadows of the Great War and the 1918 flu pandemic weigh heavily on the world. In response to these recent horrors, London’s nightlife is alive, well and effervescent. 

Enter Nellie Coker—club owner, mother, notorious schemer—who is just about to be released from prison. Everyone is curious to see her, though she rarely lets people get close. London’s Soho neighborhood serves as the backdrop for Nellie’s life, as well as for the lives of her sons and the people who work for her and against her. Each chapter shifts focus, showing a bit of a character’s story, a glimpse of an encounter, a fragment of a person trying to exist in a complex world. We even get a fascinating look at characters who work in law enforcement. 

Slowly, these moments overlap. Secrets, stories, debts and more come to the surface. As the fragments of the novel coalesce, readers witness interconnection, reverberations and consequences. Patience is required to see this puzzle through to its end, but the long game pays off, and there’s magic in seeing the whole unexpected picture. 

There’s also pleasure in how Atkinson seamlessly integrates historical figures and moments into her story. Nellie Coker is a fictionalized version of “Night Club Queen” Kate Meyrick, but the novel moves beyond its inspiration, allowing the imaginative possibilities to guide the tale. Other cultural and literary figures are bandied about in conversation, which firmly establishes the novel’s time and place.

The history and setting add nuance to Shrines of Gaiety, but Atkinson’s characters and their choices, curiosities and corruptions keep the story unfolding, making the resolution worth every second. 

CORRECTION 10/25/2022: An earlier version of this review listed the incorrect year for the flu pandemic, which occurred in 1918.

Patience is required to see Kate Atkinson's latest puzzle through to its end, but the long game pays off, and there's magic in seeing the whole unexpected picture.
FictionPopular Fiction

Other Birds

Review by Freya Sachs

What does it mean for a story’s setting to really act as an additional character? It can’t just be a well-defined place where players act out their roles. Rather, it must feel like an extra layer where secrets might be kept—and possibly revealed. An apartment building on Mallow Island, South Carolina, beautifully illustrates this principle in Sarah Addison Allen’s sixth novel, Other Birds.

Zoey never felt at home with her father and stepmother in Tulsa, Oklahoma, so after turning 18, she moves to the island to live in the apartment left by her late mother. Zoey finds herself at the Dellawisp, a quirky old building that hosts a flock of nosy, noisy birds for which it is named. So, too, has it become a home for a number of interesting people. From Zoey’s artist neighbor, Charlotte, to the property manager, Frasier, each tenant of the Dellawisp is haunted by ghosts—of who they were, whom they love, pasts they don’t understand or want to flee. In time, each resident seeks to be understood, to build connections with one another and to understand how their lives are intertwined.

Magical elements are hewn into the marrow of Other Birds. Ghosts and birds—imagined or real, but all mysterious—guide the meandering cast, allowing opportunities for joyful circumstances. The fictional dellawisps—curious, loud and loitering—shape both the setting and how the characters interact within it. Zoey even has a bird named Pigeon that only she can see. Pigeon prods and cajoles Zoey, helping her grow.

If you’re looking for a bit of mystery, whimsical characters and a keen sense of place, Other Birds offers all these delights and more. Allen immerses readers in this island world, as well as in the process of self-discovery, the experiences of being haunted and the gift of surrendering to what we can and cannot control.

If you're looking for a bit of mystery, whimsical characters and a keen sense of place, Other Birds offers all these delights and more.
FictionLiterary FictionHistorical Fiction

Properties of Thirst

Review by Freya Sachs

As a longtime teacher of American literature, I find myself with an aversion to novels that claim to be the next American epic in the tradition of John Steinbeck, particularly when they’re about World War II. These novels, purporting to be the next necessary heart-wrenching tale of wartime heroism, are seemingly everywhere, but rarely do they live up to expectations. Properties of Thirst defies, dispels and demolishes those expectations and biases in the best way. 

Centered on the bombing of Pearl Harbor and its aftermath, Marianne Wiggins’ masterful novel is a story of land and water, of family, home and connection. For years, the Los Angeles Water Department has impinged upon Rocky Rhodes’ ranch. He’s maintained the property, fought for it and made it a home for his children—twins Sunny and Stryker—as they mourn their mother’s death. 

As Stryker heads to war just before the bombing at Pearl Harbor, the Rhodes’ fiercely protected land becomes neighbor to a Japanese incarceration facility. Schiff, a Jewish man from the Department of the Interior, arrives to oversee the project. He finds himself intrigued by Sunny, and their lives twine and overlap over the course of the novel. 

It’s a challenge to probe such a dark chapter of American history while properly doing justice to the ways that government policies impact both people and the landscape. The novel’s title, Properties of Thirst, introduces an extended metaphor for this exploration: Each section opens with a property of thirst (“the first property of thirst is the element of surprise,” “the ninth property of thirst is submersion,” etc.), framing the novel’s world as one where water is scarce and desire is rampant. As Wiggins uses this lens to explore questions about our history, readers won’t be able to look away. 

Wiggins’ characters are raw and honest; they’re layered and human and fully realized people, from the ways they learn to communicate through their memories of traditions, food and holidays, to the connections they make through literature, particularly that of the Transcendentalists, those purveyors of idealism and individualism. 

Wiggins’ writing, which can be fragmented or polished depending on the page, opens up microscopic universes and sprawling landscapes alike. It’s a joy to read. The opening line, “You can’t save what you don’t love,” echoes throughout the novel, grounding and justifying the reader’s journey toward a better understanding of what that love is and the power it holds. 

In the novel’s afterword, readers learn that Properties of Thirst was completed after Wiggins’ stroke in 2016. While sitting in the author’s hospital room, her daughter, Lara Porzak, read the unfinished manuscript aloud, hoping that her mother’s “words could and would heal her brain, somehow creating a parallel existence: her shadow self living a shadow life reading her former self’s words.” Over time, the author, her daughter and editor David Ulin brought this book to the world, and in this backstory of creative collaboration, we witness the real process of saving what is loved. We are lucky, as readers, to experience the result.

Properties of Thirst was completed after the author's stroke in 2016, through a process of creative collaboration between Marianne Wiggins, her daughter, and editor David Ulin. We are lucky to witness and experience the result.
FictionFamily Drama

Any Other Family

Review by Freya Sachs

What does it mean to be a family? Why do people adopt children? How does a person choose to be, or not be, a parent? When a novel asks questions such as these, there’s often a singular instance or moment that provides an answer, or at the very least, a primary lens through which the possibilities are considered. The beauty of Eleanor Brown’s third novel is that she positions these questions in conversation, asking the how, why and what through the stories of several parents. We see many different choices and the ramifications of each.

The family in Any Other Family is constructed on its own terms: As the novel opens, four siblings live with three sets of parents. Each child was born to the same young woman, who chose open adoptions, enabling the children to maintain relationships not only with her but also with each other. The whole family is committed to raising the children with regular gatherings for Sunday dinners and holidays. And now, for the first time, they’re all taking a two-week family vacation, during which time they’ll learn to interact in new ways, encounter unexpected challenges and be forced, again, to consider how they form a family and what, exactly, that might mean.

The novel unfolds through the alternating perspectives of the three adoptive mothers, revealing their strengths and challenges with equal care. Brown’s tenderness toward these women, as well as the fathers, their children and the birth mother and father, draws readers toward empathy as well, as we feel our way into the complexities and nuances of the characters’ seemingly impossible choices. Empathy functions differently when examples are iterative, and one of the greatest rewards of reading Brown’s novel is the ability to engage with a multiplicity of perspectives.

There’s joy to be found in the struggle, and Any Other Family offers a thoughtful space to experience this truth.

There’s joy to be found in the struggle, and Eleanor Brown’s novel about an unusual adoptive family is a thoughtful exploration of this truth.
FictionLiterary Fiction

Either/Or

Review by Freya Sachs

Elif Batuman’s Either/Or is a delightful invitation to reunite with Selin by picking up her adventures where we left off in The Idiot. Now a sophomore at Harvard University, Selin continues to explore, meander and wonder throughout the autumn of 1996, the spring of ’97 and the summer that follows.

Selin’s voice is notably more mature, more reflective and perhaps more droll, and yet she’s still true to herself as she tries to figure out who, exactly, that self is and can be. She attempts to make sense of the previous summer—her travels in Hungary, her time with her crush, Ivan, and his strangeness and distance, and all the many experiences she’s lived but doesn’t yet understand—and searches for guidance through the works assigned for her literature class, including The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin, Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust, Either/Or by Søren Kierkegaard and more.

As Either/Or moves through the year, Selin begins to live actively rather than reflexively; she develops agency, and her choices have power. As she shows an increasing awareness of and engagement with the world, she starts to move out of her novels and into her own self.

Readers will find the tensions of history and present-day politics difficult to miss while reading Either/Or: Russian literature is a strong influence in Selin’s life, and her on-campus job is at the Ukrainian Research Institute. The 1990s technology is a throwback and a joy, and it’s fascinating to consider the ways that email and the internet have changed and shaped everything in our world, from relationships to travel. There’s humor in the lived experiences of parties, classes, alcohol and sex, and Batuman’s balancing of all these elements is remarkable.

Our present moment will change, and technology will continue to evolve, but undoubtedly Selin’s voice will remain a gem.

Selin, hero of Elif Batuman's The Idiot, returns with a voice that is more mature, reflective and droll as she starts to move out of her novels and into her own self.
FictionLiterary Fiction

Remarkably Bright Creatures

Review by Freya Sachs

Imagine an octopus, trapped in an aquarium: What might he notice, share, taunt and attempt? In Remarkably Bright Creatures, first-time author Shelby Van Pelt asks such questions about life in a tank—and outside of it.

Each evening, recently widowed Tova Sullivan methodically and meticulously works as a cleaner at the Sowell Bay Aquarium. Staying active sustains her, as she is still reeling from her son’s mysterious disappearance many years ago, when he was 18. Tova begins to form a cautious bond with Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus who lives in the aquarium and sneaks out to explore the other tanks and corners of the building. As Marcellus and Tova become increasingly attuned to and curious about each other, he notices details and secrets that help her find a new direction and purpose.

Remarkably Bright Creatures introduces other narrators and perspectives that are seemingly disconnected from Tova and Marcellus, albeit still engaging enough to propel the story forward. The chapters are short, making it easy for readers to dive into each subsequent voice, wondering what secrets will be uncovered. It’s a delight to piece the many stories together.

While the individual characters—human and cephalopod alike—are charming and complex, Remarkably Bright Creatures also emphasizes the importance of community. Locations such as the aquarium, a grocery store, a camper and the Sowell Bay area bring people together, providing spaces to foster conversation, gossip and curiosity. As everyday lives overlap, the reader wonders if crushes will be requited, if families will find each other and if estrangements will end. Will Tova learn more about what happened to her son? And what does Marcellus know?

As Van Pelt’s zippy, fun-to-follow prose engages at every turn, readers will find themselves rooting for the many characters, hoping that they’ll find whatever it is they seek: answers to mysteries, family, joy. Each character is profoundly human, with flaws and eccentricities crafted with care. But what makes Van Pelt’s novel most charming and joyful is the tender friendship between species, and the ways Tova and Marcellus make each other ever more remarkable and bright.

As Shelby Van Pelt’s zippy, fun-to-follow prose engages at every turn, readers will find themselves rooting for her many characters—human and cephalopod alike.
FictionFamily Drama

Unlikely Animals

Review by Freya Sachs

Annie Hartnett’s second novel, Unlikely Animals, is striking and richly imagined, with a voice that is wholly its own. The story is told by the collective dead of a small New Hampshire town, with all the boundaries and unknowns that are inherent when your storytellers are buried in a cemetery.

The town’s dead are compelled to speak when Emma Starling returns home after a failed attempt at medical school. Although she was born with a natural ability to heal, the ability seems to have deserted her, leaving her unable to help her father, Clive, who has a brain disease. Despite his tremors, Clive is determined to solve the mystery of Emma’s best friend, Crystal, who has disappeared.

In many ways, Emma’s return home is messy; her brother is recovering from an opioid addiction, and Clive has begun to frequently and unpredictably hallucinate the existence of various animals, as well as the ghost of long-dead naturalist Ernest Harold Baynes. Layer in Emma’s new job as a substitute fifth grade teacher and other delightful moments, and you have the makings of a propulsive, inviting tale.

Emma and her family are endearing, charming characters to observe. They’re flawed, searching and struggling to be seen. Although Unlikely Animals deals with many issues—aging parents, the opioid epidemic, life in rural New England, family dreams and pressures—it does so with intention and care, never heavy-handedness. The magic of Hartnett’s novel stems from the balance of these weighty topics with the story’s intrinsic playfulness, and in sections that explore the myth and history of Baynes and his domesticated animals.

Ultimately, the story of Unlikely Animals belongs to the animals themselves, from Clive’s hallucinatory rabbits to Emma’s adopted dog. They remind us of wisdom beyond human experience, offering moments of clear-eyed joy as Emma finds her way and strives to help others do the same.

The magic of Annie Hartnett’s second novel is the balance of heavy topics with the story’s intrinsic playfulness.

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