Fiction book reviews archive | Page 74 of 454

by Amy Scribner

You know you’re in for a wild ride with the shockingly inventive collection Shit Cassandra Saw when one of the first stories is a piercing tale of women in New York acquiring supernatural powers that allow them to move through the city without fear of sexual assault. This is followed by a story that’s a one-star Yelp review written by Gary F., ostensibly about a Maryland restaurant called Jerry’s Crab Shack, but really about the man’s deeply dysfunctional relationship with his wife.

Other standout entries include a poignant look at a high school softball team that is reeling from a recent school shooting, and the tale of a woman who is having an affair and being judged by the priggish Colonial ghost who lives in her neighborhood.

So it goes, in dazzling story after story in this debut book from Gwen E. Kirby, a creative writing instructor and associate director at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference at the University of the South. Through humor, ferocity and sometimes a healthy dash of surrealism, Kirby meditates on the fears, joys and pains of being a woman throughout the centuries. Every story feels unique, yet they’re tied together by Kirby’s mind-bendingly confident writing and her clear fascination with strong yet vulnerable women.

And boy, does she know how to create a sense of place so strong you can feel and smell it. In “We Handle It,” for example, we meet teenage girls who are “at a summer music camp, our fingertips sore from strings, our backs sticky with sweat, and when we reach the lake we shed our summer dresses and leap from a boulder into the water, which is deep and clean. Around the lake are tall pines and the heavy hum of Southern bug life.”

Shit Cassandra Saw is pure pleasure with something for everyone, especially readers interested in thinking deeply about womanhood from every possible angle. Kirby’s characters are sometimes sinners and never saints, as complex as the real-life women we know and love.

The female characters in Gwen E. Kirby’s collection are sometimes sinners and never saints, as complex as the real-life women we know and love.

Fiction, Historical Fiction

Fiction Historical Fiction

Small World

Review by Thane Tierney

by Thane Tierney

In the July 1845 issue of the Democratic Review, an editorial urged “the fulfillment of our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.” It’s believed to be the first time the expression “manifest destiny,” a staple of high school history papers for over a century, ever appeared in print.

The phrase doesn’t show up as such in Jonathan Evison’s epic seventh novel, Small World, but its presence—and its role within American immigrants’ and Native Americans’ destinies, spread across three centuries—is woven into every page.

There’s Amtrak executive Jenny, whose great-great-great-grandfather was a Chinese immigrant and forty-niner who parlayed his gold into intergenerational wealth; budding basketball player Malik, son of a single mother and descendant of an enslaved man; abuse survivor Laila, whose Miwok ancestor internalized white people’s cruelty; and retiring train conductor Walter, whose Irish forebear was on the crew that drove the golden spike that connected America’s coasts by rail in 1869.

In fact, it’s Walter’s 2019 train crash that kicks off the odyssey, as the engineer tries to imagine the lives of his passengers and “what circumstances, what decisions, had delivered them all to that moment.”

As Evison tells the tale of America through immigrants’, Native Americans’ and their descendants’ eyes, readers are treated to seemingly unrelated vignettes that jump back and forth across time and space. Piece by piece, Evison successfully corrals this sprawling history into a cohesive whole, coalescing it into a vivid mosaic.

Part of the reason this 480-page book seems like a novel half its girth is Evison’s ability to drop the reader into a scene. You can feel the bone-rattling lurch of a wagon carrying its hidden human cargo to freedom. You can smell the pinewoods as a young couple seeks a place to build their nest in the Sierra foothills. You can taste the congealed oats at a Dickensian orphanage. You can revel in the dreams of a young athlete on the verge of greatness.

Throughout it all, Evison underscores a sense of a shared America, not so much in the kumbaya mythology of the melting pot but a feeling—oft-neglected these days—that we are all in this nation-building adventure together. That’s a destiny worth manifesting.

Jonathan Evison underscores a sense of a shared America, that we are all in this nation-building adventure together. That’s a destiny worth manifesting.

Fiction, Historical Fiction

Fiction Historical Fiction

The Fortune Men

Review by Lauren Bufferd

by Lauren Bufferd

In 1952, a young Somali sailor named Mahmood Mattan was arrested for the murder of a Jewish shopkeeper in Cardiff, Wales, a crime he did not commit but nonetheless was convicted of and hanged for. This true story is the inspiration behind Nadifa Mohamed’s masterful Booker Prize short-listed novel, The Fortune Men, a powerful evocation of one man’s life and a harrowing tale of racial injustice.

In the 1950s, the Tiger Bay area of Cardiff is a multiracial, multilingual community of Somalis, Arabs, Jews, West Indians and West Africans. It’s also the home of Mattan, his Welsh wife and their three sons. When Violet Volacki is stabbed in her shop, her sister, Diana, thinks she sees a Somali at the door. A gambler and petty thief, Mattan tries to ignore the tidal wave of suspicion flowing from the police, his landlord, even the men at his mosque. But he grossly underestimates the racism of the local community, which wants to punish not only him but also his wife for marrying an African immigrant. Mattan’s protestations of innocence and his belief in the British justice system are no match for the prosecution’s fabricated testimonies and false witness statements.

Mohamed brilliantly re-creates Tiger Bay’s bustling world of racetracks, milk bars and rooming houses, filled with diverse characters who range from the bigoted detectives to the sheikh from the local mosque. Part of the novel is told by Diana, whose family immigrated to England to escape antisemitic violence in Russia and who never names Mattan as the man she saw, despite pressure from police. The Fortune Men is a reminder of a particularly egregious example of injustice and prejudice, but by including Diana’s point of view, Mohamed suggests that Mattan’s experience is not an isolated incident but one that was and is repeated wherever systemic racism exists.

In the real-world case, after decades of campaigning by his family and the wider Somali community, Mattan was exonerated. His name was cleared almost 50 years after his death, and the wrongful conviction and execution was the first miscarriage of justice ever rectified by the British courts. But these events happened decades after the action in Mohamed’s novel. She instead focuses on Mattan’s childhood in Hargeisa, his globetrotting years with the merchant navy and his final weeks in a Welsh jail, where a renewal of faith leads to a new assessment of life. Mohamed’s command of both Mattan’s place in the historical record and the intimate details of his life makes for a remarkable novel.

A true story inspired Nadifa Mohamed’s masterful novel, a powerful evocation of one man’s life and a harrowing tale of racial injustice.

Audio, Fiction

Fiction Audio

The Lincoln Highway

Review by Deborah Mason

by Deborah Mason

Filled with humor, misadventures, triumphs and sorrow, Amor Towles’ novel The Lincoln Highway (16.5 hours) follows Emmet Watson, his kid brother, Billy, and their friends Duchess and Woolly on an epic road trip from Nebraska to New York.

Each chapter is told from a different point of view, and Edoardo Ballerini narrates as all but two of the characters. He brings nuance to each voice, but his reading of Billy’s perspective is especially convincing. Billy, the precocious child who inspires much of the novel’s action, runs the risk of becoming more symbol than character, but Ballerini captures the wistfulness and vulnerability of a young boy far from home. Marin Ireland is gloriously brassy and brittle as Sally, a sassy Penelope figure who refuses to stay home, and Dion Graham imbues Ulysses, a homeless African American veteran doomed to crisscross America, with weary dignity and courage.

Sometimes, audiobooks merely narrate the original text. In this case, the performances by Ballerini, Ireland and Graham augment it, giving The Lincoln Highway increased complexity and humanity.

Read our starred review of the print edition of ‘The Lincoln Highway.’

Narration by Edoardo Ballerini, Marin Ireland and Dion Graham augment Amor Towles’ text, giving The Lincoln Highway increased complexity and humanity.

Audio, Fiction, Western

Fiction Audio Western

Heresy

Review by Anna Zeitlin

by Anna Zeitlin

The new audiobook of Melissa Lenhardt’s groundbreaking 2018 novel, Heresy (14 hours), will transport you to the Old West of the 1870s through stellar performances from a diverse cast. Telling the tale of a gang of female bandits, the seasoned group of seven narrators (Barrie Kreinik, Bailey Carr, Ella Turenne, Nikki Massoud, Natalie Naudus, Imani Jade Powers and James Fouhey) brings their characters to life, whether reading from the journals of gang leader/former aristocrat Margaret Parker or from a 1930s interview with elderly former outlaw Hattie LaCour.

If you love the action and grittiness of this genre but long for more novels about the women, people of color and Indigenous people who shaped the American West, then this is the audiobook for you. Women didn’t have many options in the Wild West, but this gang of outsiders carves their own path, taking the law into their own hands and forming strong bonds along the way.

Read our review of the print edition of ‘Heresy.’

The new audiobook of Melissa Lenhardt’s groundbreaking 2018 novel will transport you to the Old West through stellar performances from a diverse cast.

Fiction

Fiction

Review

Review by bookpagedev

by Randall Curb

After an absence of 16 years, John Updike’s most farcical alter ago, Henry Bech, returns for a new series of stunts and adventures in this quasi-novel of the literary life. Introduced in 1970’s Bech: A Book and recaptured 12 years later in Bech Is Back, Henry Bech shares little with his creator except the writing life. He is Jewish, only briefly married, childless (until the end of the current book, when he’s past 70), unprolific, self-loathing, and mean-spirited. Through the trilogy, Bech’s misdemeanors keep piling up, and now in Bech at Bay we have the coup de theatre: he becomes a murderer.

Obviously, the Bech books are high satire, and this new one is particularly Waughian. Always on the defensive, Bech runs up against admirers he has no use for and detractors he’d like to annihilate either in print or in homicide. Bech at Bay packs more delicious caricatures than either of its predecessors. In the chapter Bech Presides, we’re taken into the inner sanctum of an honorary society called The Forty which is supposed to represent the zenith of American artistic achievement. What we find is a gaggle of bickering novelists, composers, painters, and historians who are so vain and myopic they’re unable to elect a single new member to their august company. The critic Isaiah Thornbush, Bech’s elusive nemesis, persuades his rival to take on the presidency of The Forty, only to try to dismantle the group later and leave Bech floundering. The literary backbiting is vintage, and there is the added titillation of guessing what real-life luminary might be the model for this bitching musician or that oversexed poetess.

Updike likes to take Bech out of New York, where he has lived all his life, and put him in an exotic or baffling environment. Here he visits Prague (the year is 1986) and spends some unwelcome time in Los Angeles, where he is sued for libel by a Hollywood agent whom he described in a magazine article as an arch-gouger. The trial that follows shows that Updike was a keen observer of the O. J. Simpson proceedings and its shenanigans. He even gives Bech an ardent crush on a pop singer clearly based on Linda Ronstadt.

Henry Bech’s charm has always been his anti-charm. He is as selfish, petty, and unscrupulous as the character George on Seinfeld. And in the chapter Bech Noir, Updike seems to have taken a Seinfeld plot device the death of George’s fiancee from licking a poisonously gummed envelope as the modus operandi for Bech rubbing out a reviewer who had attacked his novella Brother Pig 40 years earlier. Successfully undetected, Bech goes on to gaslight another critic, via subliminal computer messages, and send him plunging to suicidal death. What just desserts does Updike give Bech? The Nobel Prize for literature and a baby girl named Golda.

Bech at Bay is sometimes precious, as satire often is, and it may be Updike Lite, but it has infectious, malicious vivacity. And unlike Rabbit Angstrom, Henry Bech is yet to be killed off. Maybe in his next book he’ll run for Senate.

Randall Curb is a writer in Greensboro, Alabama.

After an absence of 16 years, John Updike's most farcical alter ago, Henry Bech, returns for a new series of stunts and adventures in this quasi-novel of the literary life. Introduced in 1970's Bech: A Book and recaptured 12 years later in Bech Is Back,…

Fiction, Thriller

Fiction Thriller

The Anomaly

Review by Arlene McKanic

by Arlene McKanic

Why are a bunch of airplane passengers being rousted by the FBI and the CIA? Their only commonality is that they were on an exceptionally turbulent flight from Paris to New York City. A few chapters into Hervé Le Tellier’s Prix Goncourt-winning novel, The Anomaly, we learn that it’s because their plane did not land where and when it should’ve and so triggered something called Protocol 42. Furthermore, it’s not the only plane of its kind, but the other plane landed in China and the Chinese government isn’t talking.

The passengers of Air France Flight 006 are the types of people you’d expect on a transcontinental flight—or maybe you wouldn’t. There’s the wife of an Afghanistan War veteran and her young children; a brilliant and ambitious lawyer who recently married the great love of her life; a translator who wrote a novel titled The Anomaly; a rapper who dreams of jamming with Elton John; and a man who leads a double life as a reliable father and hired assassin. And of course, there’s the pilot, who finds that the mess he’s in may, ironically, give him a second chance at life.

First published in France, The Anomaly is pleasingly Gallic, with chapters weaving together comedy, melancholy, tragedy and a strand of noir. Lovers and would-be lovers have their hearts broken. The stone-cold assassin seems right out of a Jean-Pierre Melville movie. Only the children on the plane seem to take things in stride, as children often do. A battalion of scientists, government agents, philosophers and clergy members struggle to figure out what happened, but there’s simply no good explanation.

No doubt you’ll find yourself wondering how you would react if you were a passenger on Flight 006. Would you find your situation intolerable? Would you try to live with this new reality to the best of your ability? It is to Le Tellier’s credit that these questions linger long after you turn the last page.

In Hervé Le Tellier’s Prix Goncourt-winning novel, the passengers of Air France Flight 006 must learn to live with a life-altering situation.

Fiction, Literary Fiction

Fiction Literary Fiction

Honor

Review by Alice Cary

by Alice Cary

At age 14, Smita Agarwal and her family were forced to leave Mumbai after a horrifying incident of religious persecution. They immigrated to Ohio, and now, 20 years later, Smita has grown up to become a world-traveling journalist who writes about gender issues. As Thrity Umrigar’s Honor opens, Smita is asked to cover an assignment in Mumbai—“the one place she had spent her entire adult life avoiding.” Readers will find themselves completely immersed in the sights, sounds and smells of India, a place that Smita acknowledges can be “cosmopolitan, sophisticated, but also resolutely out of step with the world.”

Similar to her central character, bestselling author Umrigar grew up in Bombay (now Mumbai) and immigrated to the United States at age 21. Ever since, she’s been writing “to make sense of the world and to make sense of my own, often contradictory emotions and feelings.” In this spirit, Honor is a multifaceted examination of Smita’s love-hate relationship with her native country, a place that fills her heart yet is besieged with assaults on women. As one character comments, “We Indians are in the Dark Ages when it comes to the treatment of women.”

That issue is thoroughly explored through the lens of Smita’s assignment: the case of Meena, a Hindu woman suing her brothers after they killed her Muslim husband and then burned and disfigured her. Smita travels to Meena’s remote village and befriends the impoverished woman and her toddler daughter. She interviews the brothers, the police and the village chief, who emboldened Meena’s brothers to commit their atrocities. While Meena and Smita live in completely different worlds, Smita increasingly realizes the parallels in their lives and in the ways they have been treated as Indian women.

Throughout the novel, Smita is escorted by a wealthy single man named Mohan, who adores his country and is eager to reintroduce its glories to his charge. She is resistant, however, and their constant tug-of-war about India’s pros and cons results in a well-rounded portrait of a complicated country.

Suspense deepens as Smita and Meena await the court verdict, and there’s a horrifying aftermath that seems largely avoidable. Not surprisingly, romance develops between Smita and Mohan, and the blend of passion alongside brutality sometimes makes for an uneasy mix. Nonetheless, readers are likely to remain engaged with the story and its well-drawn characters.

Whether she’s writing about the bright lights of Mumbai or the poverty of village life, Umrigar excels at creating engaging situations and scenes. Readers will appreciate this novel’s deep understanding of the many complexities of Indian society.

Thrity Umrigar’s novel offers a well-rounded portrait of India, a place that can be “cosmopolitan, sophisticated, but also resolutely out of step with the world.”

Fiction, Historical Fiction

Fiction Historical Fiction

Review

Review by bookpagedev

by Charles Flowers

It can be no accident that Andrew Miller’s beautifully dark novel Casanova in Love evokes both Marcello Mastroianni’s film performance as the famous roue and Joseph Losey’s somber movie of Don Giovanni, the opera about a fictional sex addict. Miller, a writer of haunting originality and diabolic humor, clearly draws upon such images, cultural memories, and the philosophical concerns of our own time to create a character who could exist only in the 18th century.

We first meet his Casanova near death, impoverished, in exile. Perhaps an unknown woman has come to visit as he starts to burn old love letters; perhaps she is only a fantasy in a shabby room. Either way, she is pretext for him to recall his most frustrating attempt at gallantry, a failed seduction that makes the world-famous lover the laughingstock of London society.

This is no insignificant dishonor, at least in the brooding, watery world so memorably and appropriately created for Casanova in Love. Middle-aged, wracked by near-fatal treatment for a sexually-transmitted disease, insufficient in English, and barred from his beloved Venice for various crimes and heresies, Miller’s Casanova arrives in London in a disguise that no one falls for. Automatically, he begins again the familiar games of seduction and gambling. He has enough ill-gotten money for good food, fine wine, and powerful friends. Born poor but skilled at living by his wits, Casanova has cheated as many people out of their money as he has brought to bed, whether woman or boy. An illegitimate daughter, a sensible manservant, and an Italian acquaintance leaven the licentiousness, for they bring out his compassion. But when he begins to tire of sensuality and wonder about the meaning of it all, he falls into a fever of desire for a beautiful young woman, Marie Charpillon, who is his equal at games of deception and acts of unfelt passion. She is, in fact, the only woman who will ever outwit the monstrous faker, and Miller has a wonderful time, as will readers, with her teasing and playacting, her schemes and pinpricks of revenge for her gender. Hollywood actresses must be plotting to cop this role. The Charpillon, as she is called, is irresistibly maddening.

Foggy chill London, crowded and dangerous in a hundred ways, is also a major character in Casanova in Love, as is the 18th century itself. Ingeniously, Miller animates our half-remembered drawings of the period and brings to ground our romantic fantasies from film. We get filth and wit, whores and art. Only in one particular does Miller falter. He probably should not have designed Samuel Johnson as a fairly major character. The great man’s work rests too augustly atop the dialogue here.

Eventually suicidal over his humiliation by Marie, Casanova is brought back to life in a grandly orchestrated climax involving the Great Flood of 1764. The Charpillon is forgotten, the restored city reanimates the myriad stories of humanity, and Casanova goes on to new adventures. By conjuring a credible historical novel from the mysteries of yearning, Miller affirms one of his major themes: the beauty and evanescence of art as both reflection and creating principle of life. Charles Flowers is the author of A Science Odyssey (William Morrow).

It can be no accident that Andrew Miller's beautifully dark novel Casanova in Love evokes both Marcello Mastroianni's film performance as the famous roue and Joseph Losey's somber movie of Don Giovanni, the opera about a fictional sex addict. Miller, a writer of haunting originality…

Fiction

Fiction

Review

Review by bookpagedev

by Mark Luce

Michael Knight opens his first novel, The Divining Rod, with a murder. It only takes two pages to discover the showdown on the front lawn of Sam Holladay, which kills Simon Bell, is actually the conclusion of the novel. Before you get angry with the reviewer for giving away the ending, remember it is Knight that does it. Normally such a narrative move would absolutely sink a novel, appearing as a cheap gimmick. However, Knight’s risk pays solid dividends. Even though the reader is constantly aware of whatis going to happen, Knight’s slow unraveling and deliberate description make engaging reading. Simon Bell, a lonely lawyer of 28, moves into his late mother’s suburban spread. Complete with a pool and a view of the golf course, the house seems to haunt Simon, who wallows in a funk that belies his surroundings. He wonders about his mother’s years-ago affair and befriends Betty Fowler, a widow who wants to learn to cuss (Simon obliges). Betty, the substitute for Simon’s dead mother, walks the golf course with a divining rod, searching futilely for the gold coins her dead husband says he buried in a fairway. Simon also begins an affair with Delia Holladay, the wife of his neighbor Sam, an older history professor. Most of the novel traces their stolen moments, hidden evening and blooming love. Together they search for clues to Simon’s mother’s affair, swim in the pool and endlessly try to justify what they are doing. Obviously, it ends very badly. Knight’s understated prose gives the book its power, moving slowly, but fully, though the gamut of his character’s emotions Sam’s concern that his wife is too young; Simon’s overwhelming sadness; Delia’s rationalizations and bald-faced lies; Betty’s Sisyphus-like dedication to finding the hidden treasure. The mysticism motif of Betty’s quest with the divining rod seems slightly forced, a symbol of blind faith juxtaposed with the transgression of Simon and Delia’s affair. Despite this glitch, Knight’s debut is still impressive. He crafts excellent supporting characters and captures the jejune existence of suburban life its emotional facades, material trappings, and undercurrent of blase resignation. Knight, who concurrently has published a well-received collection of short stories, Dogfight, proves himself a fresh, formidable talent in The Divining Rod, and he has breathed new life into the world’s oldest story. Mark Luce is a writer in Lawrence, Kansas.

Fiction

Fiction

Review

Review by bookpagedev

by Karen Ann Cullotta

For the self-absorbed, albeit, likable heroine of Catherine Schine’s new novel, The Evolution of Jane, the rites of friendship can be summed up as survival of the fittest. Indeed, Darwin’s theory of evolution provides not only a philosophical context but a geographical backdrop as well.

Fresh from a rather boring divorce, Jane is sent to the Galapagos Islands by her mother, who recalls her daughter’s fascination with science. Of course, like many well-intentioned parents, Jane’s mother is harboring fond memories of her daughter as a nature-loving child. Nonetheless, Jane doesn’t have the heart to shun her mother’s offer of a free vacation. Jane arrives in the Galapagos with optimistic visions of finding her true self, only to discover her nemesis waiting at the airport. No, Jane’s ex-husband is not amid the island’s tortoises and parched soil. Instead, Jane encounters her long-lost childhood friend, Martha Barlow, a tour guide for the eclectic group of travelers.

Martha is perky, poised, and pleasantly pedantic, the polar opposite of her morose and somewhat mean-spirited former buddy Jane, who also happens to be a distant cousin. And therein lies the most enjoyable and interesting sub-plot of Schine’s novel the legendary Barlow family feud.

Schine is adept at creating seamless transitions from the present the Galapagos excursion to the past, when Jane and Martha were best friends. When the novel reaches back to the past, depicting a pair of dysfunctional childhoods, Schine is at her best. Despite Jane’s tendency to whine, it is hard not to sympathize with her plight. For Jane is crushed by the weight of her insecurity and paranoia, especially in regards to Martha, who unceremoniously dumped her best friend after high school.

As Jane struggles to understand Martha’s abrupt departure from her personal universe, the tenuous bonds of friendship are held hostage by the sinuous strands of DNA. Thus, the hardiest species and friendships survive and flourish, as the weak flounder and fail.

Still, the denoument of the novel is pure Jane, at her worst and best on every level. When the sea-sick heroine finds redemption, it is not without a price. Nothing is black and white in Schine’s novel, and the true nature of the characters is a subtle shade of Galapagos gray. While the resolution leaves the reader clinging to at least a few unanswered questions, Schine has delivered a surprise ending that makes this literary trip to the Galapagos a journey worth taking.

Karen Ann Cullotta is a writer in Chicago.

For the self-absorbed, albeit, likable heroine of Catherine Schine's new novel, The Evolution of Jane, the rites of friendship can be summed up as survival of the fittest. Indeed, Darwin's theory of evolution provides not only a philosophical context but a geographical backdrop as well.

Fiction

Fiction

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Welcome to Elmwood Springs, Missouri the fictional setting of Fannie Flagg’s long-awaited novel, Welcome to the World, Baby Girl. As near perfect as you can get without having to get downright sentimental about it or making up a bunch of lies, this neighborly town is filled with charming, quirky characters and has a strong, endearing sense of community.

Dena Nordstrom otherwise known lovingly as Baby Girl is the surprisingly well-adjusted daughter of Norma and Macky Nordstrom. And though Dena has left Elmwood Springs to become a TV anchorwoman and the pride and joy of her network, her hometown is still an intrinsic part of her, and she of it. With a future full of promise, Dena survives her complicated present and her mysterious past, all of which are tied to Elmwood Springs.

Flagg, an Alabama native, has, time and again, proven her mastery of storytelling, her ability to make each character vivid and real. Welcome to the World is no different. With an expert ear for language, Flagg, through her narrator, lovingly invites us to be a part of this community that is Elmwood Springs, this community with bounds far more reaching than any map could measure.

Much of this novel is vintage Flagg. For instance, Aunt Elner blesses Dena’s heart from afar over the fact that she eats in restaurants day and night up in New York City. Mourning the lack of anything homemade in Dena’s diet, Aunt Elner decides to make use of her stockpile of hickory nuts and send her my hickory nut cake with the caramel icing. There are no hidden symbols in this cake, no hidden answer to a mystery. This and other examples have little or no bearing on the plot at all. These entertaining asides, however, are ultimately the essence of Flagg’s novel.

Through unmistakable voices and rich ties to home, Welcome to the World illustrates how much a part of a person place can be. You can take the baby girl out of Elmwood Springs, but you can’t take Elmwood Springs out of the baby girl.

Pat Patrick is a reviewer in Nashville.

Welcome to Elmwood Springs, Missouri the fictional setting of Fannie Flagg's long-awaited novel, Welcome to the World, Baby Girl. As near perfect as you can get without having to get downright sentimental about it or making up a bunch of lies, this neighborly town is…

Fiction, Short Stories

Fiction Short Stories

Fiona and Jane

Review by Freya Sachs

by Freya Sachs

Spanning the globe from a night market in Taiwan to New York City, Los Angeles and many places in between, Jean Chen Ho’s novel-in-stories weaves together the experiences of two young women, Fiona and Jane. We see their lives unfold together and apart, amid challenges with their parents, flirtations, relationships and financial concerns. Through it all, Fiona and Jane navigate the complexities of their friendship, allowing it to grow, change and reemerge with time.

Fiona and Jane is comprised of chapters that alternate between Jane’s first-person narration and Fiona’s third person. Jane describes growing up and navigating her sense of self, and she ruminates on the ways that her friendship with Fiona grounds and challenges her. Meanwhile, Fiona’s chapters feel more distant for their external narration. The decision to differentiate the two Taiwanese American women’s sections in this way becomes increasingly interesting and important as the story progresses. In fact, it becomes evident that this structure is essential to how the story must be told.

Time is a fascinating factor in the novel as well. The narrative unfurls in the present while moving the reader into snippets of backstory, filling in gaps at just the right moments. Ho also moves us through and across physical and cultural landscapes, revealing how a person can feel both resonance with and distance from one’s community and self.

Ultimately, though, Ho’s characters do the most compelling work. Fiona and Jane—both earnest, curious and heart-full—epitomize the realities of growing up in America as young women, as immigrants, as Asian Americans. Their arcs show how families complicate one’s life while also enriching it, how friends can become a found family, and how each choice can echo in and reflect a person’s whole life.

By the book’s end, readers will feel as though they carry some part of these women with them, as if Fiona and Jane are our friends, as if their stories might yet overlap with our own.

After reading Jean Chen Ho’s novel-in-stories, readers will feel as though they carry some part of Fiona and Jane with them.