book review: The Devil and the Dark Water by Stuart Turton | BookBrowse

THE DEVIL AND THE DARK WATER by Stuart Turton
★★★★☆
Bloomsbury, 2020

In 1634 on the day that world famous detective Samuel Pipps is set to board the Sardaam from Batavia to Amsterdam in handcuffs, the ship is approached by a leper who climbs atop a crate to declare a frightening prophecy: “The Sardaam‘s cargo is sin, and all who board her will be brought to merciless ruin. She will not reach Amsterdam.” The man then bursts into flames and dies moments later, at which time it’s discovered that, despite the prophecy he just announced, he has no tongue.

While the opening of this standalone mystery is explosive, The Devil and the Dark Water is a slow burner. It mostly follows Arent, Samuel Pipps’ bodyguard, a gruff yet honorable man intent on proving the innocence of his accused employer. It also follows Sara Wessel, a noblewoman trapped in an abusive marriage hoping to make a new life for herself in Amsterdam. The two form an unlikely friendship as the ship comes under siege by dark forces in the form of a demon called Old Tom that has a terrifying link to Arent’s past.

You can read my full review HERE on BookBrowse, and you can read a piece I wrote about the Dutch East India Trading Company HERE.

book review: Out by Natsuo Kirino

OUT by Natsuo Kirino
translated by Stephen Snyder
★★★☆☆
Vintage, 2005

What Out does successfully is depict the utter exhaustion and desperation of the working class (focusing on a group of women working in a boxed-lunch factory in the outskirts of Tokyo).  This book is as bleak and gritty as it gets, but I liked that; I liked that Natsuo Kirino had no interest in shying away from the horrific realities that drove these characters to make the decisions that they did.  It’s also hard to come away from this book without admiring Masako Katori, its central character; she’s a brilliant creation and a fantastic focal point.

The entire time I was reading I was planning on giving this 4 stars – 1 star deducted for Snyder’s egregiously clunky translation.  Just one example among many passages that caused me to roll my eyes into the back of my head:

“Why?”
“Because you’re a smart-ass.  I’m going to teach you about the big, bad world.”
“Thanks, but no thanks,” she said.
[…]
‘Because you’re a smart-ass,’ he’d said.  She couldn’t let him get away with that.

So reading this was not entirely smooth sailing, but for the most part I found it admirable and compelling enough to compensate for the fact that it is not ostensibly a page-turner.

But then we got to the end, which… oh boy.  It’s hard to talk about without spoiling, but, in essence – this book starts to lead toward an inexorable conclusion, and it does arrive there, so that isn’t the issue.  The issue is how it unfolds, which… I personally found more offensive than I can even adequately describe, lol.  Ok, fine, spoiler: it involves a rape fetish that we got to experience through two (2) different perspectives in excruciating detail.  To say this served no purpose, was tonally incongruous, and bastardized Masako’s character – would all be an understatement. 

I’m glad I finally read this as it’s been sitting on my shelf for years, but it also felt like a shame that I decided to pick it up for Women in Translation Month (I’m reviewing it rather belatedly) when it ended on a note that I found to be so fundamentally antifeminist it kind of cancelled out the brilliant character work that had come before.

book review: Luster by Raven Leilani

LUSTER by Raven Leilani
★★★☆☆
FSG, 2020

I guess it’s natural to be slightly underwhelmed by a book that’s gotten as much hype as Luster has.  And it absolutely does deserve the hype, in a lot of ways.  Raven Leilani’s voice and writing style are spectacular, and so is her characterization of protagonist Edie.  This is very much a “disaster women” book (i.e., a subgenre of literary fiction about 20-something year-old women having a lot of casual sex and making terrible life decisions) but it’s also its own thing, refreshing both in voice and structure. 

My main issue with this book isn’t even something it did wrong, per se – but about 40% through the book it took a turn that I didn’t want it to take, and we ended up spending the rest of the book in a situation that I found much less interesting than the one that had been presented to us at the beginning.  I didn’t find Rebecca to be a particularly convincing figure and her dynamic with Edie really failed to engage or move me.  Even less interesting to me was Eric, Edie’s love interest, an older, married, white man (Edie is a Black woman, and much younger than Eric – it’s a dynamic that facilitates moments of sharp insight on Leilani’s part but Eric himself is something of a wet blanket).  It’s Edie herself that holds this novel together (she’s a realistic, sympathetic, compelling figure); it’s the circumstances she finds herself in that I felt didn’t ultimately live up to their narrative potential.

I initially gave this 4 stars but I waited a few weeks to write this review and in that time this book has sort of faded in my estimation and I haven’t really thought about it since putting it down, so that’s never an amazing sign.  I think this is a promising debut in a lot of ways and Raven Leilani is absolutely an author I’ll be keeping an eye on, but this didn’t quite do what I wanted it to do for me.

Thank you to Netgalley and FSG for the advanced copy provided in exchange for an honest review.

wrap up: September 2020

1. Coriolanus by William Shakespeare ★★★★☆
2. Slave Play by Jeremy O. Harris ★★★★★
3. They Never Learn by Layne Fargo ★★★★★ | review
4. The Merry Wives of Windsor by William Shakespeare ★★★★☆
5. Antony & Cleopatra by William Shakespeare ★★★★★
6. The Year of Lear by James Shapiro ★★★★☆
7. Henry VI Part 1 by William Shakespeare ★★★★☆
8. Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas ★★★☆☆ | review
9. The Lost Village by Camilla Sten ★★★☆☆ | review
10. The Two Noble Kinsmen by William Shakespeare and John Fletcher ★★★★☆
11. The Two Gentlemen of Verona by William Shakespeare ★★★☆☆
12. Tokyo Ueno Station by Miri Yu ★★★☆☆ | review
13. Luster by Raven Leilani ★★★★☆ | review
14. So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo ★★★☆☆

SEPTEMBER TOTAL: 14
YEARLY TOTAL: 86

Favorite: Antony & Cleopatra
Least favorite: Catherine House

Other posts from September:

• Project Shakespeare: month #6 wrap up
• ARCS of Shame Readathon
• Women in Translation Recommendations

I managed to read 4 books for my and Hannah’s readathon: Catherine House, Tokyo Ueno Station, Luster, and The Lost Village. Of course, since then I’ve also acquired (checks notes) 5 more ARCs from Netgalley, so it does feel a bit like I’m running on a hamster wheel here.

Life updates:

Pass.

Currently reading:

I am so sick of myself. If I don’t finish Death in Her Hands and Brideshead Revisited in October I am throwing them into the ocean.

P.S. Follow me!  @ Twitter | Goodreads | Instagram | Letterboxd | Ko-fi

book review: Tokyo Ueno Station by Miri Yū

TOKYO UENO STATION by Miri Yū
★★★☆☆
Riverhead, 2020

Tokyo Ueno Station is a short, sparse book which follows the life of Kazu, born in 1933, the same year as the Emperor.  Kazu’s life (mostly characterized by tragedy and poverty) is thematically entwined with the Emperor’s through a series of coincidences that tie their families together – and it’s also closely connected to Ueno Park, a historically significant site in Tokyo that Kazu’s spirit now haunts after his death.

This is a mournful, elegant book that ultimately didn’t leave much of an impression on me.  In fact, I’m struggling to write this review because I finished this a few days ago and it’s already slipped from my mind almost entirely.  I don’t know what it was, because I didn’t find a single thing about this book to be overtly objectionable; it just didn’t fully come together for me.  I think the fragmented, vignette-style structure paired with its incredibly short length left me wanting more.

Also – in some ways this comparison seems absurd but I also can’t get it out of my head – this reminded me so much of When All Is Said by Anne Griffin (a book I really didn’t care for), which follows an elderly Irish man looking back on his life and the people who shaped him the most.  In both cases I felt like I was being spoon-fed these tragic stories on a very surface level without organically feeling any of it.  I do think Tokyo Ueno Station is the more accomplished book, but I guess ‘old men mournfully looking back on their sad lives-lit’ is not for me?

Thank you to Netgalley and Riverhead for the advanced copy provided in exchange for an honest review.

Project Shakespeare: month #7 wrap up

Mamma mia here we go again…

Henry IV Part 2
★★☆☆☆
my roles: Lady Percy, Francis, Bardolph, Prince John, Servant, Harcourt, Porter, Simon Shadow, Second Groom

I have made no secret of the fact that I kind of hate the Henriad – sorry @ all of Shakespeare scholarship but Henry IV Part 2 is hands down my least favorite play of the 31 that I’ve read so far. The thing about this play is that I just don’t care – I know that’s on me and that it’s not an objective criticism in any way, but it is what it is. I think Hal is a tremendously well-written character whose arc is decently compelling (and those scenes with Henry IV at the end of this play are god-tier as far as emotional devastation goes, which isn’t even to mention Henry IV’s final lines – sob), but that just isn’t enough to really earn my investment in this nearly 3-hour long affair. And as I mentioned in my review of Henry IV Part 1, I find Falstaff insufferable and the comedic subplots in these two plays are frankly painful to slog through.

ALL THAT SAID I haven’t even mentioned the LIGHT OF MY LIFE, Kate Percy. She only appears in one scene in this play and still she delivers what has to be in my top 10 Shakespeare monologues, roasting Northumberland for letting his son Hotspur die in battle 1H4 at the hands of Hal (Monmouth) without sending backup:

MIC DROP. I ADORE HER.

Anyway, this wasn’t my favorite Project Shakespeare simply because it’s so Falstaff-heavy (though our Falstaff was brilliant so plenty of credit where it’s due to her) and because I was really failing to follow along with the story even though I’d already read it (I don’t think ANYONE was following along with the story that night, idek), but the individual performances were really shining! Oh and I had something like 16 costume changes and my bangs were a complete mess by the end of the night from swapping John’s crown with Bardolph’s baseball cap.

The Merry Wives of Windsor
★★★★☆
my roles: Caius, Pistol, Anne Page, Servant, First Servant, Second Servant

Yes, I know, I just said that I can’t stand Falstaff – no one is more surprised than I am that I didn’t hate Merry Wives. And actually, far from it – it’s probably one of my favorite comedies. It helps that even though Falstaff is the protagonist he is very much the butt of the joke, and it’s lively and refreshing and downright charming to watch all these clever women playing tricks on him. This one was very, very fun to perform.

Coriolanus
★★★★☆
my roles: Menenius, First Roman, Citizen, Seventh Citizen, Third Lord

I might change my rating of this one to 3 stars… I don’t know. I firmly believe that Coriolanus is the single most frustrating Shakespeare play. This play has greatness within its grasp and it is so close to achieving it but it just misses the target. The conflict it sets up is brilliant but it takes an agonizingly long time to get there (I have yet to find a single compelling reason why acts 1-3 can’t be condensed), the play never justifies its length, and the titular character’s lack of interiority can make the reader/viewer feel as though they’re running up against a brick wall. What I do adore about this play though is the dynamic between Coriolanus and Aufidius which I think is one of the most fascinating things Shakespeare ever wrote (I mean… this monologue…..!!) I don’t know – on the one hand this play just has this je ne sais quoi that hooks me and on the other I find it dull and tedious.

Anyway, when I read this play and subsequently watched two different productions Menenius didn’t make much of an impression on me despite his 500+ lines, but I unexpectedly loved playing him, so this was a lot of fun.

Henry VI Part 1
★★★★☆
my roles: Suffolk, Vernon, Bastard of Orleans, Third Servingman, First Warder, Porter, Scout

As my unconventional taste in the histories continues to thrive, I loved the first installment of the Henry VI saga. This play arguably suffers from a lack of a central, cogent narrative conflict (while England v. France is obviously that conflict in a broader sense, it’s rather sweeping in scope), but for whatever reason I find all the mini-conflicts to be equally fascinating, and I thought this play was incredibly entertaining from start to finish. Also, the two back to back scenes where Talbot urges his son to flee when he knows he’s at the brink of death but his son refuses to leave his side are legitimately DEVASTATING. I mean:

It’s just one small moment in the play but I also think it effectively captures the tragedy of war better than anything.

I also loved playing Suffolk and I think his scene with Margaret is just delightful and utterly absurd and I cannot wait to see her character development over the next two (well, three) plays.

Next up – Two Noble Kinsmen which will surely be a delight. Stay tuned to hear about that in four more weeks.