A Word About Awards

RADIANT FUGITIVES by Nawaaz Ahmed   Nominations: Aspen Words Longlist 2022, Center For Fiction Longlist 2021, PEN/Faulkner Finalist 2022   Date Read: June 6, 2024   From Kirkus Reviews: “ Muslim Indian family, splintered by forces from within and without, attempts to reconnect over one fateful week in San Francisco. "Oh, Grandmother, you’re not asleep yet. The voices from the kitchen are no lullaby. Your daughters are fighting, and you blame yourself. There must have been something you could have done, before the rifts widened to such chasms." Ahmed's complex, ambitious debut is narrated by a fetus who—like his literary cousin in Ian McEwan's  Nutshell —has narrative art to spare. Having just emerged from his mother's lifeless body in the delivery room, he unfolds a tragedy of classic proportions, fluently incorporating the poetry of Wordsworth, Keats, and the Quran and including masterful descriptions of the skies of San Francisco, of Muslim ritual, of LGBTQ+ pro...

LET US DESCEND by Jesmyn Ward   Nominations: Aspen Words Longlist 2024, Carnegie Finalist 2024, Kirkus Finalist 2023, Oprah Book Club 2023   Date Read: December 1, 2023   Annis is living the nightmare of slavery – where humans are not treated as human and are faced with impossible choices. Her reprieve is her mother until her mother is marched off one day by the Georgia Man. Alone and terrified, Annis is comforted by a fellow slave named Safi and that comfort turns to love.   In the midst of their chores, Annis and Safi are discovered and they too are marched off by the Georgia Man, although marched is too kind a word. Taken on foot through a torturous path from North Carolina to New Orleans, the journey is unimaginable in its brutality. Then again, Annis’ entire reality is unimaginable brutality, although Ward is incredibly gifted at giving voice to the unimaginable.   On this journey, Annis discovers Mama Aza who embodies her long-lost grandmother who was a wa...

THE BLACK MOSES by Alain Mabanckou   Nominations: Aspen Words Longlist 2018, Booker Longlist 2017, PEN/Translation Finalist 2018   Date Read: November 28, 2023   Bearing the unwieldy name of Tokumisa Nzambe po Mose yamoyindo abotami namboka ya Bakoko, whose rough translation is: “Thanks be to God, the black Moses is born on the earth of our ancestors,” the hero of this story is trying to build a life in an evolving Congo. As an orphan who has never met his parents, Moses doesn’t have the best beginnings.   Moses has survived the brutality of an orphanage which is used as a hot-spot for revolutionizing all the orphan’s thinking. He has endured fights among the kids, the director’s corrupt rule and illnesses until he is able to escape at the age of 13. He agonizingly leaves behind his dear friend Bonaventure who he cannot convince to go with him. Not having known any other life than the one at the orphanage, his newfound freedom comes as a surprise.   Moses immedi...

SEVERANCE by Ling Ma   Award: Kirkus Winner 2018   Nominations: Aspen Words Longlist 2019, Dublin Longlist 2020, PEN/Hemingway Finalist 2019   Date Read: November 8, 2023   In this apocalyptic debut, Ma explores the impact of a spore pandemic on cities, work life and survival culture. This is a stunning novel, with the feeling of a frog being boiled and not realizing it’s screwed until it’s too late.   Candace is living the dream, in a sense. She has a decent job with upward potential, living in New York and has a boyfriend she loves. Jonathan, the boyfriend, has decided he wants to drop out and not live in the capitalist rat-race and is moving to Washington. Candace isn’t willing to let her life go to follow him, even though she loves him.   She has put in for a promotion that she’s likely to get, and has one other massive complication. She’s pregnant with Jonathan’s baby. Wrestling with whether to tell him or not, she decides not to tell. And then he’s go...

THE INCENDIARIES by R.O. Kwon   Nominations: Aspen Words Longlist 2019, Carnegie Longlist 2019, LA Times Finalist 2018   Date Read: September 13, 2023   Students at a fictional college are recruited by a cult. While Phoebe Lin takes the bait, Will Kendall rejects it and in the process, loses Phoebe, the love of his life. Will has been down that road before, practicing devout Christianity and ultimately realizing that God was just a fiction, an idea created for comfort. Although he goes through the motions of joining Jejah, his main purpose is to try to get Phoebe out.   Will has nothing. He comes from a mentally ill mother without a cent to her name. Will does his best to offer her supplemental income as he can, but he’s also paying his way through college. He meets Phoebe at a party and they instantly feel a connection. As their connection grows, they move in together and their lives seem happy.   When Will goes to Beijing for an internship, however, he realize...

AMERICA IS NOT THE HEART by Elaine Castillo   Nominations: Aspen Words Longlist 2019, Center For Fiction Longlist 2018   Date Read: July 15, 2023   Hero, an unlikely name for a woman broken by her past, finds herself in Milpitas starting life over as an undocumented immigrant from the Philippines. She spent 10 years in the Philippines as a doctor to insurgents fighting for freedom from their oppressive government. Now in Milpitas, living with her aunt and uncle, Hero works in a restaurant.   The beauty of America Is Not The Heart is the cultural references and rituals that are unfamiliar to those not of Filipino ancestry. The customs, language, food and connection are texturally rich and filling. How extended family is considered family is heart-warming and makes me jealous that I don’t have those same kind of extended connections. I’m also jealous that we don’t have the same kind of rituals to pass the many holidays and celebrations of life.   I also appreciate...

THE VANISHING HALF by Brit Bennett   Award: Goodreads Winner 2020   Nominations: Aspen Words Longlist 2021, BookTube Finalist 2021, Carnegie Longlist 2021, Dublin Longlist 2021, National Book Longlist 2020, NY Times Finalist 2020, Women’s Prize Finalist 2021   Date Read: February 3, 2023   Two Black twins with aspirations for a bigger life decide to leave the small town of Mallard for the big city of New Orleans. Although this had been Desiree’s dream forever, once they had actually left home, Stella was the one who was determined to make it. The harsh realities of city life began to wear down Desiree’s dream, but Stella adopted her sisters’ dream and ran with it.   Keeping in mind this story began in the 1950s, the difference between black and white lives were still profoundly different. Not much has changed now except Americans love to say racism is dead while it still happens all around us. I would think it was almost easier back then because you knew what it...

THE AFFAIRS OF THE FALCONS by Melissa Rivero   Nominations: Aspen Words Longlist 2020, Center For Fiction Longlist 277, PEN/Hemingway Longlist 2020   Date Read: January 12, 2023   The Affairs Of The Falcons is such an intense and exhausting book that I’m almost glad it’s over. Almost. Rivero so masterfully conveys the desperation, impossible choices and hopefulness of those living in the U.S. as illegal immigrants and how that status causes life to be so uncertain and unfair. When the worst of the “illegal” blaming goes on in politics, I cannot help but think how much bravery it must take to leave the comfort of the known to uprooting yourself and your family to face an uncertain future and to live like a fugitive in a country that doesn’t want you. I get so disgusted at the lack of compassion and the lack of understanding that “… there by the grace of God go I.”   Ana has been reviled from her very first encounter with the Falcons. Her skin is too dark, her roots to...

ABUNDANCE by Jakob Guanzon   Nominations: Aspen Words Longlist 2022, National Book Longlist 2021   Date Read: January 6, 2023   Abundance is ultimately a commentary on poverty and the justice system, particularly what happens to felons after they serve their time. Guanzon paints an indelible picture of the odds parolees face when the deck is stacked against them from the moment they step foot outside their cell.   Henry Sr. is an immigrant from the Philippines with lofty aspirations for a PhD. He never quite gets there and is forced to relinquish his dream in order to survive. Henry Jr.’s parents are both well-educated and they hold out hope that he will be able to rise above his parent’s status. When Henry Jr.s mom dies, however, all hope is lost in the struggle for mere survival.    In his way, Henry Sr. sets Junior for success by teaching him a trade and encouraging him in his studies. As all rebellious teens do, though, Junior has his own ideas. He spen...

CHEMISTRY by Weike Wang   Award: PEN/Hemingway Winner 2018 Nomination: Aspen Words Longlist 2018   Date Read: August 12, 2022   Whereas the last novel I read seemed overly verbose (The Mercy Seat), Chemistry is sparse, witty and dry. Wang has a talent for looking at life from a completely different perspective and translating those perceptions into prose. I adored this novel.   Facing an uncertain future, our unnamed narrator is going through an ambivalence crisis. Her chosen career, chemistry, is not progressing as it should and her PhD advisor is threatening to fire her. Her live-in boyfriend, Eric, wants their relationship to move forward and proposes but she’s not sure that’s what she wants either. Under the pressure of being mentally stuck, she breaks down one day, cuts of her hair and goes to her lab and breaks all her beakers.   Part chemistry facts, part analysis of what a Chinese daughter of immigrants owes her hard-working parents, part insight to Amer...

REAL LIFE by Brandon Taylor   Nominations: Aspen Words Longlist 2021, Booker Finalist 2020, Center For Fiction Longlist 2020, National Book Critics Circle Finalist 2020   Date Read: January 8, 2022   Real Life gripped me from the first page to the last. It’s been a while since I felt so deeply for a character as I did for Wallace. He is so wounded but trying. Rising above, while still sinking under. Wanting love but holding back. I resonate with all of this so much, even if I am a straight, white girl and Wallace is a gay, black boy.    Wallace has risen above his inauspicious beginnings in Alabama poverty and landed in graduate school studying biology in a large, midwestern city. He is the only black person in his graduate program and he feels this fact starkly in how he is treated and side-eye looks from just about everyone. Still, Wallace is grinding, head down, catching up on the knowledge he is supposed to know but is behind on.   With such a small cot...

BLACK SUNDAY by Tola Rotimi Abraham   Nomination: Aspen Words Longlist 2021, Kirkus Finalist 2020   Date Read: December 14, 2021   When a family falls apart due to fraud, the four siblings left behind rely on each other and their creativity to survive. The family is well-off, particularly by Nigerian standards, however, the father is swindled out of their entire wealth by a scam perpetrated by a pastor.   After this devastating change in their circumstances, the mother simply vanishes, leaving her four children behind. Not long after, the father also leaves, causing all 4 children to fend for themselves. They are somewhat fortunate that their grandmother takes them in but she is elderly and distrustful of their youth. She shamelessly parades the kids before the local merchants, telling them to never sell anything to these kids because if they had any money it was stolen from her.   These industrious children – twin girls Ariyike and Bibike and their younger brot...

ON EARTH WE’RE BRIEFLY GORGEOUS by Ocean Vuong   Nominations: Aspen Words Longlist 2020, BookTube Longlist 2020, Carnegie Longlist 2020, Center For Fiction Finalist 2019, Dublin Finalist 2021, PEN/Faulkner Finalist 2020, PEN/Hemingway Longlist 2020, Kirkus Finalist 2019, National Book Longlist 2019   Date Read: October 18, 2021   I cannot remember the last time I read a novel that was so beautiful, so too-the bone honest and real. In a letter to his mother that is never meant to be sent, Vuong brings out the beauty and the complexity of a mother and son relationship made even more complex by the son often assuming the role of parent, helping his mother navigate a world in which she doesn’t speak the language. A lover of all things beautiful, often violent, traumatized by a war she endured as a child, brings home the fact that none of us is perfect and we are all reacting to a past that no longer exists.   “I want to insist that our being alive is beautiful enough to ...

BEWILDERMENT by Richard Powers   Nominations: Aspen Words Longlist 2022, Booker Finalist 2021, Carnegie Longlist 2022, National Book Longlist 2021, Oprah Book Club 2021   Date Read: October 11, 2021   It has been a long time since a book made me cry and here I am sobbing with the beauty and devastation of this piece of art. I think I feel especially connected to these characters as my son struggles through his complicated and bewildering life. I am doing everything in my power to help him but I am terrified it’s not enough. The only thing that could really make a difference is if I had given him a better world. And that’s just not within my power.   Robbie, Robin, is different. His teachers and other adults in his life really want to slap a label on this wondrous soul and shovel some medication down his throat. Theo, his father, instinctively and understandably resists. “My boy was a pocket universe I could never hope to fathom. Every one of us is an experiment, and ...

A CHILDREN’S BIBLE by Lydia Millet   Nominations: Aspen Words Longlist 2021, James Tait Black Finalist 2020, National Book Finalist 2020, NY Times Finalist 2020   Date Read: March 22, 2021   The premise of this unique take on the Bible tells of a not-so-distant future where environmental collapse is closer than we think. Twelve children are taken to a large lakeside mansion by their families, which appears as more of a hostage situation than a vacation. The parents are so distracted and aloof that the kids play a game of hiding which kids belong to which parents.   Part Lord Of The Flies, part The Road, the children ultimately end up the mature ones as they ride out a storm, deal with a hostile occupation and prepare for the collapse of civilization.    In a bizarre and clever twist on the Bible, these organized and precocious kids survive a flood, survive in an “ark” of treehouses, a birth in a barn complete with donkeys, the arrival of three magi and assi...

THE NICKEL BOYS by Colson Whitehead   Awards: Kirkus Winner 2019, Pulitzer Winner 2020   Nominations: Aspen Words Longlist 2020, Carnegie Longlist 2020, Dayton Literary Peace Finalist 2020, Dublin Finalist 2021, Goodreads Finalist 2019, LA Times Finalist 2019, National Book Longlist 2019, National Book Critics Circle Finalist 2019, Rathbones Folio Longlist 2020   Date Read: November 14, 2020   I would love to say that Nickel Boys is heartbreaking, which it indeed is, but brutal seems a more appropriate word. This latest from Whitehead follows the boys of a reform school in Florida and the ways in which they coped with and survived the violent, sadistic and impossible environment they were thrust into.   Elwood is a smart kid with a bright future. In his 15 brief years he proves himself to be trustworthy, intellectually curious and ambitious. His one fatal flaw, however, is that his skin has more melanin. In other words, Elwood is black. I still cannot understand...