I don’t usually read non-fiction: I prefer characters, plots, and being drawn into another universe. But glowing reviews and the fact that a literary figure, Alice James, was involved: I decided to make an exception.
In short, dear reader, I was blown away. Lunden is not only a fine writer, she has a gripping story to tell, not only of her own struggles with a profit-driven medical system, but also how being a woman makes everything even harder.
Lunden puts the “breakdown” of a caring profession (like medicine) into sharp focus. But thankfully (since I really prefer happy endings), she also suggests ways out of our collective collapse. Read this and try to forgive your doctors, who like you, are just struggling to be human in a runaway capitalist culture.
A Silent Spring for the human body, this wide-ranging, genre-crossing literary mystery interweaves the author’s quest to understand the source of her own condition with her telling of the story of the chronically ill 19th-century diarist Alice James—ultimately uncovering the many hidden health hazards of life in America.
When Jennifer Lunden became chronically ill after moving from Canada to Maine, her case was a medical mystery. Just 21, unable to hold a book or stand for a shower, she lost her job and consigned herself to her bed. The doctor she went to for help told her she was “just…
Good reviews and prizes always help to shape my choice of novels, and this book had both. It also had an intriguing title. As one of six sisters (no brothers), I was puzzled by the past tense: in my experience, sisters are forever. I was also attracted by the Muslim culture. Recently, I’ve been reading a lot of fiction about immigrants and cultural experiences very different from my own.
This is a painful story in many ways, about three orphaned girls who are forced by an indifferent (at best) uncle to grow up in an underground American reality. But they are sisters indeed and the writing is excellent: this short novel will break and warm your heart all at once.
LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION 2022 WINNER OF THE CAROL SHIELDS PRIZE FOR FICTION 2023
'A grief-soaked and gorgeous debut novel . . . A poet first, Asghar picks up on the themes of her debut collection If They Come for Us - partition and fragmentation, borders and bodies - and plays with space and silence on the page . . . this fragmentary form has the effect of ephemerality - much like life' Sana Goyal, Guardian
In this heartrending, lyrical debut work of fiction, Fatimah Asghar traces the intense bond of three orphaned siblings who, after…
Despite the awkward and puzzling title, this novel had excellent reviews and prizes (my typical criteria for contemporary writing), and I was not disappointed.
The structure seems familiar (alternating points of view—think Faulkner and Woolf), but Hokeah does a masterful job of both keeping the reader wondering what’s going on and captivating her with fascinating turns of plot and charmingly bizarre characters and choices.
It’s not a pretty story—life in Oklahoma as Mexican and Native American was and is hard. But the warmth and love that continually shows up in the most unexpected circumstances makes this a powerful affirmation of how good even “bad” people can be.
"STUNNING." -Susan Power, author of The Grass DancerA moving and deeply engaging debut novel about a young Native American man finding strength in his familial identity, from a stellar new voice in fiction. Oscar Hokeah's electric debut takes us into the life of Ever Geimausaddle, whose family-part Mexican, part Native American-is determined to hold onto their community despite obstacles everywhere they turn. Ever's father is injured at the hands of corrupt police on the border when he goes to visit family in Mexico, while his mother struggles both to keep her job and care for her husband. And young Ever…
Co-edited with Teresa Toulouse, "Sweet Spots" is a collection of interdisciplinary essays that explores the “in-between-ness” of New Orleans, this most “in-between” of North American cities: the “northernmost Caribbean city”; a multi-cultural port central to the homogeneous South; a city built on slavery and African culture that flouts European faux-royalty in its famous carnival; a thin sliver of land in constant danger of sliding under the sea. The essays examine elements of the city’s architecture, geography, sociology, art, music and literature, teasing out how its “interstitiality” defines its unique place in the cultural imagination.
