Book Review

Book Review: SIPSWORTH by Simon Van Booy

| Jessica Crawford

Sipsworth by Simon Van Booy is a 198 page book published by David R. Godine May 7, 2024.

Genre: Contemporary Literary Fiction

Opening Line:

Helen Cartwright was old with her life broken in ways she could not have foreseen.

The Synopsis:

Over the course of two weeks in a small English town, a reclusive widow discovers an unexpected reason to live.

Following the loss of her husband and son, Helen Cartwright returns to the village of her childhood after living abroad for six decades. Her only wish is to die quickly and without fuss. She retreats into her home on Westminster Crescent, becoming a creature of routine and “Each day was an impersonation of the one before with only a slight shuffle—as though even for death there is a queue.”

Then, one cold winter night, a chance encounter with a mouse sets Helen on a surprising journey.

Sipsworth is a reminder that there can be second chances. No matter what we have planned for ourselves, sometimes life has plans of its own. With profound compassion, Simon Van Booy illuminates not only a deep friendship forged between two lonely creatures, but the reverberations of goodness that ripple out from that unique bond.

My Thoughts:

Well, if this wasn’t the sweetest thing!

Helen Cartwright was raised in England, moved to Australia, spent sixty years there, many of them as a pediatric cardiologist. She lived an entire happy life there. But after her husband and her son both pass away, she moves back to her hometown in England and waits for her turn to die.

Walking helped, and she tried to go out every day, even when it poured. But life for her was finished…Each day was an impersonation of the one before with only a slight shuffle⁠—as though even for death there is a queue.

But then Helen encounters a mouse.

At first she intends to get it out of her home, then to bring it to a wildlife rescue center…but then she finds purpose and meaning again in caring for this little creature, whom she names Sipsworth.

Helen is certain now that the creature in her sink must surely have been a child’s pet that outlived his use as a companion and was left to die. Except he is downstairs in a pie box. Not dying. And for the first time in many years, against her better judgement, neither is she.

She even tells her new companion that if he passes away before her to keep an eye out for her husband and son:

“I want you to let them know that I’m fine. I wasn’t for a long time, but I am now.”

Not only do her interactions with the mouse bring her joy, he also winds up bringing other people back into her life: the owner of the hardware store where she initially intends to buy mousetraps, the librarian from whom she checks out books on mouse care, and others.

“You know what your gift to the world is, Sipsworth?” Helen asks him. “It’s that you bring out the best in people.”

A heartwarming tale about a renewed lease on life, meaningful connections, and found family, this story made me tear up while simultaneously pasting a wide grin on my face. I think fans of A Man Called Ove by Frederik Backman might enjoy this (although I hesitate to make comps because I personally always find them disappointing – like although books share some similarities, what I loved about the other book, such as the tone or voice, is not one of them). A real treasure!

(Side note: I was originally concerned about HOW MUCH TEA the people drink in this book – but the internet tells me that each cup only contains 26 mg of caffeine, so really 15 cups per day should be safe for consumption–which is good, because these characters are probably not far off from that!)

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Book Review: I CHEERFULLY REFUSE by Leif Enger

| Jessica Crawford

I Cheerfully Refuse by Leif Enger is a 336 hardcover standalone novel published April 2, 2024 by Grove Press.

Genres: Dystopian, Literary Fiction, Speculative Fiction

Opening Line:

Here at the beginning it must be said the End was on everyone’s mind.

The Synopsis: Set in a not-too-distant America, I Cheerfully Refuse is the tale of Rainy, an aspiring musician setting sail on Lake Superior in search of his departed, deeply beloved, bookselling wife. An endearing bear of an Orphean narrator, he seeks refuge in the harbors, fogs, and remote islands of the inland sea. After encountering lunatic storms and rising corpses from the warming depths, he eventually lands to find an increasingly desperate and illiterate people, a malignant billionaire ruling class, a crumbled infrastructure, and a lawless society. As his guileless nature begins to make an inadvertent rebel of him, Rainy’s private quest for the love of his life grows into something wider and wilder, sweeping up friends and foes alike in his wake.

My Thoughts:

This meditative dystopian story is brimming with gorgeous prose (and also a fair number of instances of turns of phrase I did not understand, prompting me to wonder if the author was not American–but it turns out that is not the case). In a bleak near future with collapsed infrastructure, a U.S. headed by a proudly illiterate president, and more and more people choosing to shuffle off this mortal coil in search of something better, Rainy and Lark have managed to make a happy life for themselves. When they let a young man board in their home, trouble follows right behind him. Rainy finds himself on the lam in a sailboat on a capricious Lake Superior. As he grieves for the life and love lost to him and attempts to evade those who would do him harm, he encounters numerous strange characters, along with a girl who needs him (and vice versa) more than either would like to admit.

It’s taken me all my life to learn protection is the promise you can’t make. It sounds absolute, and you mean it and believe it, but that vow is provisional and makeshift and no god ever lived who could keep it half the time.

But beyond the beautiful writing and the likable main character who was easy to root for, my overall feeling while reading this book was one of melancholy. So even though I appreciated the author’s skill with words (the main villain is described as a “relentless hellhound and necrotic Adonis”!), how glad am I that I set sail with Rainy on his journey? I’m still not sure myself. 3.75 stars

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Book Review: KING NYX by Kristen Bakis

| Jessica Crawford

King Nyx by Kristen Bakis is a 320 page hardcover standalone novel published February 27, 2024 by Liveright (W. W. Norton & Company).

Genres: Historical Fiction, Gothic, Mystery

Opening Line:

Last night I dreamed my husband came back.

“This woman cannot think, she feels.” So the novelist Theodore Dreiser once wrote about Anna Fort, wife of the crypto-scientist Charles Fort. It was this line that inspired author Kristen Bakis to write a story of Anna’s own, albeit a fictional one.

I had heard this book was a Gothic tale that was more about vibes than plot, and I supposed that is pretty much the case (there is certainly plot, but I do think I’d say the pacing is on the slower side). But there were a lot of other elements to this story that I was not expecting.

Anna’s husband writes about verified anomalies that science has failed to offer sufficient explanations for, and who then proposes his own rather outlandish theories. A wealthy recluse invites them to stay on his private island estate while Charles finishes writing his book. But all is not well on Prosper Island.

We learn a lot about Anna’s memories from before her marriage, at a time when she herself experienced something unexplainable and wound up having a mental break and spending time in a sanatorium. This history has her questioning when she can and cannot trust herself and her own thoughts and perceptions. She discovers that one can perform any number of mental gymnastics in order to keep one’s view of the world palatable.

Visitors to Prosper Island are made to quarantine in cabins in the woods for two weeks upon arrival, and it is here Anna and her husband meet another couple, a psychologist and his wife with an oddly antagonistic relationship, who are also guests of the eccentric Mr. Arkel. In fact, the story doesn’t actually arrive at the house itself until very near to the end, and then only briefly.

The story also includes: missing girls (pulled from the penal system and put into a school for domestic service), creepy automata (the most horrifying part of this book, IMO!), and a toy bird elevated to the status of deity. Oh, and several pet parakeets. I wasn’t expecting all of these elements, but they still wound up telling a decent Gothic mystery.

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Book Review: THE MORNINGSIDE by Tea Obreht

| Jessica Crawford

The Morningside by Tea Obreht is a 304 page long dystopian literary fiction novel (with the door left open for a hint of magical realism) first published March 19, 2024 by Random House.

“And I realized that I’d brought you into life at a time when everyone else’s debts had come due.”

This book is narrated by Sil, twelve years old for the majority of the story. She lives in a dystopian version of the world where climate change has really done a number on us. Everyone is expected to do their part to try to help the world heal. Eating meat is illegal. What food you do get depends on what ration cards the government has allotted you this week. Sil and her mother, refugees from a war torn country, are able to move to the once illustrious Island City as part of the Repopulation Program. With the changing tides, much of the island that was once inhabited now lies underwater. Sil and her mother move into the building where Aunt Ena serves as superintendent, a tower of apartments called The Morningside.

Sil’s mother and great aunt couldn’t be more different. As for the former,

The pronouncement of intent, the hubris of self-determination–these did not fit her notion of the universe

She teaches her daughter never to tell anyone their country of origin or to speak their mother tongue outside of the home, never to try to plan for the future but only meet challenges and opportunities as they come, and to leave the past in the past.

Ena on the other hand…

This was part of Ena’s magic. Familiarities you had come to take for granted were transformed by the act of her storytelling. Her version of things became the only one. She could change the reality of something you thought you’d known all your life.

With these two models in her life, even though Ena dies not long after their arrival in Island City (leaving the job of superintendent to Sil’s mother), Sil learns to look for signs of “the world beneath the world”.

I quite liked the writing and tone of this book, but I have to say, all of the characters annoyed me at one point or another. Sil would get so upset with Mila when she in fact was the one being unreasonable. I actually quite hated her mother at times. And at the end, you’re not 100% sure what the real story was with the reclusive wealthy artist Bezi Duras, or the daughter of the warlord Rait Belen, but I gather it’s supposed to be kind of left up in the air for the reader to continue thinking about. In fact, Sil even admits that what is true is not necessarily the point, or at least not the whole of it.

It had been wonderful to stand, however briefly, in the lighted rooms of Ena’s heart and know things as she knew them. But she was dead now. And were you really part of something if you were part of it alone?

This story is sort of unsettling and courageous at the same time, and I quite liked it, even if it’s the ideas I enjoyed more than the details. 4 out of 5 stars.

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Book Review: SISTERS OF THE VAST BLACK

| Jessica Crawford

“We’re all just scattered, lonely specks out here, unless we try to be more. We shouldn’t be brutal just because the universe is.”

Sisters of the Vast Black by Lina Rather (first in the Our Lady of Endless Worlds duology) is a novella about an order of nuns traveling through outerspace in a “liveship” (a giant slug bred to be able to transport people within inner chambers and survive vacuum) manages to include SO MUCH MORE than you would expect from a story of this length!

We get to know each of the sisters aboard the Our Lady of Impossible Constellations as they perform consecrations, marriages, baptisms, and funeral rites for various colonies and stations scattered among the stars. We learn about the debilitating war that broke out when Earth resisted losing control of its children that left and spread across the universe. The convent is chagrined as Earth attempts to use them in its renewed bid to bring everyone under a centralized system once again.

And yet, she also knew her history. Religion was a useful arm of the state, often enough. What better way to crush resistance than to own the souls of the people? What better way to spread your government than to tie it to the name of God?

When their liveship receives a distress signal from a new colony, the sisters must decide how best to keep their vows: through obedience to the planet-bound Vatican that does not understand the flexibility required to survive in the vastness of space, or by offering aid and comfort to those most desperate for it.

Some of the feel of this story reminded me a bit of the parts that I liked about the cozy nature of The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (a book that otherwise didn’t 100% appeal to me as a reader), and parts of it (the parts having to do with the biology of the space-faring slugs as vehicles of transport) were delightfully sciency. But overall, it was the characters confronting issues regarding ethics, morals, and personal fulfillment that drove this intriguing story.

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Book Review: THE FAMILIAR by Leigh Bardugo

| Jessica Crawford

This gorgeous book, The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo (author of Six of Crows and Ninth House, among others) is a 387 page standalone adult historical fantasy novel set in sixteenth century Spain.

The opening line:

If the bread hadn’t burned, this would be a very different story.

When Luzia’s employers discover that their scullion can work small magics, “miracles”, she finds attention drawn to her from all sorts of corners. She fears catching the notice of the Inquisition for multiple reasons, but the flames of her ambition are stoked by the opportunity to compete for a place in the king’s service. Her patron’s familiar, a man made immortal through an ill-gotten bargain, is tasked with teaching her how best to wield and control her powers.

I very much liked the romance in this book, unexpected at it was to the characters involved–but the story was about so much more than that and the magic. It was about class, political machinations, being a Jew in a land that would never trust you, and more. There is one particular side character whose journey and personal growth was quite lovely. 4.5 stars, rounded up!

All that being said, I feel as though some die-hard fans of Bardugo’s YA books, or maybe even Ninth House and Hell Bent, will be disappointed in this one. It is a “quieter” book– there is some showy stuff, but it’s more about the feels and reflection on some serious topics. Which is typically more my jam.

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Book Review: DIAVOLA by Jennifer Thorne

| Jessica Crawford

Oooh, there was so much to love about this chilling Gothic ghost story set in Italy!

Anna has long been the black sheep of her family and has prepared for the usual complaints and judgment when she joins them for a trip to Italy. They are staying at a picturesque villa that includes a modern addition built onto the original architecture…and a tower they are instructed to never unlock or enter.

Soon, it becomes clear that there is more than irritating relatives threatening what should be a peaceful vacation.

The setting was wonderful and evocative, and Thorne was able to make me feel like a tourist in Italy myself. Bellissimo!

I liked Anna a lot. She was smart, caring and compassionate to those who deserve it, and answers the insults slugged her way with perfect snark. I enjoyed the fraught interpersonal dynamics at first, but eventually they got on my nerves a bit, when everyone started blaming Anna for things it made no sense to blame her for.

The supernatural elements were deliciously creepy. The stressful family gathering introduced a feeling of tension, which only ratcheted up by increments as evidence of a haunting begin with the sounds of disembodied voices and doors slamming shut of their own accord, working up to Anna and her family being in real and imminent danger.

The pacing in different parts of the book seemed a bit unconventional, but it was quite engaging all throughout. And the story wound up going places I could not have imagined. 4.75 stars from me!

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Book Review: POOR DEER by Claire Oshetsky

| Jessica Crawford

Margaret, alone in the woods, stops screaming. She has just learned that some things are forever, and other things are never-again.

When Margaret is four years old she and her friend Agnes are playing together when events lead to the other girl’s accidental death. Margaret hears adults using the term “poor dear” (to her ears, Poor Deer) a lot, and thus is born the haunting personification (er…deerification?) of a child’s guilt, fear, confusion, and shame.

This was a very sad story. It’s well written, and your heart just breaks for young Margaret. However, I didn’t care for the ending nearly as much as I did the rest of the book. I did like that Margaret was searching for atonement, but the way the author chose to offer her this chance just didn’t really appeal to me. Although I did like how Margaret recognized that she might work toward forgiving herself to heal from her past.

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Book Review: THE BAD ONES by Melissa Albert

| Jessica Crawford

Wow, I couldn’t get enough of this supernatural YA mystery!

Four people go missing during the course of a single night, the only apparent connection among them being that each is either a student or a teacher at Palmetto High School. Nora’s best friend is one of the vanished. But Becca has left clues for Nora, as if she knew she was about to be gone. The clues all lead back to the goddess game, a local childhood tradition based on urban legend. But what if it’s actually more than a game? And what if the thing called goddess is actually something much darker?

I found Nora to be a refreshing main POV character, and in general I appreciate how the author writes teens. I liked the fact that Nora’s friendship with Becca was complicated. I did balk a bit at the style of prose (for example, I recall a line that went something like: “The wind tasted spiky and wild.”) But that didn’t stop me from having great fun reading the story! It’s deliciously spooky, intriguing, mysterious, and emotional, with just a splash of romance. Wonderful!

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