Olive Strikes Again...A Kitteridge Sequel

Thank you for the publisher for providing me an advance copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.


Olive Kitteridge has become an iconic figure in American literature, her vituperative, downer personality reverberating to a Pulitzer Prize some ten years ago and several Emmy awards when Strout's first book with her as its star was made into a fantastic (and fantastically cast) HBO miniseries. Despite being the most unlikable of characters, someone who verbally abuses those who love her and sees little joys in a life impacted by tragedy and likely mental health issues, Kitteridge still manages to engender sympathy.

In the follow up to the classic, Strout once again structures it as many interlaced stories, some with Olive at the centre and others at the periphery, but even more than the first she is the centre. As life as a widow takes hold and the unwinnable trek toward death take hold, Olive begins to consider her life and her attitudes, her treatment of others, her now dead husband Henry and her somewhat estranged son, and she begins to self-reflect and take responsibility for her bitterness and what it must have done to others. Despite those she has crossed continue to be skeptical about her, she manages to grow, find love, and try to find meaning in old and new friendships. As we approach the twilight of her life, Olive remains cantankerous but also more rounded, a better person, and we are happy to have journeyed with her as she has grown.

Strout remains a remarkable conveyor of the intimate meanings of life, taking the small moments in life and uncovering them for their profundity. Her writing is economical, no wasted word, but also takes its time to slowly reveal the secrets below the surface of the ordinary life, how difficult ordinariness can be, with its suffering, its loneliness, but also how wonderful and rewarding even the smallest joy can bring to the mundane. Strout hits it out of the park again and hopefully this one will not disappoint the loyal followers of Olive Kitteridge.

Olive, Again comes out on October 19th.

My Booker Shortlist Thoughts

Today, the Booker Prize announced its shortlist, winnowing down its Booker dozen 13 longlisted titles to 6 finalists, which are:

Margaret Atwood (Canada), "The Testaments"
Lucy Ellmann (USA/UK), "Ducks, Newburyport"
Bernardine Evaristo (UK), "Girl, Woman, Other"
Chigozie Obioma (Nigeria), "An Orchestra of Minorities"
Salman Rushdie (UK/India), "Quichotte"
Elif Shafak (UK/Turkey), "10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World"

I managed to guess 4 of the 6 (even though I have only read 2 of them, although 6.5 of the longlist). That said, despite being relatively accurate I read the list and my heart sank as the strongest book from the longlist, Valeria Luiselli's Lost Children Archive, did not make it. A remarkable and technically brilliant look at the migration crises of the Americas, Luiselli's book is an accomplishment that soars both in its meticulous plotting but also how profound and originally she tackles a topic filled with political meaning and whose significance at the present time is immense. I really hoped that it would make the shortlist and possibly win, because it is a book so many more need to read. It is a book that needed the attention that winning the Booker would bring.

On the other end, however, are two books that needed no recognition to garner attention. Margaret Atwood's sequel to The Handmaid's Tale, The Testaments, is already garnering enormous buzz leading up to its release next week. Bolstered by the award winning television series, Atwood's book is going to be a massive best seller, no award needed to get it in people's hands. Similarly, Salman Rushdie's Quichotte will sell briskly, especially with some praising it as his return to form. Unfortunately, as one of the two I have read, I can't see this as any return to form. Rushdie is a solid writer, but after reading about a third of this retelling of Don Quixote, it felt like a formulaic redoing of his past novels, a bit too cute, too meta, pretension oozing from every sentence. This is not Rushdie "at the top of his game" as the chair of the Booker jury suggests it is.

I was also a bit surprised that Chigozie Obioma's An Orchestra of Minorities made it. His debut novel, The Fisherman, was a wonderful tale of innocent youth being destroyed by fate and was rightfully shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2015. However, Orchestra was a much more tedious reading experience, using narrative devices that became grating if not pointless. At times beautiful prose almost saves it but it was too much of a slog to be saved by a few elegant passages.

Of the three others, Lucy Ellman's Ducks, Newportbury sounds the most exciting. A 1000 page, 8 sentence stream of consciousness that delves into the mind of a Midwestern housewife's thoughts about a contemporary American falling apart into chaos and division. I am also eager to pick up Bernardine Evaristo's Girl, Woman, Other, which delves into the diverseness of the black experience in the UK. The one I am least likely to pick up, however, despite it sounding vaguely alluring is 10 Minutes 38 Seconds.

So in many ways this is a good list. Ducks and Girl seem like the most likely to win. They are accomplished writers who may have hit their stride. It is unlikely that Rushdie or Atwood win their second Booker but I would not be totally shocked if Atwood somehow managed to win. That said, some of the reviews that just leaked today (embargo over I guess) suggest it is more literary thriller than the kind of experimentation with form and style that Booker juries look to award. But who knows.

That said, I feel sadness that Lost Children Archive is not part of the conversation moving forward. It's the prize's and the reading public's loss but hopefully Luiselli will get her due eventually.

Transcending Boundaries: FRESHWATER by Akwaeke Emezi

LONGLIST FOR WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION

13 OF 16 BOOKS FROM LONGLIST READ

There is a saying that works of fiction worry less about facts and more about truth and I have always embraced this axiom when talking about why I am so drawn to the world of literary fiction, defending this form of art from the jaded few who scoff at what they deem fantasies. The best works of fiction, in fact, use fantasy to tell profound and meaningful insights into the human experience, offering us a window into the meanings of life that non-fiction forms aren't always able to. And on occasion a great novel is able to tap into the a question of the moment, at the heart of the zeitgeist, and offer readers a more compelling and convincing portrait than the most well argued polemic or essay ever can.

In many ways, the exhilarating debut novel Freshwater, by Nigerian author Akwaeke Emezi, offers just that, a book we desperately need, a story so intimate and personal to Emezi but that offers a glimpse into an experience society and its occupants need to hear. As troglodyte charlatans like Jordan Peterson try to shame and marginalize those challenging gender dichotomies, Emezi offers a magical and metaphysical, yet also incredibly visceral and corporeal, tale of the how those breaking from societal norms must overcome pathologizing and othering to construct identities of self that reflect who they actually are.

The story centres on Ada, but is largely told through the voices and perspectives of godlike consciousnesses that live inside her brain, a cacophony of external voices that try to control Ada's actions, her sexuality, her will to live, as she journeys to the United States to study and live. Emotionally detached and sexually uninterested, she relies on these consciousnesses to play active roles in her relationships with others, determining her sexual preferences, her most intimate desires, abdicating her own role in these most personal of things. Unsure who she is, what form she should take, Ada lives a life filled with loneliness and depression, resorting to self-harm and self-imposed isolation, until she is able to determine what identities are most representative.

Emezi identifies as non-gender conforming and has described this book as largely autobiographical. But unlike many works of auto fiction, which frankly I often find boring and difficult to tell the fiction part, Emezi uses metaphysical forces and the flourish of the magical to explore the journey they went through, a device not only entrancing while reading but also one that works as an incredibly astute device in describing how ones gender identity is shaped through prolonged struggle between multiple internal voices. But Emezi cuts sharply against attempts to pathologize this process as mental disorder, placing it rather in the realm of a religious experience, spiritual creatures fighting for their control over Ada's body until Ada can take control and affirm the rightful place of all these voices within Ada's identity.

When this book was listed on the Women's Prize for Fiction longlist, it obviously generated significant interest but also controversy after one of the judges suggested that Emezi still identified as a woman when the book was submitted, something Emezi and their publisher have rebuked as inaccurate and misgendering. This has resulted in the Women's Prize deciding to formalize a policy on how it will treat the quickly changing terrain of gender moving forward. Hopefully, some of the reactionary backlash won't cause the Prize to conservatize its approach. The prize in many ways was set up to spotlight works from voices who had been marginalized because of gender and one hopes the prize will embrace this year's decision to include Emezi as the best approach.

That said, I also hope all the attention about who Emezi is does not take too much focus away from what is a remarkable text. Emezi has written a work of fiction filled with flowery and biting prose, easily devoured in only two days (which is very fast for me) that grapples with issues that are obviously reflective of Emezi's experiences but also speak to so much more, namely how we as readers, as a society, should understand the struggle and final outcome of those experiences. Complex in form and style, this book feels not like a debut but a grand accomplishment of a literary veteran. Certainly destined to greatness, I am hoping both this book and Emezi get the due they absolutely deserve.

Documenting Diaspora: LOST CHILDREN ARCHIVES by Valeria Luiselli

LONGLIST FOR WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION

BOOK 9 OF 16 OF LONGLISTED TITLES

I had thought Colson Whitehead's THE NICKEL BOYS had firmly ranked itself as the top book of 2019 and lo and behold Valeria Luiselli came swooping in the very next novel and challenged for the crown with her absolutely remarkable LOST CHILDREN ARCHIVES, a timely depiction of the migrant crisis through the eyes of a family taking a road trip from New York City to Arizona.

In some ways this book is hard to describe or to summarize in a few sentences, because there is so much going on above and below the surface. Up front we are placed in  car journeying south, a husband and wife in the front, in the back two children, each parent having brought a child to the marriage. Told through the voice of the wife, we quickly become attuned to the sad fate that waits the end of this road trip, a family whose time has come to an end, a relationship appearing to fail as each party discovered they want to explore different professional goals.

But this basic structure is filled in with the most astounding details that shape the story as it moves forward. The husband and wife met several years before working on a sound project that New York University had commissioned to record all the languages spoken in the city. The documenting of sound is given life, we are given exact details of the mechanics of the process as well as the meaning the partnership gives to what they are doing. As the project winds down, the husband and wife become determined to further the documentation of sounds, the former wanting to record the echos of now gone Apache warriors that once dominated the southwestern territories of the United States and the latter keen of giving voice (or recording voices) of child migrants caught in the harsh and merciless immigration system.

As the family travels south, both parents knowing their union may be at an end, the soundscape of the car ride is filled with the father's stories of Apache warriors, age inappropriate audiobooks the children must listen to and radio broadcasts of the migration crises, filled with stories of children who have attempted the border crossing on their own only to be detained and now face the prospect of deportation back to countries whose violence threatens their survival. The mother, whose New York friend has had her two daughters detained and have gone missing during a transfer from one institution to another, is now intent on not only documenting the lost children but finding these two girls.

Midway through the book, Luiselli shifts perspective, giving voice to the ten year old son, whose adolescent mind has absorbed and reinterpreted the stories coming from the front of the car, producing bizarre understandings of the reality that in itself is horrific and bizarre, but has become the normal for the adults. The boy slowly begins to recognize the impending end of his family and decides he must try to act in some way to impress his step mother, making a decision to run away with his five year old sister in search of the two lost girls his mother is intent on finding.  The final third of the book becomes a harrowing descent into an unknown territory as the two children themselves become lost and their voices facing the threat of becoming another echo, their story another tragedy to be archived.

Luiselli is a skilled crafter of prose, her sentences filled with detail and specificity, yet beautiful in a precise but also meandering way. She captures intimate details of the characters lives and perspectives, all the while articulating the broad ideas and contemplations of the various narrators. But most striking here is her use of a plethora of literary texts, music, photography and other medium to inform the narrative, to provide background to the characters and also understand their actions as their world is about to change drastically. Each chapter begins with an opening of an archival box the family brings with them, containing works of literature, academic texts, musical scores, that not only tells their research project but become integrated into the plot of the book. She quotes passages, lyrics and even creates a fictional book within a book, Elegies of Lost Children, itself a literary allusion to other works that have sought to detail experiences of "voyages, journeying, migrating."

Some have criticized this technique as pretentious (see Mercedes Bookish Musings quite harsh and I'd contend unfair review) and I will admit that in other cases I do get annoyed with writing that seeks to name drop works of literature for the sake of bragging, An Unnecessary Woman comes to mind. But in this case, Luiselli is not trying to merely show off her incredible grasp of literature, but instead alludes and quotes to further the goals of the text in a way that is organic. As she notes in the Works Cited section after the text of the novel:

...references to sources--textual, musical, visual, or audio-visual--are not meant as side notes, or ornaments that decorate the story, but function as intralinear markers that point to the many voices in the conversation that the book sustains with the past.

Far from showy decoration, these references become powerful components of the text, serving the narrative, acting as echoes from the past that the present must confront. Just one example that many have cited, is the first line from Cormac McCarthy's The Road, which is repeated often as the audiobook player manages to default to it whenever the mother turns on the radio:

When he woke in the woods in the dark and cold of the night he’d reach out to touch the child sleeping beside him.

This chilling line is not there for show but serves as a foreshadow, as a constant worry of losing ones child, as a warning of potential dangers that await the young siblings. For me, this is not pretentious but an amazing sculpting of literary works to inform the narrative purposes of this novel. That Luiselli does this so well, uses these texts or other media to build an archive of this family that touches upon so much beyond their own compelling drama is one of the reasons this book is a thing of beauty.

A more concerning critique is the question of cultural appropriation and how Luiselli uses the story of the Apache to further her own story telling goals. Some have noted that this falls into the trope of treating indigenous voices as unable to speak for themselves, reinforces a narrative of victimhood and denies agency to a population that continues to rightfully insist on self-determination. In LOST CHILDREN ARCHIVE, Luiselli gives the father, a Mexican American, full control over the story of the Apache, which leaves us to consider the problematics associated with this narrative decision. However, I don't believe that Luiselli is oblivious to the problems with this decision. In several interviews she discusses issues of appropriation and who has the right to tell other's stories and notes that the heart of the LOST CHILDREN ARCHIVE is asking the question of where do we stand when archiving the experiences of political violence. In this case, the pressing political violence Luiselli wants to document is that of Central American child migrants and she uses analogous histories of disappearance that Native Americans have experienced to emphasize the echoing of experiences across large swaths of time. That she chooses to have those comparative experiences channeled through the voyeuristic eyes of the father is a question worth debating but a debate that I would imagine Luiselli welcomes. That other indigenous authors, such as Tommy Orange, have effusively praised the book's treatment of transcending historical experiences, signals to me that it is not so easy to condemn Luiselli's choice as a sloppy or disrespectful act of cultural appropriation.

If anything, I'd suggest the level of discussion and grappling with this text speaks to how powerful a statement it is. Beautifully written, densely packed with ideas, timely as ever, Luiselli has offered us an utterly important novel, one that asks how and where we stand as millions of migrants move around the world, looking for safe passage but met with cold rejection if not brutal violence. To have tackled such big issues through the lens of a modest road trip story speaks to how fantastic a writer Luiselli is. This will be one of the big books of 2019 and beyond and hope it gets its proper due critically and beyond.

You Can't Break Me: Colson Whitehead's The Nickel Boys

"The world had whispered its rules to him for his whole life and he refused to listen, hearing instead a higher order. The world continued to instruct: Do not love for they will disappear, do not trust for you will be betrayed, do not stand up for you will be swatted down. Still he heard those higher imperatives: Love and that love will be returned, trust in the righteous path and it will lead you to deliverance, fight and things will change. He never listened, never saw what was plainly in front of him, and now he had been plucked from the world altogether. The only voices were those of the boys below, the shouts and laughter and fearful cries, as if he floated in a bitter heaven."

 Colson Whitehead, The Nickel Boys

Colson Whitehead has asserted himself as one of the preeminent English language literary figures of our times. Emerging as a talent with his wonderfully inventive debut, The Intuitionist, he followed his first novel with a string of critical successful books, both fiction and non. It was the 2016 release of The Underground Railroad, a magical realist reimagining of the slave escape passage, that garnered him near-ubiquitous acclaim. Chosen as an Oprah book and winning the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the novel is now set for adaptation, with Oscar winning filmmaker Barry Jenkins (Moonlight) directing a six-part limited series.

With all this success, Whitehead could have been forgiven if his follow up novel, The Nickel Boys, was a bit of a letdown. Thankfully, there is no such ebb in quality here and Whitehead demonstrates that right now he's at the top of his game, giving us this haunting and tragic account of the final years of Jim Crow institutions in the the Deep South, institutions eager to give African American bodies as much pain as possible before the era of legal segregation was dismantled completely.

Elwood Curtis is a black teenager living in Georgia in the early 1960s who becomes inspired by the Civil Rights movement and the hope of desegregation it brought with it. Repeatedly listening to the one record his grandmother has, Martin Luther King at Zion Hill, Elwood embraces the emancipatory rhetoric of King and seeks to take advantage of the improved opportunities for African American youth. He studies assiduously and prepares to pursue post-secondary education when misfortune and bad timing results in his conviction for a crime he did not commit and his incarceration in a juvenile reformatory called the Nickel Academy.

Elwood, a shy and studious boy, must quickly re-evaluate his prospects while figuring out ways to expedite his release. He learns quickly that the stern hand of violent repression still guides the reformatory's philosophy and watches in horror as any stepping out of line can result in cruel torture or death at the hands of white tormentors, none of whom will ever face any consequences. Although he finds friendships and opportunities to avoid some of the worst punitive punishments of the reformatory, Elwood must decide whether his commitment to the justice that King advocated can allow him to silently bide his time and leave in tact the corrupt school so eager to sadistically punish black children.

A gifted story teller, Whitehead's prose is more toned down compared to some of his previous work, but in The Nickel Boys it is his plotting, the slow build up to an unforgettable climax, that is so engrossing. In particular, it is the revelation at the end, one that is so unexpected (despite knowing in advance that something special happens in the end and trying to guess what was going to happen) that leaves the reader shattered. The Underground Railroad also uses a twist at the end, one of an almost absurdist quality, one fitting to explain the genesis of Cora's fantastical journey. The Nickel Boys, however, uses this slight of hand even more powerfully. While much of the novel repeats the theme quite common in African American literary canon, and Whitehead's own work, of white supremacy's subjection of black bodies to abuse and violence, the end of The Nickel Boys demands of his protagonist to take agency for these abused bodies, to refuse to let their stories disappear in past or in this case the grounds surrounding the reformatory. While devastating when revealed, it also echoed the powerful message from Whitehead's speech after winning the National Book Award:

They can't break me, because I'm a bad mother f****r

What is so amazing about Whitehead is his mastery of different voices, different techniques, different genres. Of the four books of his I have read, no two is the same, let alone similar. From the noir detective quality of The Intuitionist, to the embrace of horror and magical realism in The Underground Railroad, Whitehead appears comfortable writing anything. With The Nickel Boys we get another taste of Whitehead's talents, writing a more conventionally structured telling of Jim Crow that is gripping and powerful and incredibly timely at a time when more and more are shouting out loud to power: You can't break me.

*I received an Advanced Reader Copy of this book from Penguin Random House Canada in exchange for an honest review, which is above.

**The Nickel Boys is set to be released in Canada in July 2019.

Don Winslow's The Border: An Unapologetic Condemnation of the War on Drugs

I thankfully discovered Don Winslow several years ago when the second leg of his now complete The Cartel trilogy, was released. I picked up the audiobook and was captured immediately, taken deep into the world of drugs and its traffickers, and the accompanying violence and corruption. Winslow writes in a compelling almost journalistic style, turning the intrigue of the narcotic trade into a page turner extraordinaire.
trilogy,

Last year, Winslow announced the release of the final chapter in the story of DEA agent Art Keller and I quickly got myself a copy of The Power of the Dog, the pilot episode in this epic story of Keller and his obsession with Adán Barrera, the patron and head of the Sinaloa Cartel. In the final chapter, however, Winslow had his aim clearly on the current U.S. administration, teasing early on that the reckless behaviour and policies of Trump and his cronies would be subject to scrutiny, aptly titling the novel The Border. 

Ambitious in scope, written with gusto, pleasing to those lovers of crime fiction or political thrillers, Winslow delivers a fittingly brilliant conclusion to the trilogy that speaks to so many of the most pressing issues of the political moment.

After Keller had killed Barrera at the conclusion of The Cartel, he is recruited to head up the DEA as the Sinaloa drug empire falls into chaos and powerful players seek to replace Adan as the patron of the cartel. At times this can be messy, as many different families and alliances assert themselves and then quickly are defeated or fade. But Winslow does his best to bring the readers up to speed and allows them to get a grasp of the chaos that Barrera's death has caused.

While the Mexican forces battle for supremacy, the 2016 Presidential election takes centre stage, as a fictionalized Donald Trump, aka John Dennison, enters the race eager to scapegoat Mexican migrants for the ills of American society. At times Dennison feels cartoonish, but only because Winslow takes Trump's rhetoric verbatim when scripting Dennison's speeches, which says more about Trump's own unbelievable villainy than Winslow's writing. Dennison's son-in-law (Jared in disguise) gets roped into the drug world in the midst of the election, procuring a massive loan from cartel affiliated forces to fund a tower project that Dennison has a direct financial interest in. Keller, concerned with the fortunes of American democracy at the hands of Dennison, turns his attention to this laundering scheme and must face the inevitable backlash when Dennison surprisingly wins the election.

I must admit I was concerned with how this plot device would work. Winslow, who is very active with his views on Twitter, spends significant time challenging the Trump administrations ties to Russia and whether financial dealings between the Russian government and Trump compromise the latter's fealty to the United States. Although the Trump administration may raise such concerns, there is nothing inherently foreign about its actions nor about the thirty years of aggressive bipartisan neoliberal governance, Trump being its latest, most extreme, incarnation. Stressing Russian influence is often a substitute for looking deeply into the core rot of the American system that Trump is merely a symptom, otherizing the causes of the mess we are currently in. Thankfully, Winslow avoids this and if anything uses cartel influence of the Dennison regime to emphasize American complicity in the drug crisis. In terms of the narrative, the Dennison-drug money ties actually works quite well, allowing Winslow to delve into the realm of political thriller that does in fact deliver compelling plot points.

More powerful, however, are the vignettes into the lives of Central American migrants, often escaping civil wars or drug gangs that the United States market has encouraged. Winslow tells the story of two Guatemalan children, Nico and Flor, who flee local unrest, only to be repeatedly victimized either by criminal players or state actors, pushing them into lives of exploitation and crime. In many ways these sections are the most forceful rebuke of the Trump obsession with his wall, painting a picture of chaos and suffering that the American state has played a direct hand in causing and the very human face of those Trump eagerly dismisses as 'bad hombres' and criminals. If there are monsters in the midst, Trump and by association the United States has no one to blame but themselves for creating them.

In the end, Winslow concludes with a very explicit and bludgeoning take down of the War on Drugs. Keller, confronted by political circumstances keen on destroying him, must come to terms with his own actions and the consequences they had on innocent parties. He is forced to question whether his four decade hunt of the drug cartels was the right war to be fighting, a question whose answer is unequivocally negative.

Without a doubt, Winslow is one of the premier crime writers of our times. His research is impeccable, his story telling engrossing. He peppers the historical context with the brutal violence that colours it, and he is able to capture his readers eager to find out how this epic saga ends. If you haven't picked up Winslow, do it now, go get yourself a copy of The Power of the Dog, The Cartel and The Border and don't look back, just read and disappear into the story of the new American century.

Dreaming In The Midst of Apocalypse: Karen Thompson Walker's The Dreamers

I received an advanced copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. So here it is for The
Dreamers, which was released this week.

Frankly this was going to be a hard sell for me. The blurbs compared it to the huge hit, Station Eleven, which I admired but did not love and I have grown weary of the post-apocalyptic genre. It has been overdone and as many have noted the fantastical separation we once had reading these books is no longer there, with reality quickly aligning with the nightmares authors once created out of thin air.

For the most part, The Dreamers is a unique take. Instead of a collapsing world, Walker focuses on a small Californian town overcome by a mysterious disease that leaves its victims alive but asleep, prisoners to dreams that may be premonitions or just longings for past experiences long buried in the subconsciousness. Walker takes around the town, introducing us to college students at the epicentre of the outbreak, various families broken up by the illness, senior lovers hoping to be taken to the same dreamland after the ravages of senility have taken their toll.

Much of the time I was somewhat bored by Walker's plot. It did not meander or get bogged down by too ornate language, it pushed forward at a nice pace, keeping the various plotlines fresh in the mind of the reader. But frankly, most of the characters were quite boring, too quaint, too normal, with all shady elements of the past unexplored. As Dwight Garner's NY Times review notes, all the characters are "exceedingly nice" and none say or do anything particularly interesting. While sharing Station Eleven's desire to explore the unexplored elements of human experience in moments of societal collapse, the agents of that exploration that Walker relies on hold none of the sharpness or dark malevolence that Emily St. John Mandel managed to imbue her characters.

However, something beautiful comes about toward the end of the book as the world of dreams and their meanings begin to surface. Walker's prose rises to another level and the questions she asks about how our dreams convey or filter how we understand our experiences, especially those moments of crises, is truly beautiful. It turned a mediocre reading experience to one where I had to go back to read passages, mesmerized by the writing and the dalliance into the subconsciousness Walker wants to explore.

I'm happy I powered through, as I would have lost the most powerful elements of the book had I abandoned. In the end, The Dreamers is more than just a new Station Eleven, and should be reckoned on its own merits, giving credit to the questions Walker wants to explore, which are not conventional to the genre and which offer important insights into the human condition.

3.5/5

Reading The Overstory in the Shadow of Bolsonaro

In early January, Brazil’s new president, Jair Bolsonaro, took office. It is not a stretch to describe Bolsanaro as a fascist, someone who pines for the days of military dictatorship and torture of leftist opponents. In addition to his desire to reverse even the most moderate of reforms enacted under the previous government and his embrace of the most radical of neoliberal economic programs, Bolsonaro has also set his sights on accelerating the exploitation of the Brazilian rainforest.

As reported in The Guardian, huge new regulatory powers have been transferred to the Agriculture Ministry, that most declare beholden to agribusiness interests. Deforestation is at the forefront of the agenda and considering how significant a sinkhole of carbon gases the rainforest plays any further attacks on its integrity will be detrimental not only to the inhabitants of the Amazon but also the fight against climate change.

It’s in this bleak shadow that I picked up Richard Powers’ The Overtory. Shortlisted for the Man Booker in 2018, and appearing on many year end best of lists, this a five-hundred page tome offers a poweful cri de coeur on behalf of The Trees.

The Overstory is a work of fiction structured like a tree. Powers first introduces 8 characters in what is deemed the book’s roots. Each discrete story involves people in someway touched by the world of trees, pessimistic about the damage humans have ravaged upon the beautiful creatures of wood, eager in some way to save them from destruction. The second part, the trunk, brings the characters together as their stories begin to overlap and influence one another as their journeys turn to activism and challenging industries insatiable need to destroy. The third part, the cover, jumps ahead twenty years as the consequences of their actions come to fruition, before concluding with the seeds, the hopeful promise of some sort of salvation for the wonders of forests.

Powers uses beautiful prose to disclose the mysteries of the tree, from the scientific to the mystical, exploring how the trees own language to one another conveys not only something truly magical, but also more powerful than even the most promethean desires of human industry. And though he clearly admires the tree much more than the species eager to destroy it, Power manages to convey the power of human compassion and empathy, with his subjects driven to save these creatures at great personal cost.

Although incredibly ambitious in scope and structure, this is not a perfect novel. Not all storylines work well and shedding a couple of the more pointless characters may have led to an even more powerful work. It is also an incredibly pessimistic take, almost nihilistic in the end game Powers sees as likely. Admittedly, I share some of this pessimism, but a cri de coeur must also inspire those to take action, to stop the destructive path we head in. Doing so may have weakened the work, made it too propagandist, but sometimes the political imperative demands the weakening of art.

All that said, this a book people should pick up. If not to be motivated to take up the fight, at the very least to appreciate the magical marvel that is majestic creature we call The Tree.