All posts filed under: November

Homegoing: Great Expectations

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I’d heard nothing but praise for Homegoing before picking it up. It’s clearly a beloved story, and a big reason why we chose it as our November book. But sometimes such high expectations get in my way. But with the really good ones, the author-defining books like this one, expectations are just the beginning. Yaa Gyasi’s debut novel Homegoing is a blow-you-away kind of story. Gyasi masterfully engineers the stories of eight generations into just three hundred pages in a way that’s nothing short of a work of art. Her writing is poetic and yet efficient. The characters are each sketched as full portraits in their short chapters. And the beginning of every ancestor’s story reads like the start of its own epic novel. Some of the characters I missed after their brief time in one chapter (give or take some overlap), but Gyasi then has you falling in love with the next character, and the next, and the next. And all the while she weaves in significant periods of history in a way that’s …

Eyes Open: Homegoing

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I read Homegoing in March. I wrote my review of Homegoing immediately, in March. A lot has happened since March. A lot has happened that is relevant to the subject matter of Homegoing. I have done a lot of reflecting, a lot of reading, a lot of discussing, and a lot of Work. This book and this review, in some ways, were a turning point in my commitment to truly understanding my own privilege, to educating myself, and to equity and justice. So, instead of rewriting it to reflect all that I have learned since, here it is, exactly as I wrote it in March. Homegoing Review, March 2020 Let me get the easy part out of the way, Homegoing is absolutely amazing. Yaa Gyasi wrote a phenomenal novel following a family line over centuries, through separation, slavery, loss, death, heartbreak, hope, and everything imaginable. This book rocketed easily into my top ten favorite books ever. From the first chapter, I was completely hooked and desperate to find out what would happen in the next generation. I …

November Book

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More than most books we’ve read at The Bookly Club, fellow book-lovers can’t seem to say enough good things about this year’s November book. And rightfully so! This bestseller is an all-time favorite for a lot of readers and has won countless accolades. Selected in 2016 for the National Book Foundation’s “5 under 35” award, the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Award for best first book, one of Oprah’s Best Books of the Year longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize in 2017, recipient of the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for 2017, an American Book Award, and the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Literature The historical fiction debut novel Homegoing begins in eighteenth century Ghana, and follows the parallel lives of two half sisters and their descendants. One sister, Effia, marries an Englishman and lives a life of comfort. The other, Esi, is captured, imprisoned, and sold into slavery. This multigenerational family saga travels from Southern plantations and the Civil War, to the Great Migration, the jazz age, dope houses in twentieth-century Harlem, right up …

Happiness and Hope

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I can safely say this is one of my leading favorites for any of our November selections. It’s a month when we pick a book that circles around family; the drama, the trials, the love, and everything in between. Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue was no different. A top book of 2017, Mbue’s debut novel, Oprah’s Book Club 2017 selection, and a New York Times bestseller. It’d been on my list since its debut, and I had high hopes! It’s the story of the Jonga family, and their journey to a happy life. Jende Jonga moves to New York City from Cameroon to find a job, provide for his family, and dutifully walk the path to citizenship in the land of opportunity. The book begins when he gets a stable, well-paying job as a chauffeur for Mr. Clark; a top executive at Lehman Brothers. The catch? It’s 2007. You may think you’re witnessing an American dream about to come true, but it’s much more complicated. The characters are powerfully written. I was deeply invested in each …

November Book

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This November we’ve picked a family saga that’s been on our #tbr (to-be-read list) for quite awhile. Well, for about three years which is like a decade in book nerd years. Cameroon native Imbolo Mbue’s best-selling debut novel Behold the Dreamers was released in 2016. It won the coveted spot as Oprah’s Book Club selection for 2017. It won the 2017 Pen/Faulkner Award for Fiction, was named a New York Times Book Review notable book of the year, and was on numerous lists as one of the best books of 2017. The high praise seems endless. And the story is still just as relevant and topical as it was three years ago. Set during the 2008 financial crisis, Mbue’s novel follows two disparate families; the Edwards family and the Jonga family. Clark Edwards is a senior executive at Lehman Brothers, he and his family live a life of wealth and privilege in New York City (with a home in the Hamptons on the side). Jende Jonga, his wife Neni, and their six-year-old son have come …

Loving Elvis Babbit

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Rabbit Cake by Annie Hartnett (our November selection) has flown somewhat under the radar. I’d not heard much about it until voting on what to read for Bookly in 2018, and I feel like that’s somewhat the norm. Not many have heard too much about this one, but those who have seem to have really enjoyed it. It’s the story of Elvis Babbit and her family after her mother’s drowning during a routine sleep swimming episodes. Survived by 11-year-old Elvis, her sister, and her dad, the family goes down an odd path of grief involving world record baking, talking birds, seashell jesus sculptures, zoological metaphors, and more sleep-driven chaos. For all its quirks, Elvis, the Babbit family narrator, brings a bright and young perspective of hope to her family’s tragedy. Her voice was entirely unique and a pleasure to read. I will say, this is the type of book/story that isn’t usually my first choice. A character-driven family drama where nothing much happens except a quirky familial arc. However, Harnett didn’t drag it along. The pacing …

November Book

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Road trips, shopping, cooking, dishes, gathering around the dinner table, eating, eating, eating – this month hosts a lot of time with family. A lot. And so does this month’s book. Rabbit Cake is a debut novel by Annie Hartnett (released March, 2017). Listed as one of Kirkus Reviews’ best books of 2017, it’s the story of Elvis Babbit, and family, after her mother’s suspicious sleep-swimming drowning.Her mother is survived by Elvis, her sister Lizzie (a sleep eater), and her father. As told from the perspective of 12-year-old Elvis, we start to see under the many layers of the Babbit family’s dirty laundry. But there are things yet to be uncovered. There are a few things that don’t seem right to Elvis, so she begins looking into the details of her mother’s life and death. Written with a very original, charmingly young voice, you feel like you’re experiencing all the nitches of this bizarre family through the eyes of Elvis Babbit. “Elvis investigates the strange circumstances of her mother’s death and finds comfort, if not answers, in …

Commonwealth: a nation, state, or other political unit

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“It’s like this enormous tree had just crashed through the house and I was picking up the leaves so no one would notice what had happened.” I read this book early last year, so details are a little fuzzy BUT, I do know that I LOVED it. I read it in one day, one sitting, becoming completely immersed in the lives of the Keating and Cousins family. Ann Patchett is one of my favorite writers (if you haven’t read This is the Story of a Happy Marriage, DO IT). She has a way of setting the scene that makes you feel as if you’re right there, which is exactly what she did in Commonwealth. From the first chapter, I could picture myself at Franny’s baptism, I could smell the gin, I could taste the oranges. And I was hooked. While I’m not always a fan of stories where nothing happens, the character development and the relationships between these complicated families — not to mention Patchett’s beautiful writing — had me flipping the pages, eager to …

What’s it about? Stuff. Really good stuff.

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Commonwealth is an uncommon read.  It revolves around a family that is uncommon but somehow not uncommon at all. The relationships between families divided and rebuilt with scraps is a universal theme. Even if you come from a family never split by divorce, you definitely have something off about your family. (If you think there is nothing off about your family, you are probably the thing that is off about your family.) Through the complex narrative that Patchett slowly unfolds, you can find pieces of the story that make you feel at home – sometimes the chaotic, dysfunctional version of home that so often defines our family. It speaks to the excellence of Ann Patchett’s writing that she could develop little stories and relationships and build it into something greater than the sum of their parts. It is the way she describes seemingly innocuous parts of the scene that drew me in.  Describing a single mother’s struggles – “She was always arriving, always leaving, never there.” It’s an enormously complex struggle synthesized into one sentence. …

Everything and Nothing

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Though I bought Commonwealth in mid-May, I didn’t start reading it until a few days ago. Mostly because I wasn’t sure I would like it. I had read a few reviews and talked to a few people who said variations of, “it took me a long time to get into it,” or “I couldn’t relate and didn’t connect with any of the characters.” I was dreading reading a book that I wouldn’t enjoy. Fast forward to November 26 when I decided to start it, with every intention of not finishing and writing a review that said exactly that. But lo and behold – I was hooked from the outset. I read the first quarter in one night, the next third the following night, and finished the rest over the next two days. Don’t get me wrong, it was not without its faults. The narrative device somehow made it feel like nothing was happening when in fact so much had happened that it was hard to believe. As I described it when discussing with the other Bookly Clubbers …