The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more

Book Review: Separated: Inside An American Tragedy by Jacob Soboroff

Book #167 of 2020:

Separated: Inside An American Tragedy by Jacob Soboroff

This title is pitched as a deep dive into the Trump administration’s draconian policy of separating migrant children from their parents at the southern U.S. border, but it’s instead somewhat narrowly focused on author Jacob Soboroff’s personal experiences investigating that story, including tedious descriptions of his every research step and fawning quotes from his journalistic peers. There are also wide swaths of relevant background information on immigration and asylum that are not provided, rendering the project less of a definitive reference text and more of a meandering memoir that only occasionally educates along the way. The writer’s heart is in the right place and I value his reporting on the subject elsewhere, but this book is fairly unnecessary.

(The audiobook is also pretty bad, with endnotes divorced from their context and interstitial document excerpts only identified at the end of their quotes. It’s a production that opts to read through the printed version cover to cover, rather than considering how formatting should be adapted for the spoken medium. My rating reflects the written content and not these editing choices, but they were frustrating enough to raise in this review.)

★★☆☆☆

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Book Review: Girl, Serpent, Thorn by Melissa Bashardoust

Book #166 of 2020:

Girl, Serpent, Thorn by Melissa Bashardoust

I like how this new fantasy novel of a princess whose touch is poison — so inadvertently appropriate for our pandemic era of masks and social distancing! — blends #ownvoices Persian folklore with elements of the Sleeping Beauty and Rapunzel fairy tales, by way of the Nathaniel Hawthorne story “Rappaccini’s Daughter.” That’s an unusual combination of influences, and it gives the text a fairly distinctive flair. I also appreciate that the heroine has both a male and a female love interest as the plot progresses, with nary a sign of any biphobia or homophobia built into the worldbuilding.

Unfortunately, it feels as though all the relationships in the book, including those two romances, are founded upon secrets and lies, which are not always well-motivated or examined for their effects on the characters’ trust. I’m kept somewhat at a distance from the narrative as a result, unable to fully invest in any of these personal dynamics. It’s still a neat read, but not nearly as captivating as author Melissa Bashardoust’s Girls Made of Snow and Glass debut.

★★★☆☆

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TV Review: Shameless, season 7

TV #27 of 2020:

Shameless, season 7

Although still recognizable, this is a quieter and more thoughtful year of Shameless, with arcs that build gradually to a boil rather than the show’s typical frenetic style. It doesn’t always work with what we know of these characters — Fiona’s new focus on business and disinterest in mothering her siblings is particularly hard to square with her earlier pursuit of custody rights, and the writers can’t seem to decide whether Debbie is a genius who can ace her GED without studying or a hopeless case who might as well beg on the streets — but the slower pace generally serves the narrative well. Frank’s time running a nearby homeless shelter, while absurd, also positions him nicely as a minor antagonistic presence in his children’s lives, a much better use than when the series treats him as a full-fledged antihero.

Shameless’s exploration of transgender issues this season is also more grounded and compassionate than I would have expected/feared (based on how it’s handled race and disability in the past). We do get some hurtful things said in ignorance and one scene that reduces people to their pronouns as an apparent punchline, but Trevor, as played by trans actor Elliot Fletcher, is a nuanced and interesting role. And overall, the program is again messy but effective: maybe not quite back at the heights of season 4, but still a big turnaround from early season 6. Despite a few dropped plot points here and there, the ongoing Gallagher story seems in a relatively stable place for once.

[Content warning for alcoholism, racism, rape, and incest.]

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: Fever 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson

Book #165 of 2020:

Fever 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson

I remember liking this historical fiction title when I first encountered it as assigned reading back in middle school, so when my library acquired the digital audiobook in the midst of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, I figured it might be worth revisiting. And overall, I’d say the 2000 novel holds up well. Author Laurie Halse Anderson captures the panic and terror of an outbreak more acutely than I had realized, and although her plucky protagonist is an invention, the work is quite educational on the facts of Philadelphia’s Yellow Fever crisis. It’s not a perfect analogue to our own circumstances, of course, but there are recognizable parallels that add further poignance to an already gripping plot.

I also appreciate how the book features race in the form of black supporting characters and (brief) discussions of discrimination and slavery. The topic is somewhat flattened for the middle-grade genre and is hardly a focus of the text, but it’s an element that many writers would have likely elided altogether, so I’m glad to see it here. As with the descriptions of dead and dying bodies, Anderson walks a fine line to impart the seriousness of the situation without ever growing too heavy for her young audience.

★★★★☆

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Book Review: Middlegame by Seanan McGuire

Book #164 of 2020:

Middlegame by Seanan McGuire

I have mixed feelings about this story of psychic twins, separated at birth, who nevertheless find each other via telepathy and end up forging an unshakable bond. I like the protagonists themselves, and the plot reads like classic Stephen King as they use their special talents to evade evil and undo a few doomed timelines. I especially appreciate the complicated nuances of Roger and Dodger’s often-codependent relationship, and that author Seanan McGuire resists ever turning these estranged siblings into lovers (as I worried she’d do after a similar development in her Newsflesh trilogy).

On the other hand, the backstory to the experiment that created the rhymed pair is frustratingly vague, as are any other details to the alchemical worldbuilding and the exact goals that anyone is fighting to achieve. I can’t help but feel checked-out as a reader when the primary villain’s motivation seems to be just a generic power grab, which the nominal heroes only oppose because it involves their deaths. We also spend too many scenes — including the entire first hour of the audiobook — from the perspective of this antagonist or his lieutenant that are dramatically inert, telling us nothing more than that they continue to be nebulously diabolical in their schemes. The narrative crackles back to life whenever we rejoin the main characters, but this would be a much stronger novel if it could focus solely on them throughout.

[Content warning for a graphic suicide attempt.]

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★★★☆☆

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Movie Review: Palm Springs (2020)

Movie #11 of 2020:

Palm Springs (2020)

This is a fun spin on the old time-loop story, situating it as a romantic comedy with both leads stuck in the same repeating day (which happens to include a wedding, a classic romcom setting to begin with). It’s as funny as you’d expect from Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti, and I particularly love how she gets to play a dynamic character with her own arc of self-empowerment, rather than just being there to service the narrative of her schlubby co-star. There are some of the typical plot beats to this genre, but the script surprises me at several points, and even makes some smart philosophical observations that feel straight out of The Good Place. I’m not saying I would watch the film again and again, but it’s pretty great on this first time through.

[Content warning for torture and suicide.]

★★★★☆

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TV Review: Altered Carbon, season 2

TV #26 of 2020:

Altered Carbon, season 2

I still have some issues with the logic of this sci-fi series, from the frequent foolishness of its elite super-soldiers to the persistence of sexism centuries after humans have started casually swapping their minds from body to body. (If anything, that decoupling of mental and physical should allow for a nuanced consideration of gender and other identity aspects that the show is just categorically uninterested in pursuing.)

Nevertheless, even more so than the first season, this sophomore outing has made a lot of really smart adaptation choices, keeping the basic premise of the worldbuilding and a few particular plot beats from the books but generally spinning a fresh take on the material that shores up its many weaknesses. Characters and concepts are remixed together in a way that likely disappoints fans of the original Richard K. Morgan trilogy, but as someone who was only ever lukewarm on that version, I greatly prefer what the TV writers have come up with.

Of note this year is the recasting of protagonist Takeshi Kovacs from Joel Kinnaman to Anthony Mackie — a seemingly necessary reconfiguration for the new story that many shows would surely have resisted regardless, plus just a win for diversity — as well as the decision to bring back the endearing hotel A.I. who only appeared in print for the first novel. These are clever production moves that further service the action and the fun exploration of the setting’s mythology that follows.

I’ve been hard on this franchise before, and it definitely offers more here that I could nitpick, but since this is its finest iteration yet, I think it’s earned my first four-star rating.

★★★★☆

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Book Review: The Monster Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson

Book #163 of 2020:

The Monster Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson (The Masquerade #2)

I love the first volume in this series, a poignant character study of a queer woman sacrificing her morals and steeping herself in the politics of her people’s conquerors in a long game to bring down their bigoted empire from within. And I have a lot of lingering affection for its world and protagonist as a result, but this follow-up is a rather different beast, a sprawling narrative that adds a lot of detail to our understanding of the wider setting without ever finding much for Baru to proactively work towards next.

There are also quite a few surprise coincidences — motivated only by vague references to fate — and the genre turns more overtly towards the fantastical, with immortal enemies who perpetuate their existence via cancerous growths into new hosts, which is a pretty odd divergence from the fairly grounded intrigue of the first book. I’m still invested enough in the heroine’s personal arc and the broader plot to check out any further sequels, but this is not the instant classic that I was hoping author Seth Dickinson would deliver again.

[Content warning for infanticide, eugenics, genital mutilation, brain damage, cannibalism, homophobia, and rape.]

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster

Book #162 of 2020:

The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster

An old favorite. It’s just so delightfully heartfelt and punny, and it definitely helped shape my love of language at an early age. Milo, a bored and boring young child, gets whisked away to a magical land where he must rescue the princesses Rhyme and Reason from the Demons of Ignorance. Along the way he meets many colorful characters, learns some things, and comes to view life as a grand adventure. Juster wields his language beautifully, and there are any number of delightful turns of phrase and inventive re-interpretations of common expressions as actual characters and concepts, from the Whether Man and the Spelling Bee to eating your words and jumping to Conclusions. I identify far too strongly with the Ever-Present Word Snatcher, and I suspect Norton Juster may have as well.

[Review originally posted 2/12/11]

★★★★★

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Book Review: Wuhan Diary: Dispatches from a Quarantined City by Fang Fang

Book #161 of 2020:

Wuhan Diary: Dispatches from a Quarantined City by Fang Fang

Originally published as a series of daily blog posts from late January to late March of 2020, this book recounts Chinese author Fang Fang’s experiences in the initial epicenter of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. At the time, the city went into lockdown in an (unfortunately futile) effort to contain the virus, and Fang, a lifelong Wuhan resident, was there to offer her perspective and attempt to corral all the breaking information and personal stories that came her way. The 65-year-old academic gained a global audience through her writing, as well as some objections over accuracy and critiques that she was either too hard or too soft on the local political response.

It’s interesting to read Fang’s words in translation a few months later on. A lot of what’s novel for her and her neighbors has become our unhappy new normal — shelter-in-place ordinances, face masks, grocery shortages, business closures, etc. — and the unintentional foreshadowing is somewhat uncanny, even though Fang never once predicts that the epidemic will go worldwide. The blogger is also presenting what she learns about the coronavirus as she hears it, so there are a few claims, as she warns in a foreword to the finished text, that we now know are incorrect. And in fact, a growing theme across the diary is her anger at the early experts who told people that the disease was a minor concern that could not spread from human to human.

Removed from the context of a digital ecosystem there are pieces to this work that fall a little flat, especially the writer’s snippy reactions to contemporary critics and aggravation at the government censors who take down her entries without explanation. Yet she has a keen eye for observation and the valuable ability to synthesize a narrative from disparate strands, and she helps provide a sense not just of what life was like in that moment, but also of how the quarantine was almost destined to fail.

We are still far from the end of the crisis, and it’s difficult to predict how future generations will someday look back and study all this. But it would not surprise me if Fang Fang’s on-the-ground reporting becomes key testimony in that regard.

★★★★☆

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