Devil Is Fine by John Vercher

Wednesday, Apr. 30, 2025--San Antonio

Devil Is Fine by John Vercher was longlisted for two prizes and was named a best book of 2024 by several sites.  It is the story of a biracial (mulatto) professor under a lot of stress:  His job is on the line because his first book, a prize winner, has not been followed with further publications and the deadline for receiving tenure or losing his job is approaching.  His 17-year-old son has recently died without the two of them resolving issues that had been developing since the son became an adolescent.  He has just inherited a piece of land which is a former plantation from his grandfather on the "white" side of his ancestry.  He has been having hallucinations since arriving at the plantation to inspect it and to make a decision regarding what to do with it.  He is imagining conversations with his son.  And he seems to be taken over by the spirit of the former plantation owner as excavations at the site uncover aspects of the past.  It's a fascinating story although quite surreal at times.  I gave the book 4 stars out of 5.

Stag Dance by Torrey Peters

Sunday, Apr. 27, 2025--San Antonio

Stag Dance by Torrey Peters is a publication that includes a short novel and 3 short stories.  The title comes from the novela.  The writing is good and thought-provoking.  The first short story was quite provocative in concept.  Research lab work to aid pig farmers to make higher profits by introducing a bacteria that fights the body's natural inclination of developing sexual characteristics until a choice is made (in the case of pigs of giving the body estrogen so that all of the piglets become females) is released outside the lab causing a spreading contagion among humans that results in each person having to choose to be either male or female.  The novela takes place in an illegal logging camp in the middle of winter.  The stress of working under extreme cold conditions (with snow), working 12-hour-day-after-day to finish the job before spring arrives and government inspectors head to the countryside to catch illegal logging camps, and boredom from the routine of it with no option as an outlet for their frustrations results in the proposal of having a future stag dance.  The leader of the camp proposes that it be held "Winnipeg-style" which means that the dance will be more interesting by asking men who are willing to do so wear an upside-down triangle of brown fabric over their crotch for two weeks before the dance to indicate that they are willing to play the role of being a female.  The "fun" of this concept is that if the other men want to enjoy having dance partners (and maybe more), they must woo the men wearing triangular pussies--with favors, gifts, etc., up to the time of the dance.  The protagonist in the story is called Babe Bunyan.  He is huge and strong and quite unattractive.  But inside, he has desires to be courted by men, to have close encounters with men, and possibly even to have sex with one of them.  There's far more happening in the novela--jealousy conditions, a contract for the illegally felled wood with the state's wealthiest family, concerns about not being paid until the end of the contract, broken trusts between people in te camp, etc.  I found all four stories to be thought-provoking with each covering a topics that is beyond the realm of my life experiences.  I gave the book 4 1/2 stars out of 5.

Hombrecito by Santiago Jose Sanchez

Monday, Apr. 21, 2025--San Antonio

Hombrecito by Sanitago Jose Sanchez was recognized as a best book of 2024 by both NPR and Kirkus.  But it is a bit of muddle as a novel as far as I am concerned.  The beginning is the story of a family in Colombia--a woman married to a civil engineer who is seldom home (due to his work, but also because he has a reputation for having affairs) and two sons, one the son of the current husband and the other the son of a previous husband.  This opening section continues to the point where the mother and two sons leave Colombia to live in South Florida because of a tragedy--leaving a middle class life in Colombia for a poor one in Florida.  The middle of the book becomes the the story of the struggle the family has living in poverty in the U.S., the relationship between the sons who have been close starting to change, and eventually the story of the younger son as he, after high school graduation, departs from South Florida.  The majority of the last part of the book veers into the story of the younger son having lost his way in life--making bad choices related to university studies, becoming involved in taking drugs and partying, exploring his sexuality (as a somewhat effeminate gay whose interest is in older men who abuse him), and bumbling through jobs that do not pay well and his life mostly as a failure.  Then a final chapter is told by the mother and involves a turn-around where she and the younger son return to Colombia for a week because her mother/his grandmother is near death.  Personally, I found much of the middle of the book uninteresting--the brothers' relationship disintegrating and the young boy, although intelligent, repeatedly making very bad decisions in life, and the older brother mostly distancing himself and his life from both the brother and the mother while the mother makes progress in overcoming the poverty and hardships that they have faced since coming to the U.S.  The trip at the end of the novel was interesting but seemed to be mostly disjointed from the rest of the book because of it switching to the mother telling much of the story in it.  I gave the book 3 1/2 stars out of 5.

Twenty Four Seconds from Now by Jason Reynolds

Tuesday, Apr. 15, 2025--San Antonio

Twenty Four Seconds from Now by Jason Reynolds was listed among the top books of 2024.  It's adolescent literature that can be enjoyed by anyone--a love story written from the perspective of a 17-year-old Black boy.  It's uniquely written, starting 24 seconds before he and his girlfriend of 2 years and he are about to have sex for the first time and going backwards by 24's (minutes, hours, weeks, months) sharing what has come before to build up to this moment.  Neon (named that because his grandfather was Deon and his father Leon and told by his girl friend that he's lucky they didn't choose Peon!) does not fit the stereotype for teenage Black boys.  He is kind, thoughtful, caring, sensitive, intelligent, very communicative, and hilarious at times.  He is from a middle class background with the family on his mother's side owning a metal shop making door knockers for several generations.  He and his group of friends are seniors in high school and are the committee for producing the school yearbook as an online publication for the first time instead of a physical book.  He watches films with his grandfather once a week, walks his grandmother to the cemetery once a week after his grandfather dies, takes his girl friend on weekly trips to see old films at the cinema, and assists at his father's bingo hall by handing out the prize money to each winner.  He is worried about not just the coming sexual experience, but about the coming end of the school year.  His girl friend is going away to college, and he is apprenticing at the family door knocker metal shop.  What will happen then?  It was easy to like the characters and the story which is a fast read making me laugh often.  I gave the book a rating of 4 1/2 stars out of 5.

Fire Exit by Morgan Talty

 Saturday, Apr. 12, 2025--San Antonio

Fire Exit by Morgan Talty is a slice-of-life novel.  It takes place over a rather short period of time in a very particular place with back-stories to provide insight into who is who and why they are the way they are.  The setting is in rural Maine on the border where the Penobscot Nation tribal lands begin. The central character is an unmarried, non-Native American man who was raised by his mother and his Native American stepfather on the tribal lands until he became an adult and had to leave.  His stepfather bought land and built him a small home just opposite the river that is the border.  His best friends when living on the tribal lands were a boy and a girl his age who were both natives.  In his past, he and the young woman who had been his friend for years lived together and she became pregnant.  Because tribal rules do not give rights to people who are not 100% native, the woman left him and married a native man to assure rights for her daughter.  The daughter is now a married adult and is not aware that he is her real father.  The boy who was his close friend no longer lives in the area; his father, who was the chief of the tribe, beat him regularly as a child for not being manly and he now lives in California and is married to a man.  The mother of the main character has suffered from depression all her life and has developed dementia.  She eventually moved into town and there have been years of little or no contact between them.  Because of his loneliness and his own problems, the main character has developed a close relationship with an alcoholic man he met at AA meetings.  It is not a sexual relationship, it is a co-dependence based on the need for someone in each of their lives considering the loneliness they are feeling in this rural area.  The reader learns of the hardships all of these people have faced, the limitations of their lives based on the circumstances, the guilt and secrets that each has, their need to have better or different lives than currently exists for them, etc.  It's an interesting story.  I gave the book 4 stars out of 5.

Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino

Wednesday, Apr. 9, 2025--San Antonio

Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino is quite unique.   It was named a top book of 2024 by Time and others and is the story of an alien brought to life as a human female child birthed by a poor American woman in Philadelphia.  (The book tells how it occurred.)  The child is a bit of a misfit (as any alien would be), but that works well for her to fulfill her purpose here.  As a child, she is visited in the evenings by beings from her planet who explain her existence and her purpose.  Not until she is an adolescent is she "activated" for fulfilling that purpose which is to report on what life is like on Earth, since there are problems on her home planet that will cause everyone to die if they cannot find a solution such as a new place to live.  The book consists of her life story--living in poverty and what that entails, being a bit different from everyone else (definitely not a part of the in-crowd), being very intelligent and earning scholarships for the best Catholic middle school and high school in the city, missing out on a scholarship for college because another student who cheated got it, being close friends with a girl in her classes and her family through most of her life, making the decision to be bold and move to New York City to live where her best friend and one of brother both moved, etc.  But more important than that life story are her communications back to her home planet.  The author of the book has done a great job of imagining what it would be like for a stranger to earth observing life here.  Each communication is an explanation of how things are, but written in a very innocent, childlike way.  It's those communications that make the book so special and keep the reader interested.  There are sad times, happy times, frustrating times, etc., that assure the reader that she is really living life as an earthling while observing it.  I enjoyed taking the journey with her and gave the book 4 stars out of 5.

The Hypocrite by Jo Hamya

Wednesday, Apr. 2, 2025--San Antonio

The Hypocrite by Jo Hamya was recommended as a top book of 2024 by several sources.  I read it, and it was an interesting concept for a novel, but it was quite confusing at times, since the book was describing 3 different periods of time--a 3-month period a father and daughter spent in Sicily as he wrote a novel and she was invited there to assist him, and two simultaneous events occurring 10 years later--the mother and daughter having lunch together and discussing their lives while the father (divorced from the wife since the daughter was a young child) watches a matinee of a play the daughter has written which seems to be a criticism of what happened that summer.  By the end of the book, I did not care for any of the characters.  They are all very self-centered.  The father has always had sloppy, inconsiderate habits which bother those around him and which he seems to think are okay ways for him to be.  The mother divorced him for those reasons and seems to have tried to punish him by limiting his time with the daughter while collecting as much child support as possible (since he is a very successful author).  The daughter is the worst of all of them, however.  She is a 30 year old who feels that she has been slighted constantly by everyone in her life.  She is always ready to tell anyone else (even strangers on the street) how they are offending her by what they are saying or how they are acting.  In my opinion, it's time for all of them to go their separate ways and to never have anything to do with each other ever again; otherwise, there will never be any peace in their lives.  But I expect, the same problems will arise with anyone else who becomes involved personally with any one of the three.  I was so glad to see the book come to an end.  I gave it 3 1/2 stars out of 5 not because I didn't like the characters but because it was such a complicated construction of a novel that I found myself having to figure out too often what was happening and where and when.