Homegoing (by Yaa Gyasi)

An early contender for best read of the year, for sure.  Homegoing absolutely blew me away.

If you aren't already familiar with it from the crazy hype last year, it starts on the African coast, in modern-day Ghana, with two separated sisters. One is forced to marry a slave owner and stays in Africa. The other is kidnapped and sold to America.  We follow each of their family histories, generation by generation, through the present day -- each chapter is a vignette focusing on a child of the previous protagonist.

The vignettes cover a large swath of the African and African-American experience, from the civil rights movement to slavery, Jim Crow to colonialism, tribal war in Africa and the Harlem of the renaissance.  Loss and separation is a constant theme. Each vignette is strongly character driven, each character is vivid and unique, and I formed an emotional connection with each one.

I can't say enough good things about this.  A must-read.

The Nix (by Nathan Hill)

I read this for (what else) the Tournament of Books, and I read it alongside Moonglow.

A lot of the ToB judges and commentators this year seem to have strongly preferred The Nix, but it was an interesting experience for me. Moonglow, despite being almost entirely fictional, is presented with this sheen of verisimilitude that, for me, The Nix lacks.  The ending went a ways towards mitigating this issue, but still -- Moonglow felt true for me; The Nix did not.

That's not to say it was anything less than a pleasure to read. It was deeply enjoyable, sometimes going off on tangents with side characters, most of whom are delightful. (I don't know that I needed Allan Ginsberg's point of view on the Chicago riots, but Pwnage's story is great.)  There's a chapter between Samuel, a professor, and his cheating student, presented in the form of logical fallacies, that is masterful. (And rings so completely true. We've all taught Laura Pottsdam at one point or another.)  There's a Choose Your Own Adventure chapter where the end of each chapter is only one choice. And so forth.

Overall, it's experimental in some ways, an impressive achievement, and very fun to read. I won't be mad to see it advance further in the tournament, and to discuss it more in the comments. But for me in terms of emotional resonance and a sense of authenticity, it falls a bit short.

Moonglow (by Michael Chabon)

The last Chabon book I tried to read was Telegraph Avenue, and I thought the writing was so horrible that I got barely half a chapter into it.  I am very curious to dig it up and see why I hated it so much, given my enjoyment of Moonglow.  Maybe it's a return to Kavalier and Clay form, or maybe Telegraph Avenue caught me on a bad day.

At any rate, this is an account of the life of Chabon's paternal grandfather, and the history he imparted to his grandson in the final days of his life.  Chabon jumps around in time to cover his grandmother's and mother's history as well. And of course, in all the interweaving stories, all the revelations of family secrets, the moon serves as a central theme.  It's assured, well-paced, wonderfully written, funny at times, authentic -- just a classic literary fiction delight.

Version Control (by Dexter Palmer)

As I mentioned in my last post, I loved Version Control! I've already recommended it to half a dozen people.  It's a wonderfully absorbing near-future story about not-quite time travel.  Setting it ten years in the future is so clever -- I'm reading about my daughter's generation, only when they are my age. It's a trippy experience! And that's before you even get to the world-building details -- the self-driving cars and the dining tables with embedded touchscreens and the personalized messages from the president.*

*Amusingly, or "amusingly," the dystopian touches do not go nearly far enough given our current political situation. Like, women still are treated as people and everything! That's how you know it's science fiction.

You also know I'm a sucker for an unreliable narrator. This narrator, Rebecca, is a quasi-functional alcoholic whose husband is a scentist working on a not-quite-time-travel-device. And she keeps getting hints that something about the world is not quite right. She's a great character, and the world is so interesting to read about, you really don't want this book to end. Or at least I didn't.

My only quibble -- actually my only two quibbles. One is that the character of Alicia (sexually voracious, brilliant, emotionally cold scientist) could only have been written by a man.  The other is that the ending didn't quite land for me -- maybe because I didn't fully understand what... a certain character did.  I am being intentionally vague but maybe will head over to Goodreads to see what others have to say.

Highly recommend this novel, and indeed I have slept on my opinions of both of the books in the bracket, and I'm giving the nod to Version Control. 

My Name Is Lucy Barton (by Elizabeth Strout)

I've been reading two ToB books simultaneously, this one and Version Control.  This was the one I've had to put on my to-do list every day to get through; Version Control has been my fun reward book.  Not that Lucy Barton is at all long, or in any way bad. But being in Lucy's world is being seeped in melancholy. 

The plot of the novel, such as it is, is that Lucy is in the hospital, being visited by her mother and reminiscing. We see flashes of her painful childhood, marked by extreme poverty and abuse, and her own deep emotional damage as a result.  Yet it's written in an understated, spare, meditative way.  Lucy and Lucy (both the character and the book itself) wring your heart as you read.

Let me put it this way: Version Control includes the death of a child and is way less depressing.  These two books are going head-to-head in the first round of the ToB. I can't wait to see how that turns out; when I finish Version Control, I'll let you know how I would vote.

All the Birds in the Sky (by Charlie Jane Anders)

I loved this book.  Read for the Tournament of Books and then realized it is set in San Francisco, so qualifies for the RHC as well. (In a category I already completed, but oh well.) (Hey, it's a debut novel! It counts after all.)

This is about two kids who meet in middle school and eventually end up embroiled in a potentially apocalyptic war of science vs. magic: Laurence on the side of science, and Patricia on the side of magic. I loved the magic stuff -- it is reminiscent of The Magicians, if The Magicians actually had good characters and pacing and a plot. And the sci-fi elements are fabulous too -- I loved the world-building of the near-future San Francisco.

The resolution is smart and feels completely earned.  I appreciated the casual queerness that Anders includes, as well as the flashes of humor.  A page-turner, and my favorite read of the year so far!

Underground Railroad (by Colson Whitehead)

I read and loved Underground Airlines last year, but Underground Railroad is the one that has been getting all the accolades and is of course on the Tournament of Books shortlist. I decided as a point of comparison, I would read it.

I hesitate to use the word "entertaining" to describe a book about slavery, or to imply that I need "entertainment" in my books about slavery. But Underground Airlines was entertaining and a bit of a page-turner -- although I don't think it shied away from the implications of its premise. Underground Railroad was more of a painful experience, so more difficult to read. That's not a criticism, by the way -- but a difference in my experience of each. 

Both of them are slightly alternate histories, though Railroad's is more subtle -- the only change is that the railroad is a literal railroad, with tracks and trains and tunnels, that aids Cora on her attempt to run away from plantation life and find freedom in the South.

It wasn't until the end of the book that I actually got why there was a literal railroad, and it was at that point that my mind was totally blown: Cora herself is a metaphor for the bridge between slavery and present-day America, showing that the damage of slavery is clearly alive and well in the black experience today. That is not a huge surprise, thematically, but the final chapter made both Cora and the railroad more overtly metaphorical than at any point earlier in the book.  And of course, then you know how Cora's story turns out, and it's the story of black America. Cora's life becomes all black lives. It is a brilliant conclusion.

However, I would still rank this below some of the other recent books I've read on the same theme, notably The Good Lord Bird, The Sellout, and yes, Underground Airlines.  For me, the brilliant ending was not enough brilliance to carry me through the painful, and somewhat predictable, and somewhat underdeveloped meat of the story. I expect this to go far in the Tournament of Books, but maybe not win. I'll be interested in the commentary, however!