JESS JUST READS

A BOOK REVIEW BLOG

Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng

Twelve-year-old Bird Gardner lives a quiet existence with his loving but broken father, a former linguist who now shelves books in Harvard’s library. He knows not to ask too many questions, stand out too much, stray too far. For a decade, their lives have been governed by laws written to preserve ‘American culture’ in the wake of years of economic instability and violence. To keep the peace and restore prosperity, the authorities are now allowed to relocate children of dissidents, especially those of Asian origin, and libraries have been forced to remove books seen as unpatriotic – including the work of Bird’s mother, Margaret, a Chinese American poet who left the family when he was nine years old.

Bird has grown up disavowing his mother and her poems; he doesn’t know her work or what happened to her, and he knows he shouldn’t wonder. But when he receives a mysterious letter containing only a cryptic drawing, he is drawn into a quest to find her. His journey will take him through the many folktales she poured into his head as a child, through the ranks of an underground network of librarians, into the lives of the children who have been taken, and finally to New York, where a new act of defiance may be the beginning of much-needed change.

Celeste Ng’s Our Missing Hearts is a powerful dystopian tale set in the near future where Asian Americans are scorned and feared, with ensuing and continued dire consequences.

Our protagonist is the twelve-year-old Bird, whose mother fled years earlier for seemingly no reason and Bird’s father offers little insight into the true reasons behind such a painful abandonment. When Bird receives a letter from his mother he begins to question the reasons behind her disappearance and as the story unfolds, we, the reader, learn more about the country’s vilification of Asian Americans. More specifically, a law implemented to try and preserve American culture.

“He has never heard these words before, has never even heard this language before, but it is clear from the look on his father’s face that his father has, that he not only recognises the language but understands it, understands what this man has said.”

Celeste’s latest novel explores family and responsibility, but it also delves into power, injustice and racism. An authoritative government has taken over the US and it has harsh ramifications for anyone in the country of Asian descent.

When we meet Bird, he’s living with his father – a man rather oppressed and reluctant to challenge the oppressive government. And when Bird suspects that he may be able to reconnect with his mother, a woman who may just be the complete opposite, he sees an opportunity too enticing to refuse.

Throughout the novel we come to witness an unbreakable bond between mother and child, and how much they’re both willing to sacrifice to be with each other. Amidst a society consumed by fear, we have two characters willing to risk it all.

“They could have fired me, he says. The library isn’t open to just anyone, you know. You have to be a researcher. They have to watch who they let in. The university gets a lot of leeway because of its reputation, but they’re not immune. If someone caused trouble and they traced it back to a book they got here…”

Celeste is known for her powerful novels that challenge treatment of others, and Our Missing Hearts is no different. She has captured such a large-scale dystopian setting through the lens of a very small cast of characters. The ending, in particular, will sit with you for some time.

The novel does take a little bit of time to gain momentum, and it really isn’t until Bird goes in search of his mother that the novel starts to increase in traction. Up until that moment, Bird doesn’t seem to possess much agency or drive – he is merely a player, reactive to what is happening around him.

“A game they played, he and his mother, when he was very small. Before school, before he had any other world but her. His favourite game, one he’d begged her to play. Their special game, played only when his father was at work, kept as a secret between just them. You be the monster, mama. I’ll hide, and you be the monster.”

Recommended for readers of literary fiction, and dystopian tales. Readership skews female, 30+

Thank you to the publishing company for mailing me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

Our Missing Hearts
Celeste Ng
October 2022
Hachette Book Publishers

The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell

Florence, the 1560s. Lucrezia, third daughter of Cosimo de’ Medici, is free to wander the palazzo at will, wondering at its treasures and observing its clandestine workings. But when her older sister dies on the eve of marriage to Alfonso d’Este, ruler of Ferrara, Modena and Reggio, Lucrezia is thrust unwittingly into the limelight: the duke is quick to request her hand in marriage, and her father to accept on her behalf.

Having barely left girlhood, Lucrezia must now make her way in a troubled court whose customs are opaque and where her arrival is not universally welcomed. Perhaps most mystifying of all is her husband himself, Alfonso. Is he the playful sophisticate her appears before their wedding, the aesthete happiest in the company of artists and musicians, or the ruthless politician before whom even his formidable sisters seem to tremble?

As Lucrezia sits in uncomfortable finery for the painting which is to preserve her image for centuries to come, one thing becomes worryingly clear. In the court’s eyes, she has one duty: to provide the heir who will shore up the future of the Ferrarese dynasty. Until then, for all of her rank and nobility, her future hangs entirely in the balance.

Set at the heart of the treacherous political world of the Italian Renaissance, Maggie O’Farrell’s The Marriage Portrait centres around a young woman’s tumultuous marriage to someone she is convinced will murder her.

O’Farrell has found her comfort zone with 16th century heroines. In The Marriage Portrait, she crafts a story around Lucrezia, who was the third child of Medici, ruler of Florence. Married off at age 13 to the Duke of Ferrara – Alfonso – she died not long after the wedding and was long thought to have been poisoned by her husband. In The Marriage Portrait, O’Farrell imagines a story around this historical saga, brining Lucrezia and Alfonso to life with a vivid tale.

“Lucrezia said nothing, just pulled a piece of parchment towards her. It was the only way to deal with Isabella’s fits of temper: ignore them, let them run their course. Securing the page with one hand, she held her pen poised. How to begin? Dearest Alfonso? Your excellency?”

Structurally, we first meet Lucrezia one year into her marriage. Failing to fall pregnant and give Alfonso an heir, she knows that he will murder her so that he can re-marry. The novel then moves back in time so we can understand how Lucrezia came to be in this situation.

The setup of the novel is beguiling and intriguing, and the latter third of the book builds in an enticing manner, but for most of the novel the pacing lacks and the tension never builds to where it needs to be. Perhaps the novel is too long. Perhaps too few characters cross our path and so we’re largely forced to read only about Lucrezia who grows a bit monotonous at certain points in the novel.

Truthfully, I wanted to love this novel but in reality, I had to force myself to continue.

“The plaits are arranged, criss-crossing her head, looping over hear ears and the jewels there, up the curve of her neck, and secured at the crown of her head. The veil is brought down around her while they affix the golden diadem, brought by Vitelli himself, from the iron-lined strongroom.”

One of the strengths of the novel does include O’Farrell’s description – rich and full, if at times a little too lavish and long. She revels in how she brings an author to a setting and an interaction; O’Farrell cannot be accused of stripping back her prose too much. At times though, her description boggles and slows down the pacing, traps its reader instead of keeping us propelled forward.

I wonder if there just wasn’t enough to the plotting to craft a faster paced story, and so Maggie had to fill the gaps with excessive prose that brought the novel to an unnecessary 440 pages.

“Except for little Lucrezia, tucked into a bed with both her sisters in a room under the eaves of the palazzo roof. Lucrezia of the solemn gaze and pale, wispy hair – incongruously so, for all her siblings had the sleek fox-dark colouring of their Spanish mamma.”

The Marriage Portrait is best suited to historical fiction readers, with a particular pursuit towards literary fiction. Readership skews 40+

Thank you to the publishing company for mailing me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Marriage Portrait
Maggie O’Farrell
September 2022
Hachette Book Publishers

The Women Could Fly by Megan Giddings

Josephine Thomas has heard every conceivable theory about her mother’s disappearance. That she was kidnapped. Murdered. That she took on a new identity to start a new family. That she was a witch. This is the most worrying charge, because in a world where witches are real, peculiar behaviour raises suspicions and a woman – especially a Black woman – can find herself on trial for witchcraft.

But fourteen years have passed since her mother’s disappearance, and now Jo is finally ready to let go of the past. Yet her future is in doubt. The State mandates that all women marry by the age of thirty – or enrol in a registry that allows them to be monitored, effectively forfeiting their autonomy. At twenty-eight, Jo is ambivalent about marriage. With her ability to control her life on the line, she feels as if she has her never understood her mother more. When she’s offered the opportunity to honour one last request from her mother’s will, Jo leaves her regular life to feel connected to her one last time.

Megan Giddings’ The Women Could Fly follows twenty-seven-year-old Josephine Thomas, whose mother disappeared fourteen years earlier. Under suspicion of witchcraft, her disappearance caused irreparable damage for Josephine and her father. Naturally, people suspect Jo of being a witch too.

Jo and her father, after fourteen years, decide to accept that Jo’s mother is dead. They mourn her, grieve her. Jo reflects over her mother’s belongings in an attempt to gain closure for her mother’s decision to disappear. Her mother’s will, updated and read, stipulates that if Jo travels to an island in Lake Superior, on a specific day, she would receive a substantial inheritance. Jo decides to honour her mother’s wish and what she finds on that island challenges everything she thought she knew about her family.

“After my mother’s disappearance, the usual protocols happened. While the police quietly investigated my dad, I was taken away by the Bureau of Witchcraft to be questioned. A woman who can vanish might not be in danger, instead, she might be a danger to everyone. And if you’re the daughter of a witch?”

If magic were real and available largely to only women, of course men would try to control it – control those with the power to wield the magic. Once a woman turns 28, she must register with the state and be subjected to regular tests designed to uncover witches. Marriage with a man ensures protection, and thus is Jo’s best chance at remaining undetected.

The Women Could Fly explores magic and family, but also patriarchy and power – control over those we do not understand, and unwillingness to try and understand them. This is a multi-layered novel, and Jo’s POV allows for a nuanced, deep understanding of the world around her and how unsafe she feels as a black woman with a witch for a mother.

“I was so tired of people suspecting me, so tired of always having to follow arbitrary rules. How could I live the rest of my life like this? I was almost twenty-eight and exhausted already. I reminded myself that throughout history women had endured far worse things.”

Megan’s writing is raw, sleek and observant. She captures so much with such few words, and set within a world where women must marry by 30, The Women Could Fly feels like a modern-day The Handmaid’s Tale. What she encapsulates within 270 pages allows for a reflective reading experience that sits with the reader.

“He shared food the way I liked to share food, by gingerly cutting off a piece for the other person and putting it on a appetizer plate. He asked me questions. We held hands under the table. I realized we had never done that before.”

Recommended for literary readers, and those interested in books tackling social commentary and power. Readership skews 30+

Thank you to the publishing company for mailing me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Women Could Fly
Megan Giddings
August 2022
Pan Macmillan Publishers

Electric and Mad and Brave by Tom Pitts

Matt Lacey is in a mental health facility recovering from a breakdown.

In an attempt to work through a mess of conflicting thoughts and feelings, he writes, unwinding the story of his adolescence with the beautiful, impassive, fierce Christina.

As Matt delves into the more agonising moments of his past, he has to learn to look directly at the pain and love that have made him who he is now.

Brazenly wearing its heart on its sleeve, Electric and Mad and Brave is a heightened and technicolour story about the soaring joy and numbing nightmare of being young and hopelessly in love.

Tom Pitt’s literary debut Electric and Mad and Brave centres around twenty-eight-year-old Matt Lacey, living in a mental health facility in Melbourne and struggling to confront and reconcile with events from his past. When Matt’s therapist suggest he keep a journal to reflect on his childhood and the events that led to his admission into the facility, we are immersed in a compelling and tender history.

Narrated in first person, the book’s stylistic devices allow for an immediate sense of Matt’s mind frame and his willingness (or rather, unwillingness) to confront the truth about his past. We come to realise early on that Matt is an incredibly unreliable narrator – at first, his journal entries are clear and concise. Over time, they become chaotic, they double-back, they re-write events we thought we’d already learned. Matt is being untruthful with the reader and it isn’t until the final chapters that we find out how certain events actually unfolded in Matt’s childhood.

“No – that can’t have been what she’d meant to say. There’d been something else on her lips. Hadn’t there? Yes. In that pause, she’d almost said it: something mad and terrifying. Although maybe she couldn’t say. Maybe to say meant stepping off a ledge into…”

Moving between past and present quite frequently, Matt meets Christina when he is 11 and she is 12. We follow them over the course of their adolescence as their connection grows and attraction develops. Both Matt and Christina’s families are unhealthy and dysfunctional, but in rather different ways. These two kids coming together forces these two families to intersect which sets into motion a string of avoidable events leading to Matt’s breakdown and admission into the mental health facility.

Tom Pitts builds tension and pacing throughout the book, but it’s most notable in the final chapters as the truth about Christina and Matt’s relationship is revealed. Their love is a destructive one, and so we can feel the tension build between them as we move closer and closer to the reveal. Stylistically, there’s a quicker nature to the writing. Shorter chapters, more abrupt observations and descriptions. We’re suddenly moving through at a much faster pace to build and maintain momentum.

“In the days after, I began to view things differently, my memories becoming distorted. I would think of Alek at the dining table with his shiny head, only to suddenly recall that his eyebrows had been skin too – that he’d sat upright in hospital only because he was too weak to stand…”

Electric and Mad and Brave sensitively portrays mental health and trauma, and the process of confronting traumatic events from one’s past.

The book moves between past and present so frequently, sometimes in the middle of a chapter, and I’ll admit I sometimes struggled to follow the flow of events. It was often hard to immediately determine what was past vs. present, what was a memory and what wasn’t. I often found myself having to flick back and re-read certain sections.

“Now I was in the back seat, having still not replied, and my hands were sweating. I looked outside and the landscape was enchanting and warped. Somehow this morning dusk was causing the landmarks to become strange imitations of themselves.”

Poignant, moving and observant, Tom Pitts’ Electric and Mad and Brave is recommended for literary readers. Readership skews 30+

Thank you to the publishing company for mailing me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

Electric and Mad and Brave
Tom Pitts
August 2022
Pan Macmillan Publishers

Reward System by Jem Calder

Julia has landed a fresh start – at a ‘pan-European’ restaurant.
‘Imagine that,’ says her mother.
‘I’m imagining.’

Nick is flirting with sobriety and nobody else. Did you know: adults his age are now more likely to live with their parents than a romantic partner?

Life should have started to take shape by now – but instead we’re trying on new versions of ourselves, swiping left and right, and searching for a convincing answer to that question: ‘What do you do?’

A compact set of contemporary short fiction, Jem Calder’s Reward System explores the millennial experience, modern life, getting older, and trying to solidify what it is we want from our jobs.

Reward System is six short stories, each varied in length and containing an assortment of characters who make an appearance across different stories – characters move in and out of stories almost like adult friends do. Jem has a rather skilled ability to capture the micro, minute details of everyday interactions – implied meaning, concealed desire, for example. Dialogue is quite bare but conveys all that it needs to.

“Because she knew her mother didn’t have many people to talk to her in life and that Wednesdays marked the remotest point of interspace between her Sunday fellowships at St Mike’s, Julia made it a midweek habit to FaceTime with her during the breaks that divided her split shifts at the kitchen.”

Each short story is broken up further into scenes and shorter snippets, allowing for somewhat of a staccato reading experience. It feels like what we’re experiencing of these characters is just a very tiny glimpse into a much wider story, and so it leaves you wanting more.

My favourite story is the first one – A Restaurant Somewhere Else – which also happens to be the longest one (107 pages). It certainly feels like the most fully-developed story, with a slower build and comprehensive character reactions. It is also a rather quirky and enticing setting, Julia being a sous chef at a rather up-market restaurant, surrounded by quite a large suite of eccentric characters to keep the story anchored and to maintain momentum.

“Pretty celibate this whole past year, actually. With only a wall separating her from Margot and only a global cellular-network connection separating Margot from her older sister…Julia had been too sound-and-space-conscious to bring any boys back to the apartment since moving in.”

Whilst I did find a couple of the stories a little dry and slow, and I did skim read over some paragraphs that I found a little monotonous, Jem will find loyal readers in those who appreciate short story collections. The package itself is gorgeous – hardback, smaller in size, with bold colours of orange, green and blue.

“Walking home, he said he was still hungry, and when they got back to his apartment, she baked two peaches and watched as he ate them both with ice cream. He was maybe the most unselfconscious eater she had ever seen, perhaps also the greediest.”

Observant and insightful, Jem Calder’s Reward System is recommended for readers of short fiction, novellas, and literary fiction. Readership skews 30+

Thank you to the publishing company for mailing me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

Reward System
Jem Calder
July 2022
Allen & Unwin Book Publishers