Book of the Day Roundup July 16-July 20
Behind These Hands
Linda Vigen Phillips
Light Messages
Softcover $16.99 (300pp)
978-1-61153-259-3
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
When a member of her family receives a terminal diagnosis, fourteen-year-old Claire Fairchild suddenly questions her every action, wondering what remains important in the face of the challenge. This novel written in verse sticks close to Claire’s heartache as she navigates not only her own reaction to the news but the reactions of her family and friends. This is a compelling story in whose heroine other struggling teens might see themselves.
Claire is a music prodigy. She spends hours at the piano, listening for the conversation that occurs between her hands and the instrument. She shares this passion for music with her longtime best friend, Juan, against whom she is competing for a scholarship based on their own compositions.
When her younger brother receives a diagnosis of Batten disease, Claire struggles to find a way back into her own life that feels significant. Shocked and terrified, she yearns to celebrate her brother’s life and make her own worthwhile.
Short, targeted scenes and ruminations keep close to the emotional turmoil Claire experiences. Her voice is young and authentic, paying close attention to her friendships and relationships. As her parents struggle to help their children, Claire finds her family relationships changing; each person must determine how to renegotiate their connections. Here it is clear how a severe diagnosis guts not only patients but their families too.
Still, Claire finds a way to bring hope to the story. Written to help young adults and their families handle mental and physical health challenges, her story speaks to an often forgotten population and does so without exploiting the situation for melodrama. It can help teachers and students alike to understand how young people weather and grow from challenging mental and physical diagnoses.
CAMILLE-YVETTE WELSCH (June 27, 2018)
Tacky Goblin
T. Sean Steele
The Unnamed Press
Softcover $14.99 (130pp)
978-1-944700-60-7
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
T. Sean Steele’s Tacky Goblin is a clever, loopy novella that relates the journal entries of an unnamed twentysomething central character. He drifts through ennui-laden days in his parents’ home in Chicago, surviving demonic possession that’s due to a mouth-shaped ceiling mold stain that swallows up a parasitic goblin.
Things get even more surreal when the hero moves to Los Angeles to share an apartment with his sister, Kim. Kim may or not be a serial killer; the dog the narrator cares for, Muggins, is possibly also an infant named Barb; and the upstairs neighbor that blasts ambient noise podcasts walks around with a hole where his abdominal organs should be.
As anyone who has survived the gauntlet of independent adulthood knows, the transition is emotionally hard and unsettling, and as full of angst, bizarre life events, and weirdo relatives and love interests as this frothy little fantasy. The absurd plot and Steele’s deadpan humor combine to make the book a delightful send-up of classic coming-of-age fiction.
Kim gets the funniest lines. When the narrator complains that she never flushes the toilet, she informs him that there’s a drought going on, which he should have read about in her email. When he demurs about picking up her car from the repair shop because he has no license, she retorts: “A driver’s license is one of those things people say you need but really you don’t. Like bedsheets, or protein.” Even when she and other characters say the most ridiculous things, the dialogue seems natural and unforced, a trick that Steele pulls off throughout the book.
Tacky Goblin is a perfect escapist read for anyone who needs a break from reality’s daily grind. It’s a petite fantasy with a huge scoop of absurdist humor that will leave readers hungering for more of Steele’s outsized interpretation of life.
RACHEL JAGARESKI (June 27, 2018)
The Healing
One Woman’s Journey from Poverty to Inner Riches
Saeeda Hafiz
Parallax Press
Softcover $18.95 (296pp)
978-1-946764-04-1
Buy: Amazon
Through yoga and a macrobiotic diet, Saeeda Hafiz was able to conquer the demons of her past and escape her family’s cycle of violence and drug abuse. In The Healing, Hafiz tells her story in raw, unflinchingly honest prose, and the result is epic.
Born in Pittsburgh, Hafiz grew up in an unhappy home where love felt conditional. But she persevered, went to college, and secured a well-paying job. Still, she felt adrift, and had difficulty reconciling her achievements with her background.
When Hafiz happened upon a yoga class, it proved to be life-changing. She became entrenched in the principles of yoga and gained a newfound understanding of healthful eating. In engaging prose, Hafiz recounts her journey toward physical wellness and inner peace, as well as her circuitous career path, her quest for love, and her complicated family relationships.
Hafiz’s insights are beautiful, and her storytelling is well structured: her story unfolds in a mostly, but not entirely, linear fashion, with childhood memories and traumas woven between scenes. By the book’s end, feelings of emotional connection pervade—and the healthy recipes that are included are a bonus.
Hafiz’s conclusions—she finds her own path and forges her own place in the world, irrespective of her past—are universal. She reaches into the depths of her soul to tell this story, which is, at various points, both a cautionary tale and a beacon of hope for others who dream of making major life changes. Every part of the prose conveys its gut-wrenching and cathartic origins, and the results are inspiring.
HILARY DANINHIRSCH (June 27, 2018)
Magnificent Creatures
Animals on the Move!
Anna Wright
Faber & Faber
Hardcover $17.99 (32pp)
978-0-571-33068-3
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
A herd of South African springbok, a kaleidoscope of migrating butterflies, a murmuration of starlings, and a massive school of silver herring are beautifully rendered in this unique collection of natural science facts. Winsome pen-and-ink artwork, richly patterned fabrics, and shimmering golden accents capture the fluidity and graceful movement of animal collectives in a dozen enchanting images of feathers and fur, shells and fins, antlers and tentacles, all in perpetual motion.
PALLAS GATES MCCORQUODALE (June 27, 2018)
The Letting Go
Deborah Markus
Sky Pony Press
Hardcover $16.99 (320pp)
978-1-5107-3405-0
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
Deborah Markus’s The Letting Go is a fascinating story about a young woman trying to create a life for herself without the comfort of human connection.
At seventeen and with just one year left in school, Emily is a damaged girl, though she has a sharp tongue and a bright mind. When she was just four years old, her mother was murdered—followed by her father, her best friend, and even her dog.
Now she lives under an assumed name in a small boarding school. Her life is quiet, if not happy. A new girl wants to be her friend, but Emily, remembering the losses of her past, knows that it is far too dangerous to let the connection form. She immerses herself in the work of Emily Dickinson; she keeps the people in her life safe by holding them at a distance with cold treatment and cruel words. But then the headmistress finds a dead body in front of the school. Emily knows that the fresh death cannot be coincidental.
The plot is tense and riveting. The unseen murderer lurks behind every moment of the unconventionally formatted story, which is presented via Emily’s journal—or, one of them; she keeps two notebooks. One starts just when the dead body is found; the second notebook is far shorter and encompasses the murders’ resolution.
The first, linear notebook is the easier to follow; the second is disjointed and occasionally confusing as Emily sorts through what was, what is, and what might be. Though this notebook requires a bit more effort to decipher, it is a wonderfully effective vehicle for Emily’s trauma.
The Letting Go is many things: wonderful, unique, sad, intelligent, creepy, and fun—and, most of all, impossible to put down.
CATHERINE THURESON (June 27, 2018)
Hannah Hohman
