Book of the Day Roundup: March 18-22, 2024
A Different Kind of Brave
Lee Wind
Duet Books
Softcover $12.99 (256pp)
978-1-64160-950-0
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
In Lee Wind’s exciting novel A Different Kind of Brave, two gay teenagers who emulate James Bond fall in love and crisscross the Americas to shut down a harsh conversion therapy institution.
Sixteen-year-old Nico escapes Dr. Hergenreder’s Institute in California, vowing to free the sixty-nine other queer teenagers still imprisoned there—“lumps of clay” whom Dr. H intends to remold into straight Christians. Meanwhile, privileged Sam, who has had his heart broken by Kevin, confronts his parents about their infidelities before they leave Manhattan for a yachting trip. They send Sam on a vacation to a Mexican resort; there, Nico, under an alias, leads adventure sports. The new couple, on the run from Dr. H, plans a daring raid on the Institute.
Chapters alternate between Nico’s and Sam’s points of view, with different fonts indicating the switch. The typeface gives further clues: italics for Nico’s flashbacks to life at the Institute and before, and cursive handwriting for Sam’s “One Good Thing” gratitude journal entries assigned by his therapist. Sam and Nico meet at the halfway point, making love the fulcrum. And Sam is embedded in a fun group of queer friends that includes nonbinary Ari and gender-nonconforming Frida.
The action atmosphere, built on surveillance, identity theft, flashy vehicles, and up-to-date technology including drones and vlogging, is authentic. However, old-fashioned ingenuity is prized too, as when Nico jams door locks with a mixture of baking soda and glue. In this way, the book both pays homage to and updates the James Bond–style spy story. It contrasts toxic masculinity with what Sam calls “magical penis swagger”—the sort of confidence embodied by Bond, his hero.
A Different Kind of Brave is a gem for young adults: not just a high-octane thriller but also a queer romance full of heart and sensuality.
REBECCA FOSTER (February 13, 2024)
The Gift Child
Elaine McCluskey
Goose Lane Editions
Softcover $24.95 (340pp)
978-1-77310-324-2
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
In Elaine McCluskey’s novel The Gift Child, a former news photographer explores her genealogy following a mysterious disappearance.
When her cousin, Graham, vanishes, Harriet is drawn back into the orbit of her narcissistic father, Stan. As the family bands together in search of Graham, Harriet digs into their dysfunctional history. At the same time, she is blatant about her intentions to write a family memoir while participating in a writing workshop.
The Gift Child proceeds on the irony of directionlessness. In their search for Graham, Harriet’s family follows a variety of false leads buried in the opacity of police procedurals. That her narration is part of a memoir about the messiness of truth is undisguised; she acknowledges that it is an undifferentiated mass of lies, multiple truths, secrets, and memories warped by time. This purposelessness is wrought beautifully in Harriet’s profuse description of sea-blown settings: Pollock Passage is “a smattering of white wooden houses, a working-class Atlantis. Some dropped on the shoreline, some further inland.” Metacommentary arises from Harriet’s lengthy inclusions of moments from the workshop where she first conceives of talking about her father and Graham.
Harriet’s self-deprecating exploration of decline and loss runs alongside this work. Stark realism results from her admission that she and her father are both people at the end of their careers and lines. Stan, a self-aggrandizing man with a public, successful profession in television broadcasting, denies that he is fading into irrelevance. Divorced from a man whom she stole from another, Harriet remembers her personal, now inaccessible, high point producing images from all walks of life during her time as a newspaper photographer before being laid off.
Suffused with a pervasive sense of loss, The Gift Child is a novel about how truth is created, not inherent, within the context of a collective family loss.
ISABELLA ZHOU (February 13, 2024)
You Are a Little Seed
Sook-Hee Choi
Jieun Kiaer, translator
Charlesbridge
Hardcover $15.99 (40pp)
978-1-62354-428-7
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
First published in Korean, this translated picture book uses bright illustrations and simple, flowing language to convey the resilience and potential within every child. Some seeds are shy, others have thorns, but they develop into proud peonies and elegant island flowers; the seeds and plants are paired with illustrations of children growing up. Full-page, close-up illustrations display the varied colors and patterns of the flowers and plants, as well as the diverse personalities of the children who embody them.
DANIELLE BALLANTYNE (February 13, 2024)
Some of Us Just Fall
On Nature and Not Getting Better
Polly Atkin
Unnamed Press
Hardcover $28.00 (312pp)
978-1-961884-00-7
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
Polly Atkin’s memoir Some of Us Just Fall reveals the concentric circles surrounding chronic illnesses, drawing on history, experience, science, and literature to explore life lived in a liminal space with nuance.
From toddlerhood on, Atkin’s bones broke often—and without compelling reason. Her body hurt; her skin became gray. Pain fogged her brain as her joints rolled in and out of their sockets. As she grew, she tried to understand her body’s battle as an inheritance—her parents and grandparents had similar issues. She also sought understanding through more distant DNA, through England’s National Health Service, and through her affinity for the Wordsworth family and their environs of Grassmere in the Lakes District. She weaves such stories into her own, resulting in rich historical detail and burgeoning clarity on the enormity of not understanding or having command of one’s body.
With a fractured style that mirrors the experience of living with a chronic illness, the book eschews linearity to embrace episodic storytelling. Its sections cover varied means of coping with hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome and comorbidities. Atkin’s own diagnosis is the narrative thread that pulls her past experiences together, helping to make sense of her broken bones and spinning knees. The book acknowledges that diagnosis for those without common complaints can be difficult; sexism, ableism, ageism, medical ignorance, apathy, and arrogance all make answers elusive, as those with rare chronic illnesses “cannot be diagnosed if we can’t be seen.” Her book does a powerful job of indicting the medical establishment for its profound blindness toward those with chronic illnesses.
A memoir about chronic illness and the search for answers, Some of Us Just Fall is illuminating, fierce, and intelligent.
CAMILLE-YVETTE WELSCH (February 13, 2024)
Nosh
Plant-Forward Recipes Celebrating Modern Jewish Cuisine
Micah Siva
The Collective Book Studio
Hardcover $35.00 (256pp)
978-1-68555-327-2
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
Healthful and ecoconscious, the plant-based recipes compiled in chef and nutritionist Micah Siva’s cookbook Nosh riff on global Jewish traditions with palate-expanding innovations.
Rooted in memories of her bubbe’s kitchen, Siva’s dishes also keep holiday requirements and the strictures of home cooking in mind. The book begins with explanations of both Jewish culinary and cultural terms and recommendations for substituting ingredients in staple dishes first reliant on the inclusion of meat and dairy. Nostalgic eaters will be comforted by the book’s spins on deli classics: there’s Carrot “Lox” made with liquid smoke, slow-roasted Celeriac “Pastrami,” Sesame Tofu “Schnitzel,” and “Brisket” made of a pulled mushrooms and tofu mix. There are recommendations for making matzo balls airy using seltzer, too, as well as a recipe for the borough-evocative black-and-white cookie.
Reflecting the diversity of Jewish life in the diaspora, the book includes, and sometimes intermixes, flavors that are Sephardic, Mizrahi, and Ashkenazi. In addition to twists on classics, as with Poppy Seed, Potato, and Caramelized Onion Kreplach (soup dumplings) and the delectable Pumpkin Kugel with Pecan Streusel, there are piquing recipes for wholly fresh dishes like Olive, Chickpea, and Zucchini Stew with Preserved Lemons; Beet and Sumac Salad with Oranges; and Olive Oil, Pistachio, and Ricotta Cornmeal Sheetcake. Symbols throughout indicate Passover-friendless and the presence of purely vegan dishes, and there are menus provided for help with planning for special occasion meals. Nor does the book eschew dessert and libations: mini halvah cakes and the Halvah Milkshake are assured crowd-pleasers, and you’ll want to raise a toast to the new year with the Apple and Honey Whiskey Sour.
With its mix of plant-based twists on classic dishes and exciting new plates featuring global ingredients, Nosh is a tantalizing addition to the Jewish cookery canon.
MICHELLE ANNE SCHINGLER (February 13, 2024)
Barbara Hodge
