Book of the Day Roundup: September 4-8, 2023
When Dad’s Hair Took Off
Jörg Mϋhle
Gecko Press
Hardcover $18.99 (72pp)
978-1-77657-520-6
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
A father’s balding inspires far-flung, humorous adventures in Jörg Mϋhle’s winsome chapter book When Dad’s Hair Took Off.
A child narrates this vibrant story about the fate of their father’s hair: wanting “a life of its own,” it springs loose during his grooming routine, and her father scrambles after it. His hair sails out of the bathroom and into the wider world, at first seeming to settle on the grass. Then it travels over the hills and into town, to a restaurant, to the zoo, and even to the sea.
With all the relish of a tall tale, deadpan timing, and choice vocabulary (with words like rootling and hullabaloo), the story morphs and leaps from one improbable act to the next. The hair is personified: it shares fond musings (it and the father had “done everything together,” from attending kindergarten to going to the dentist), and it sends mischievous postcards, too. Comical illustrations further enhance the silliness, depicting the father’s effort to get his crowning glory back.
The messes that result from the chase are hyperbolic: plumbing fixtures tip over, townsfolk tumble by the wayside, and objects fly as the now-bald man, clad in a house robe, races around with a butterfly net. The hair, in turn, is drawn as individual prickles that move in capricious streams and sometimes camouflage themselves. The unnamed child’s clear amusement about what’s now become family lore is also a highlight; they even include their own elaborate diagram and express affection toward their father, whose vanity is never stated outright.
In the fabulistic chapter book When Dad’s Hair Took Off, harrumphing desperation takes over when a man seeks his wayward hair, tracking it through a bevy of shenanigans.
KAREN RIGBY (August 27, 2023)
Wound
Oksana Vasyakina
Elina Alter, translator
Catapult
Hardcover $27.00 (240pp)
978-1-64622-144-8
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
A Russian woman recalls her mother’s final days and her own grieving process in Oksana Vasyakina’s novel Wound.
After her mother’s death, Oksana has an endless list of tasks to complete, the most important of which is to take her mother’s ashes home to Siberia. Along the way, she looks back on her past and her relationship with her mother. From her youthful attempts to gain her mother’s attention through poetry to the unexpected difficulty of burying her ashes and thus relinquishing her physical presence, Oksana’s journey is both universal and personal.
Oksana’s childhood was different from most: often distant, her mother thought nothing of leaving her alone in dangerous circumstances. Misery and abuse tumbled down from generation to generation. Oksana recounts tales of her foremothers’ unhappy relationships with men and her own unhappy relationships with women. In the present, she contemplates the small moments that make up a death. Some have dark humor about them, as when she puts her mother’s urn in a dog food box for safekeeping on the flight to Siberia. And as Oksana seeks to reclaim her voice from her grief, she experiments with different ways of expressing her feelings, including writing poetry and imagining events from her mother’s perspective. The result is “unconventional in form and criminal in content.”
A target of censorship in Russia, Wound holds nothing back in its exploration of complex relationships, including lesbian ones, and its unsparing approach to difficult subjects. It ends with one final experiment: Oksana speaks to her mother rather than about her, demonstrating her ability to stand independently and to communicate in her own way for the first time.
Wound is a wide-ranging novel that reflects on death, grief, womanhood, creativity, and women’s sexuality.
EILEEN GONZALEZ (August 27, 2023)
Under the Java Moon
A Novel of World War II
Heather B. Moore
Shadow Mountain Publishing
Hardcover $26.99 (384pp)
978-1-63993-153-8
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
In Heather B. Moore’s illuminating novel Under the Java Moon, a Dutch family is sent to a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp.
Inspired by a woman who lived in Batavia (now Jakarta, Indonesia) when she and the women in her family were interned at the Tjideng Camp, this novel introduces the Vischer family: Rita, a bewildered child; Rita’s mother, Mary; and Rita’s father, George, a Dutch naval officer whose battle aboard a minesweeper results in a treacherous ordeal to remain afloat with the remaining crew. As their Dutch colonial life faces sudden interruptions, their vivid, interlocking views convey their apprehension in unadorned, matter-of-fact terms.
Once at Tjideng Camp, Rita and her family members endure hunger, roll calls in the heat, illness, and the expectation that they will show deference to the conquering Japanese army officers. So-called insubordinate women face brutal punishments. They don’t know what’s become of George, either—nor does he know what’s become of them. Tensions simmer, even as the women form supportive friendships and attempt to stay humane.
The Vischers, like other Dutch families, prove helpless against the Japanese occupation of the island. The Indonesian people desire independence, and people’s resolve deepens as the story continues. Their fears are conveyed in matter-of-fact terms; generalities are avoided in favor of startling wartime details.
Though the war takes an unpredictable path for the Vischers, they also enjoy rare reprieves. And George leans into divine providence while facing harsh conditions. All parties find a way to endure, while interspersed quotations from Dutch survivors reveal the war’s impact in broader terms too.
The solemn historical novel Under the Java Moon does the valuable work of reviving the lesser-known stories of WWII’s Dutch internees through the story of a loving family that faces an unthinkable plight.
KAREN RIGBY (August 27, 2023)
Meetings with Remarkable Mushrooms
Forays with Fungi across Hemispheres
Alison Pouliot
University of Chicago Press
Hardcover $26.00 (320pp)
978-0-226-82963-0
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
Meetings with Remarkable Mushrooms is a delightful exploration of an often-overlooked aspect of the natural world: the fungi that are essential to the health of the planet.
Alison Pouliot contends that fungi are often misunderstood or even maligned; many people view them as threats to be managed or destroyed rather than as beneficial organisms. Advocating for a “fungal awakening,” her book portrays passionate, talented mycologists who study the complexity and intricacy of interactions between fungi and other species. It emphasizes the multigenerational knowledge of Indigenous people as well as brilliant women scientists who are working to preserve and restore fungal networks and habitats.
This engaging, informative book considers mushroom species found in a variety of ecosystems, including the rain forests of the Pacific Northwest, the lichen-scapes of Iceland, and the eucalypt forests of the Australian bush. Its descriptions evoke the distinct colors, shapes, smells, and textures of dozens of fungi, including edible species like truffles and golden chanterelles and feared species like poison fire coral palavers. Also included are fungal “renegades,” such as bioluminescent ghost fungi and otherworldly fungi that parasitize beetles and ants. There are crucial insights into fungal life cycles and the role of mycorrhizal networks in forest health and soil stability, as well as the impact of climate change.
Subtle humor enlivens the prose, such as when Pouliot notes that she felt “underdressed” at a mushroom show after watching a person wearing a morel costume “wobble precariously” down the sidewalk or describes her surprising rental car for a Seattle mushrooming trip, a Dodge “with the clearance of a porcupine.” Sixteen stunning color plates illustrate extraordinary examples of fungi.
Conveying an impassioned message for conservation and awareness, Meetings with Remarkable Mushrooms is a compelling, enlightening look at lowly but remarkable fungi that are often hidden in the shadows.
KRISTEN RABE (August 27, 2023)
Discretion
Faïza Guène
Sarah Ardizzone, translator
Saqi Books
Softcover $14.95 (224pp)
978-0-86356-976-0
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon
The members of an Algerian immigrant family cope with their losses but retain their dignity in Faïza Guène’s novel Discretion.
Yamina left Algeria for the first time as a child, during the war with France in the 1950s. Since then, the concepts of home and belonging have grown vague and seem not quite attainable to her. She faced poverty, domestic abuse, and emotional distance; she learned to keep her head high and her emotions in check.
Now, as an old woman in France with four grown and troubled children, Yamina forges ahead in the only way that she knows how: by remaining kind no matter what and by supporting her children in every way that she can. A patient, generous woman, she remains poised and upbeat, even as she faces continuing prejudice in ordinary places, as when she’s in line at the pharmacy or in her own apartment building. Through it all, she maintains an equanimity that her children never learned—even despite their greater opportunities (or perhaps because of them).
There are poignant, astute, and sometimes cutting observations made about Yamina’s family and the different ways of life that exist on different continents. The family navigates their various worlds as well as they can, always aware of the features that set them apart. They do not always understand each other, yet they spend their lives supporting each other through personal crises, unfulfilled ambitions, and questions of belonging in a nation that exploits their labor and never accepts them. Despite their individual troubles and disagreements with one another, they remain bound by love—and by Yamina, the quiet, strong matriarch who kept them together through all of their difficult years.
Discretion is an intricate novel in which living, and expressing one’s identity, at the margins takes multiple forms.
EILEEN GONZALEZ (August 27, 2023)
Barbara Hodge
