hollyd19's reviews
279 reviews

This epic follows a family of Tibetan refugees from their flight to Nepal during China’s Cultural Revolution through to Vancouver in 2012. Sisters Lhamo and Tenkyi are young girls when their family is forced to flee violence and cultural erasure. They land in a refugee camp set up in Nepal for the incoming migrants, and the book follows their unfolding lives.

The structure of this novel is creative with sections delineated by relational groupings (daughters, sisters, lovers, etc). The story goes back and forth from the 50s until nearly present day, converging to bring the whole story into focus. The writing is truly exceptional. Several passages bowled be over with poetic, insistent prose determined to scrub away grit from a window and reveal beyond wise, hard-earned truths. 

 What a spectacularly creative novel. Nell Stevens’s historical fiction centers on a tumultuous year in the lives of two pretty famous people: George Sand and Frédéric Chopin. In the early 1800s, the lovers absconded to Mallorca seeking “curative sea air” for the ever-sickly composer and Sand’s son. What makes the book delightful and unique is that our narrator is the ghost of a fourteen-year-old girl who died four hundred years prior to the ragtag crew taking up temporary residence in the monastery where she died.

I am not well-versed in the history of Romantic era writers or classical composers, but you needn’t be to enjoy this read. George Sand is such a distinctive person — a feminist and rebel and dotting mother — which gave Stevens much to work with. The book’s narrator, Blanca, is an exceptionally shrewd device for providing commentary and insight throughout. She can “inhabit” the bodies of living people and share their sensory experiences while also mining their memories. The novel darts between the various characters giving the story a real emotional depth even as the plot is fairly simple.

Beyond being an inventive work, Stevens has a real deftness with words. I wrote down several excerpts, floored by the poetic, playful perceptiveness. The book is rich with descriptive language of both the setting and the characters’ inner lives. Consider this early passage from Blanca:

If I were a historical fiction writer, this book would be the sort I’d strive to emulate. Reading it was such an unexpected pleasure. 

This memoir is a masterpiece. 

Quiara Algería Hudes uses every inch of this book to embrace her wholeness in a world hostile to her nuances. When discussing this read with my book club, someone described Hudes as a stained glass window and I cannot imagine a more apt comparison.  

Recounting her childhood, Hudes invites the readers alongside her journey to find language to encapsulate the many dimensions of her identity: Puerto Rican, daughter, Jewish, white-passing, English-Spanglish-Spanish speaking, cousin, North Philly resident, pianist, big sister, activist, Quaker, academic… Her deeply bonded maternal family grounds her and empowers her search for her truth. Her mother, a practitioner of Santería, fosters Quiara’s curiosity, self-confidence, and ambition. Her tias and cousins expand her world and provide ballast when seas are rocky. Her neighborhood offers community, connection, and courage. 

Hudes is a gifted storyteller and I was struck by the richness of her language, especially in a book ostensibly dedicated to its “brokenness.” She seamlessly intertwines cultures, dialects, and slang across seemingly disparate groups — a skill honed as she grew into a Pulitzer-winning composer and playwright. I alternated the physical book with the audiobook which added verisimilitude to the reading experience (Hudes narrates herself). Additionally, Hudes commits to telling her story honestly but not tragically. She doesn’t dwell on the hardest parts of her life. Instead, she acknowledges them plainly but spends much more energy celebrating the Perez women in all their diverse, indefatigable glory. 

I turned the last page with enlivened understanding and fresh hope. I so deeply recommend this read.

I care a lot about ethical fashion — it’s something I have spent time learning about and enjoy sharing what I know with others. So when I saw this book coming out, I was hopeful about having a place to direct people who are interested in learning more. Ostensibly “an insider’s look at how the rise of fast fashion obstructs ethical shopping,” I found instead that this book fell short of presenting a thorough and cohesive story about the ills of fast fashion. 

The author is a journalist with credentials from some big name outfits like InStyle. Unfortunately, the anecdotes she shares and the research she presents both have a shallow, myopic quality. While she names the main drawbacks of fast fashion (labor exploitation & environmental degradation), I did not find her chapters to be well-developed. Scattershot anecdotes and cursory reporting on existing research ultimately meant the writing felt fairly sophomoric. 

One of the redeeming chapters what the one that held the description’s promise: an insider look at how fashion journalism contributes to seasonal cycles and overconsumption. Hardy’s account confirmed a suspicion I had that fashion outlets are very heavily directed by marketing affiliate dollars not actual reporting. 

That said, the book holistically did not live up to the expectations I would have a nonfiction title claiming to expose an industry’s dark side. However, I sincerely hope the topic continues to gain traction as it is extremely relevant, even if I don’t expect this will be the book to make waves. 

The story follows the eponymous Leah Fern, an early-twenties orphan living alone in the small town where she was raised after her circus-performer mother dropped her off with a friend and never came back. Leah has decided to end her life, but then a curious delivery arrives: the ashes of her recently-deceased downstairs neighbor along with a cryptic note inviting her on a long-distance scavenger hunt. Intrigued enough to put her fatal plans on hold, Leah gets in her truck, driving north to the first of nine post offices where she will find general delivery mail under her name, offering up information about her long-absent mom. 

As Leah unspools the stories of both her mother and her neighbor, she is forced to spend time reckoning with the ways that her abandonment has impacted her life. The story dips in and out of Leah’s past, offering glimpses of her childhood being brought up in a carnival with chaotic & caring folks all around from whom she could learn and draw comfort. As she travels, Leah encounters a wide swath of characters along her road trip, each with a unique role to play in her journey. 

This book is absolutely full of whimsey, heart, and candor. I was entranced by the emotive writing and by the marvelous, vivid cast. Leah has a reluctant resiliency about her, honest but hopeful, trusting but hurt. And the people she meets & places she goes are so lovingly rendered, providing waypoints to Leah’s journey with their caring, broken selves. 

Truthfully, it felt like an amalgamation of some of my very favorite things: Big Fish, The Secret Life of Bees, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, and the movie Elizabethtown. The book releases in early October and I cannot wait for others to read it.