hollyd19's reviews
279 reviews

Reading Bewilderment felt like diving without an oxygen tank, knowing that when you break to go to the surface the coral will disappear, so you hold your breath until it hurts and keep your eyes wide because the beauty is overwhelming but the panic is setting in, too.

Bewilderment follows Theo, an astrophysicist widower, and his young, neurodiverse son named Robin. The two are attempting to navigate their increasingly unstable world, on a personal level after the loss of their wife/mom & in terms of climate change and political unrest. When Robin is threatened with expulsion for an outburst at school, Theo enrolls him in a neurofeedback study happening at his university, which sets in motion the rest of the book. 

This was my first Powers and I was very moved by his writing. I took so many notes and highlighted several passages. Relatedly, I felt that Robin’s neurodiversity was portrayed with tenderness and honesty. 

Now some minor spoilers to talk about why it wasn’t an unequivocal five stars.

I strongly dislike gratuitous tragedy and since the rest of the book felt masterfully subdued, I was pretty bothered by the revelation that Aly was pregnant when she died. It added nothing. In a similar vein, I was unsatisfied with how Powers wrote the bit about Aly’s possible infidelity. At first it was guardedly hinted at, but when Theo asks “Is he mine?” it felt a bit ham-handed.

Two things made this a particular winner for me. 1: The secondary characters were utterly delightful; Teddy works as a personal assistant to an incredible pair of elderly sisters who have a penchant for drama. 2: The setting of a retirement community. 

I found Ruthie so endearing and Teddy entirely charming. Their slow burn relationship was wholesome without being corny. I laughed out loud on more than one occasion. 

Something that stuck out to me in this collection was how much these women preyed on the very thing women are often derided for: altruism and gullibility. In particular, the section on seers — women claiming to be spirit mediums — made me very sad. Their marks were often people who were grieving and desperate, and the false hope mixed with deceptive manipulation was pretty despicable. On the flip side, some of these stories were wild in that people bought into them at all. For instance, the modern-day spiritualism movement started with a pair of sisters who were trying to freak out their mom with spooky sounds around the house and it got… well, quite out of hand.

Finally, there was a section on tragediennes, aka women who claim connection to something horrible like 9/11 or the Ariana Grande concert explosion. Tefler points out that while these are horrible falsehoods, they are not all that different (and in some cases even less harmful) from other cons that do not draw the same social derision. This chapter in particular led to some excellent book club discussion about what “the line” is in terms of indulgent criminality and unacceptable behavior.

Maeve Higgins is a marvelous human and exceptional writer. Her essays teem with compassionate curiosity. Wide ranging in topic, this collection peeks under the rocks of America from the bemused but charmed view of an immigrant writer. One essay talked about the time Higgins accidentally ate way too many edibles and realized it while on an errand to the Paper Source that got *~trippy~*. Another recounts her experience visiting the Border Patrol expo in Texas. Still another discusses how 90 Day Fiancé is a perfect lens into misguided American exceptionalism.

What makes this book particularly good is Higgins’s openness. She doesn’t approach any topic looking for a fight, fists balled and poised to strike. Instead, she optimistically views humanity has generally alright, albeit peculiar and often rather foolish (not even excluding herself… see: accidental weed brownies). I’ll also say her essay on climate change (titled Death Tax) was so passionate and moving and tenderly written. It’ll stick with me for a long time and alone is worth the price of the book. 

Contained in these pages is wide-ranging, wholly-compelling, deeply-researched account of the heroines in folklore, myths, and storytelling. Tatar’s title plays on the famous 1980s tome The Hero With A Thousand Faces, but doesn’t seek to simply insert women into that paradigm. Instead, Tatar employs “1,001” with a nod to the Arabic interpretation, designating “a vast measure, the final digit of ‘one’ in that number goes beyond a thousand to suggest a swerve into something without limits… meant to capture they boundless possibilities as well as the bravura magnitude of heroic behavior.” 

Tatar’s work is powerful — if not a tad scattershot — drawing on a robust well of cultural examples from Greek mythology to DC comics. She outlines the ways that heroines are distinct entities apart from “female heroes,” positing that heroines rely on storytelling and words more than action and violence, and are motived by care, compassion, restoration, and justice. 

I kept copious notes as I went, sometimes capturing the particular brilliance of Tatar’s wordsmithery and other times highlighting an especially poignant argument. Of all the chapters, I found the ones on gossip and curiosity most elucidating. I had never really contended with the way that curiosity is simultaneously encouraged and censured, celebrating discovery (see: science) but chastising any challenges to the status quo (see: social dissatisfaction). 

I’m grateful to have read this with my book club, as our discussion deepened my understanding and added texture to an already complexly woven thesis. 

In this bookish mystery, the president of a university library has a stroke and his second-in-command, Leisl Weiss, is called back from her sabbatical to fill his role in the interim. Just days before his hospitalization, Leisl’s boss had overseen the delivery of a recently-acquired precious artifact. When Leisl takes the helm, she finds that the manuscript is missing. She must find it quickly in order to prove her competency & prevent donor backlash.

Let’s start with what I enjoyed about this book: a nerdy library setting with bookish characters will always appeal to me. Leisl is a compelling protagonist — thoughtful and principled, but flawed and a bit self-centered. Also, I was engaged through the whole story and was invested in the outcome.

Now, where the book fell short for me lies mostly in the secondary characters. They all had the building blocks of fascinating ensemble players, but none were fully developed enough. In particular, there is a side storyline of a librarian who, in the midst of the whole drama, goes missing. Her story had such potential to add richness to the narrative, but unfortunately it came off to me as a flippant use of mental health distress.  

I kept wanting all the hints about Leisl’s husband’s mental fragility to amount to either a relapse on his part or a lesson on her part that translated to her treatment of Miriam. Neither happened and it left me feeling like they were dehumanized.

On the whole, not a bad read, but not one I’ll quickly be recommending. 

 On more than one occasion while reading this book, I just wanted to hold it to my chest in a tight hug. The Book of Form and Emptiness is creative & thoughtful, with kindhearted, messy characters and a sensitive look at mental illness. It explores seemingly incongruous themes from climate change to the purpose of art to the power of found family.

The protagonist, Benny Oh, starts hearing voices after the unexpected and upsetting death of his beloved father. He realizes that the voices are the objects of the world trying to get his attention. On the whole, he finds their pleas overwhelming and he retreats into himself in search of solace. Ultimately, he finds comfort at the public library where things are literally quiet and orderly, and he meets a delightful cast of characters from the social margins who help him see his worth and sanity. Benny’s mother, Annabelle, wracked with grief, experiences her own breakdown and begins hoarding. Benny’s new “ability” clashes dramatically with Annabelle’s penchant for collecting, and the two have to figure out how to hold their little family together amidst their individual struggles.

Ruth Ozeki is incredibly inventive and this book definitely played with structure and perspective in an original way. The supporting cast of characters were all treated as full people which added immensely to my enjoyment.

My only critique of the book is that I wished for even more insight into the world Ozeki built around objects. The Book (a character in itself!) explains to Benny that there is a bit of a rift between Made and Unmade items, and occasionally goes on rants about how various objects (specifically books) view humanity. I really enjoyed those parts and they came with less and less frequency as the book progressed which was a bit of a bummer.