May Reading Recap

Last month's books were completely different from each other, but all thought-provoking:

→ STAG DANCE by Torrey Peters is a collection of four stories, all nuanced, intense, and focused on characters in situations that require complicated thinking about gender (by both character and reader). All are first-person narratives, with fully developed settings and scenarios that made me feel completely immersed—an often uncomfortable experience, since none of these are particularly happy stories.

When I reached the end of the first story, the gender apocalyptic "Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones", I forgot I was reading a collection and was sorry to have to move on. I could easily imagine a novel-length expansion of that story. "The Chaser" and "The Masker", both compelling stories based in the familiar world, left me satisfied by their self-contained plots.

About half of the book is the title story, billed as a novel itself, and I was glad to get so many pages to grow familiar with the logging camp setting, its denizens, and their distinctive jargon. Peters writes with such a distinctive and confident voice that every sentence is a marvel of language: "To timber trespass in the full of winter was to countenance ice slicks, frozen fingers, and sunlight hours so short the workday extended from dark to dark. The grade of the slopes made cutting sidewinders a common occasion, and if you weren't careful in how you stacked the cold deck, those massive logs would tumble like straw, snapping knees as they went." As a respite from this cold and challenging work, the boss of the operation (the "job shark") throws a stag dance, meaning that any logger who wishes may play the role of a lady by wearing a strategically placed triangle of fabric. The story's narrator wants this very much, which sets in motion a complex inner journey. I recommend this whole collection (as well as Peters' previous novel, DETRANSITION, BABY).

→ COLORED TELEVISION by Danzy Senna: When Jane's sabbatical lines up with the chance for her family to spend a year housesitting at the extravagant home of her rich and far more successful friend, she finally has the space and time to finish her second novel. For almost a decade, while teaching, raising two children, and moving between cramped apartments, Jane has been working on an increasingly epic book. She started out writing the story of a Black actress passing as white, then incorporated more characters and historical threads about mulattos in America to round out what her husband calls her "mulatto War and Peace." But at last she finishes the novel and sends it to her agent, dreaming of fame and prizes and a fancy house of her own. The response isn't what she expected, and soon Jane finds herself making some ethically dubious decisions and considering writing for television, a field she's always scorned.

Jane's character drew me into the story right away, and I was caught up in the unfolding drama of her situation. I loved the detailed and slightly satirical look inside both the literary and television industries. The writing is always sharply insightful about race, class, and human foibles. I frequently laughed at great lines, and I frequently cringed at Jane's choices. This is my first time picking up one of Senna's novels, but it won't be the last.

→ LUMINOUS by Silvia Park follows two main story threads, and how they connect is a mystery at first. (A mystery that's spoiled by other book descriptions, so beware.) In a reunified Korea, Ruijie is a human girl who uses robotic braces to walk, and she loves roaming the salvage yard after school in search of discarded robots to tinker with. She meets Yoyo, a robot boy who's exceptionally lifelike and advanced, yet has no owner and lives in the salvage yard, hiding from scrappers. Ruijie befriends him, introduces him to some classmates, and hopes to convince her parents to take him in. Elsewhere in Seoul, Jun works as a detective for Robot Crimes, and his latest case involves a missing robot girl who the owner considers her daughter. Jun is human, but following an IED strike during the Unification War, his reconstructed body is 80% bionic. It's also the male body he always wanted. Jun's investigation puts him back in touch with the sister he's been avoiding, a roboticist like their father, and the two of them start to grapple with difficult memories from childhood.

As you can tell, there's a lot going on in this novel. The characters are all well-drawn, and the portrayals delve into thoughtful explorations of disability, gender, and trauma. Park presents a complex vision of a society where robots are ubiquitous but there's no agreement on how much to treat them as people. The worldbuilding is also strong in depicting a Korea brought back together by another devastating war. I liked many parts of the story, but the pieces didn't all come together as well as I was hoping. This is Park's debut, and I'll definitely watch for more of their work.

Good Stuff Out There:

→ Lincoln Michel contemplates The Age of Genre Bending, Blending, and Juxtaposing: "Regardless, before 2006 it was rare to see writers engaged with science fiction, fantasy, or horror concepts competing for major literary awards. Since then, it has been rare to not have writers like Carmen Maria Machado, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Karen Russell, or Emily St. John Mandel in the mix. We almost expect our big literary authors to embrace genre elements for some books."

→ Charlie Jane Anders looks at How Cloud Atlas Is Shaping a Generation of Authors: "Lately, I feel as though I'm constantly seeing books that are described as 'Cloud Atlas meets ———————.' And I'm also coming across a steady flow of books that use that time-spanning structure, though not always with six whole storylines. I also feel like Cloud Atlas has become a shorthand for 'genre-hopping novel with literary aspirations.' As I've said before, this is how genres happen: a book comes along that everybody loves so much, they want more of the same."