I've still been reading away, enjoying an excellent selection of books:
→ THE SHAMSHINE BLIND by Paz Pardo: Agent Kay Curtida of the Psychopigment Enforcement Agency is investigating a strain of counterfeit Sunshine Yellow pills. This "Shamshine" has infiltrated the local market, causing harm to Depressives who need the real medication. Curtida is glad to have a case with potential for once, because the criminal underworld operating in Daly City and the ruins of San Francisco is small-time compared to the big cities of Boise or Iowa City. (The US's previous big cities were destroyed almost 30 years earlier, when the Falklands Conflict escalated to a world war and Argentina became the dominant superpower through the use of weaponized psychopigments.) But Curtida is out of leads to follow, so she has to turn her attention to a minor case of suicide at a psychopigment pharmaceutical company. As the new investigation continues, she discovers the death involves an unusual pigment she's never seen before, and that this case is more complicated, and more sinister, than it initially seemed.
I was so impressed by the imaginative worldbuilding and well-paced plotting of this speculative detective story. Pardo has constructed such a fascinating world, between the color-based drugs that control emotions and the alternate history that reshapes politics and culture. Details of this world are dispensed gradually, at points that work naturally in the story, as when Curtida listens to the radio while driving around following leads. Curtida is an excellent character who narrates with a distinctive spin on the hardboiled detective style. Her fellow agents and the other characters are great as well, and there's plenty of real emotion in this story where feelings are sometimes manufactured by psychopigments. If you're at all curious about this literally colorful noir novel, I hope you'll check it out.
→ GOOD PEOPLE by Patmeena Sabit is presented as excerpts from a series of interviews conducted with friends and acquaintances of the Sharaf family, or witnesses who encountered them during a significant weekend. The family and the events of that weekend are under investigation by law enforcement, but the reason is kept as a mystery from the reader at first. Before understanding what's happened, we learn about the lives of the Sharafs in the years before. As a young family, they arrived in Virgina as refugees from Afghanistan. The local Afghani community helped them out through hard times, and eventually they thrived, earning a level of wealth that brought envy and scrutiny. The family is close-knit, but there's been trouble with the teenage daughter, who chafes against the strictures of her parents' traditional Muslim expectations. All this background comes into play in understanding the tragic events that are eventually revealed, explained, and then reinterpreted.
This engrossing, carefully constructed novel kept me guessing and pondering. Every time I planned to read just a few of the short chapters, I found it hard to stop. Sabit brings the voices of the interviewees to life, giving the characters distinctive speech patterns and concerns. The scenario is full of ambiguity, and each new perspective nudges the reader's understanding one way, then another, to great effect. There are no clear answers here, but much to think about, and this would be a great book to discuss with a group.
→ ALL THE WORLD CAN HOLD by Jung Yun: September 16, 2001, is a strange time to board a cruise ship, but with travel plans made long in advance, the passengers in this novel embark on a trip to Bermuda. The story follows three characters who all start out feeling conflicted about trying to enjoy themselves during such a terrible time, and who all have personal dramas that keep them from enjoying themselves anyway. Franny is determined to follow through on celebrating her mother's seventieth birthday, with all the traditional trappings of a Korean chilsun, whether or not the rest of the family agrees. Doug, once an actor in a show filmed on this very ship, is appearing as a celebrity because he needs the money, but he has no desire to be back at the site of his drunken past. Lucy was invited on the cruise as a last-minute replacement, but she's afraid she made a mistake in accepting for so many reasons, including that she's supposed to be interviewing for jobs this week. As the cruise's regular schedule of festivities proceeds, the characters grapple with their own concerns, aware of how cut off they are from news of much larger misfortunes.
I was intrigued by the setup of this novel (inspired by the author's real experience) though unsure what to expect. But it didn't take me long to get invested in all three characters and their problems. There's complexity and surprise to how the storylines develop. At times, the story could have been about any cruise, but that felt realistic to the circumstances. Whenever the context of 9/11 returned to the forefront, I found it thoughtfully handled. I liked the writing and the character portrayals, and I may check out Yun's previous novels.
→ LAKE EFFECT by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney opens in 1977 in a well-to-do neighborhood in Rochester, New York. The Larkins and the Finnegans live across the street from each other, and the families are close, each with two teenage children who grew up as friends. Also, Nina Larkin and Finn Finnegan are having an affair. When Nina and Finn decide to take steps to bring their relationship out into the open, they know it will shake up the lives of their families. But they aren't prepared for just how many relationships will be torn apart. Two decades later, there are still more consequences to reckon with.
Sweeney is always skilled at writing about family relationships, and this novel is another strong exploration of characters with complicated and shifting dynamics. Every Larkin and Finnegan family member spends some chapters as a viewpoint character, revealing secrets and grudges that the others don't know about. Not everyone gets the same amount of page time, and I was sorry not to follow some characters in more depth, especially after the time jump. So I would have been happy for a longer version of this novel, but I enjoyed all the story threads and scenes that appear in this one.
Good Stuff Out There:
→ Lois Lowry is publishing a new dystopian YA novel this fall, as reported in an interview with People: "For Lowry, this book felt necessary to write for the same reason The Giver's themes — and the themes in Building 903 — resonate so strongly with readers today. 'These are tough times that we live in, with lots of questions about the future,' she tells PEOPLE. 'I'm extremely old, so I lament the fact that I'm not gonna be around to see how this turns out. However, my imagination does that for me.'" (Thanks, Book Riot!)
