Read and Dream: My Book Life: May 2020

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead Review

Title: The Underground Railroad
Author: Colson Whitehead
Genre: Historical Fiction
Blurb: From prize-winning, bestselling author Colson Whitehead, a magnificent tour de force chronicling a young slave's adventures as she makes a desperate bid for freedom in the antebellum South.

In Whitehead's ingenious conception, the Underground Railroad is no mere metaphor- engineers and conductors operate a secret network of tracks and tunnels beneath the Southern soil.Whitehead brilliantly re-creates the unique terrors for black people in the pre–Civil War era, his narrative seamlessly weaves the saga of America from the brutal importation of Africans to the unfulfilled promises of the present day. The Underground Railroad is at once a kinetic adventure tale of one woman’s ferocious will to escape the horrors of bondage and a shattering, powerful meditation on the history we all share.

Me: Winning both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, this book has become a part of every list of essential books to read from the past few years. I was really excited and intrigued by the premise and had very high expectations going in - perhaps too high, because it felt mostly underwhelming and not entirely memorable.

Title: Normal People
Author: Sally Rooney
Genre: Fiction, Contemporary
Blurb: At school Connell and Marianne pretend not to know each other. He’s popular and well-adjusted, star of the school soccer team while she is lonely, proud, and intensely private. But when Connell comes to pick his mother up from her housekeeping job at Marianne’s house, a strange and indelible connection grows between the two teenagers - one they are determined to conceal.

A year later, they’re both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Marianne has found her feet in a new social world while Connell hangs at the sidelines, shy and uncertain. Throughout their years in college, Marianne and Connell circle one another, straying toward other people and possibilities but always magnetically, irresistibly drawn back together. Then, as she veers into self-destruction and he begins to search for meaning elsewhere, each must confront how far they are willing to go to save the other.

Sally Rooney brings her brilliant psychological acuity and perfectly spare prose to a story that explores the subtleties of class, the electricity of first love, and the complex entanglements of family and friendship.

Me: She finally did it, gals. After having seen Sally Rooney's name in every bookshop for the past two years, I watched the trailer for the new Hulu series and decided I needed to bite the bullet and try the books. And AHHHHH (coming from the excitement of binging the show right now)- I'm so glad I did.

Title: Girl, Woman, Other
Author: Bernadine Evaristo
Genre: Fiction, Contemporary
Blurb: Joint Winner of the Man Booker Prize 2019

Teeming with life and crackling with energy — a love song to modern Britain and black womanhood

Girl, Woman, Other follows the lives and struggles of twelve very different characters. Mostly women, black and British, they tell the stories of their families, friends and lovers, across the country and through the years.

Joyfully polyphonic and vibrantly contemporary, this is a gloriously new kind of history, a novel of our times: celebratory, ever-dynamic and utterly irresistible.

Me: I'd casually heard the name of this book everywhere for the past few months, but it took me a while to realize it was a recent book (one that won the Man Booker Prize in 2019!). I'm so glad I decided to finally read it - probably one of the best reads of 2020 so far.

Title: The Goldfinch
Author: Donna Tartt
Genre: Fiction
Blurb: It begins with a boy. Theo Decker, a thirteen-year-old New Yorker, miraculously survives an accident that kills his mother. Abandoned by his father, Theo is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. Bewildered by his strange new home on Park Avenue, disturbed by schoolmates who don't know how to talk to him, and tormented above all by his unbearable longing for his mother, he clings to one thing that reminds him of her: a small, mysteriously captivating painting that ultimately draws Theo into the underworld of art.

As an adult, Theo moves silkily between the drawing rooms of the rich and the dusty labyrinth of an antiques store where he works. He is alienated and in love-and at the center of a narrowing, ever more dangerous circle.

Me: I finally did it, y'all. I read the book of 2014 six years later in self-isolation, but as someone who never thought they'd get around to it, I'm pretty happy! I was excited to see some of the hype for myself but unfortunately, I think I might understand why I avoided reading it for so long.

Title: Trick Mirror
Author: Jia Tolentino
Genre: Essays, Nonfiction
Blurb: Trick Mirror is an enlightening, unforgettable trip through the river of self-delusion that surges just beneath the surface of our lives. This is a book about the incentives that shape us, and about how hard it is to see ourselves clearly in a culture that revolves around the self. In each essay, Tolentino writes about a cultural prism: the rise of the nightmare social Internet; the American scammer as millennial hero; the literary heroine’s journey from brave to blank to bitter; the mandate that everything, including our bodies, should always be getting more efficient and beautiful until we die. Gleaming with Tolentino’s sense of humor and capacity to elucidate the impossibly complex in an instant, and marked by her desire to treat the reader with profound honesty, Trick Mirror is an instant classic of the worst decade yet.

Me: I got to see Jia Tolentino in a passing second before I read her work. Having shown up late to one of her readings at college (which was so fully packed that I ended up leaving after a few minutes), I saw her walk in in a animal print coat with such a charismatic aura about her. I remember thinking that I absolutely had to read her book. And on finishing it, it didn't disappoint.