FAVOURITE BOOKS OF 2019

In 2019, I read a total of 100 books. Some of them were good; some of them were bad. One of them was Fifty Shades Darker, which was terrible (full review to come). Most of them, however, elicited nothing more than a ‘meh’ from me. They weren’t awful, but they weren’t awesome, either: they were middling, unmemorable, unobtrusive and unimpressive. I tallied up all the ratings I gave this year, and 41 of the books I read in 2019 received only 3 stars; that means that nearly half of the books I read were average at best. This was a pretty depressing proportion when it came to drafting up my list of favourites for this year’s blog post, but I think I’ve pulled together a list that accurately represents the authors and the styles that consistently work for me, which will hopefully help me finetune my next decade of reading. Without further ado, here are my favourite books that I read in 2019. 

8.  Wayward Son by Rainbow Rowell

I don’t think I can make a favourites list for 2019 without at least mentioning Wayward Son. This book was probably one of my most anticipated releases of all time (Harry Potter notwithstanding) owing to the fact that Fangirl and Carry On, its counterpart and predecessor respectively, are two of my all-time favourite books. Carry On is a fantasy novel about a young mage named Simon Snow and his arch-nemesis, Tyrannus “Baz” Basilton Grimm-Pitch, in their final year at Watford School of Magicks. Wayward Son is the long-awaited sequel about what happens to the hero after he’s finished saving the world. Simon is in a depressive funk after losing both his magic and his purpose, so his boyfriend and best friend, Baz and Penelope, decide to take him on a road trip through the American West. He needs a change of scenery, they declare; but what they don’t anticipate is that a change of scenery is the least they’re going to encounter. 

Although this book wasn’t perfect, Simon and Baz hold such a special place in my heart that I had no choice but to include it on this list. It was so fun and exciting to spend more time with these characters and in this world, but I did miss Watford an awful lot; part of what I love so dearly about Carry On is the world of Watford, particularly the integration of Rowell’s unique magic system into the story. We still got that magic outside of Watford, but I was feeling rather reminiscent for the Watfordian context while reading, and I’m glad that it seems like we’ll be returning to Watford in book three (although the cliffhanger ending was a real son of a bitch). Of course, Simon and Baz were the aspect of the book I was most looking forward too, but I have mixed feelings about it. Is it possible to both love and hate something simultaneously? Because I both love and hate the tension in Simon and Baz’s relationship. I’m a hopeless romantic. We did the angst thing in Carry On; now that they’re together, I was looking forward to some happy boyfriend behaviour, and Rainbow Rowell did NOT deliver. Their relationship is really on the rocks, and it stressed me the hell out. Overall, I don’t think this book is as strong or as charming as Carry On,  but it was still really enjoyable, and I loved getting to spend time with Simon and Baz again. Rainbow Rowell has a knack for characters and character work that makes you feel all warm and cozy on the inside, and I am gagging to get my hands on book three and enjoy even more Simon and Baz. 

7. Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

The problem I have with Leigh Bardugo is that although I have read six of her eight full-length novels, I only enjoyed two of them — but the two I enjoyed were my favourite books of last year. Happily, Ninth House was a similarly rousing success. The novel’s protagonist is Alex Stern, a young woman who has been offered a full ride to Yale, on the condition that she joins a group named Lethe, which is tasked with monitoring the occult activities of Yale’s secret societies. Laced with magic and supernatural intrigue, the story takes a dark turn when a young woman is murdered on campus — and Alex suspects that the societies are involved. 

I heard mixed reviews of Ninth House before going into it. I heard that it was underwhelming, that it was excessively graphic and violent, that it was disturbing, horrifying, and disgusting — so I wasn’t expecting to actually kind of love it. One of my favourite things about this book is how feminist it is, without presenting itself as an actively-feminist book. Not that there’s anything wrong with actively-feminist literature, but I think the subtlety Bardugo employed in Ninth House worked well with the dark, broody tone of the novel, allowing the paranormal/supernatural elements of the story to control the narrative. I also really enjoyed the characters, especially the protagonist, Alex. Many of the unflattering reviews of this book complain that Darlington, one of the side characters, carried the weight of the story, which I find confusing; am I the only person who noticed how interesting and complex Alex is? Her backstory is fascinating and unfolds excruciatingly but tantalisingly slowly throughout the novel, her relationships with the other characters ring with truth and authenticity, and her general demeanour and attitude were a great combination of badass and absolutely, utterly normal. She’s got badass energy, but she also feels realistically human and fallible, which makes her easy to connect with and like. Now, I think it’s important to mention that Ninth House will definitely not be for everyone — to be honest, I was extremely surprised that I ended up enjoying it as much as I did, because it is a very dark and fucked-up book. If you are considering reading it, do proceed with caution and make sure to check out the content/trigger warnings which can be found on Goodreads; this definitely isn’t a book for the faint of heart. That being said, Ninth House was a great book that I am stoked to have enjoyed as much as I did, and I can’t wait to read book two. 

6. Call Down the Hawk by Maggie Stiefvater

Perhaps one of the biggest surprises of the year was the fact that I enjoyed Call Down the Hawk as much as I did. In 2018, Maggie Stiefvater’s The Raven Cycle was high on my list of favourites of the year, but one of the few criticisms I did have was that Ronan and his dream sequences were my least favourite aspect of the series. Naturally, when Stiefvater announced a second series about these characters and set in this world, I was thrilled — until I learned that Ronan and his dream sequences were going to be the centre around which this new series revolved. Still, I have great faith in Maggie, so I decided to give Call Down the Hawk a chance, and hot damn, am I glad that I did. It’s hard to give a synopsis of this book, but it mainly follows Ronan Lynch, a vicious young man with the ability to bring objects out of his dreams; Hennessey, another dreamer whose dreams are being plagued by a dark, evil entity that is slowly killing her, dream by precious dream; Jordan, a talented art forger and one of the many copies of herself that Hennessey has brought back from her dreams; and Carmen Farooq-Lane, who has joined an organisation that is hunting and killing dreamers in order to prevent the end of the world. 

I really enjoyed this book, and I am hugely surprised by this fact. In The Raven Cycle, I found Ronan abrasive and unlikeable, but now that he’s dating Adam, my heart does not have enough room for the amount of love I feel for him. Having a boyfriend hasn’t made Ronan any less sharp-edged in terms of his exterior attitude, but for me, it softened his edges a bit, made him more endearing and empathetic, easier to connect to and love. Ronan and Adam are so cute together, and I’m really hoping to see lots more of their relationship in future books, because it made me really happy. (Also, Adam got into Harvard?! I’m so proud of my son!) The plot of this book is also really great, although ‘plot’ maybe too strong a word; certainly the novel had a narrative, but it was so much more focused on developing old characters and introducing new ones that I often lost track of where the plot was going. Fortunately, the character development was so good that the novel’s slight plotless-ness didn’t bother me at all. Spending more time with Ronan’s brothers, Declan and Matthew, was a treat that also ended up pushing the story forward in fascinating and completely unexpected directions, and Hennessey and Jordan were an unexpectedly enjoyable addition to the world. I missed Gansey and Blue, and was disappointed (although not surprised) that we didn’t get to spend much time with Adam, but overall, I was impressed to find that Ronan doesn’t need his raven boys to tell an interesting and emotionally rewarding story; he can do it all on his own. 

5. Dig by A. S. King [full review]

I’ve already reviewed Dig in full, so I’ll keep this summary short. It’s a hard book to synopsise, but essentially, it’s about an extended family in Pennsylvania whose matriarch, Marla Hemmings, refuses to share any of the money in her and her husband’s seven-figure bank account so that her children and grandchildren will learn to thrive on their own. That’s the basis of the plot, but there’s so much more that the book is about: it’s about racism, about family, about selfishness and greed, but more than that, it’s about surviving by any means necessary. It’s certainly one of King’s most abstract novels to date, but this by no means made it worse than her other published works; in fact, it simply made it all the more fascinating. 

To be frank, Dig is weird. It’s weird and strange and confusing and not always especially coherent, but that’s the A. S. King trademark, and it’s the thing I have loved about all of her novels so far, Dig included. This book is fantastic, beautifully written and completely impossible to understand. I had no idea what was going on the whole time, but I also understood it intimately and innately, as if the meaning was being pulled straight out of my subconscious, but the part of my subconscious that only makes sense in a dream. When I’m trying to guess what A. S. King books ‘mean’, I never feel like I’m getting it right. But that’s what makes her books so special: they are so open to interpretation. The author’s influence doesn’t dominate the meaning of the book, so although I know that King’s young adult writing won’t be for everyone, I do also think that it’s flexible in terms of who can enjoy it and what they can take away from it. One criticism I do have is that I found it hard to connect with any of the characters, partly because the page-time was divided between so many of them, and partly because they sometimes became so lost in metaphor that it became difficult to reconcile them as a person as opposed to an abstract idea. Still, in my eyes, King can do no wrong, and if you’re a fan of magical realism or books that don’t make reading an easy time, I would highly recommend that you give Dig a try.  

4. The Year We Fell From Space by Amy Sarig King

The fact that A. S. King has made this list twice (albeit under a different version of her name) is no surprise: she’s such a talent that she deserves to take up two spots. The Year We Fell From Space is the first of King’s middle grade novels that I have read, and I love it dearly. It’s about a young girl named Liberty whose parents are getting a divorce, and what takes place in the year that follows their decision to separate. It’s a really sweet and comprehensible story about divorce and mental health, and I think it has value for both its target audience and older readers, too. 

The Year We Fell From Space is definitely King’s most coherent book, which makes sense, since it’s middle grade. I’ve never read an A. S. King book with a plot that was so easy to understand — that is, a plot that doesn’t rely heavily on magical realism — and it was so enjoyable to be able to understand this book without having to do heaps of legwork to make sense of it. I also think that this is a really important read, and that it’s going to help a lot of kids who are going through a divorce or who are starting to learn about mental health for the first time, whether because they are having problems or because someone they love is struggling. I’ve never read, or really even heard of, a book for young readers about depression, and I think this one is going to be a valuable resource for many people. The detailed information that King provides about the hereditary nature of depression, the different types of depression (e.g. chronic vs situational), and the symptoms of depression are all given in a comprehensive and empathetic way; no child who reads this book is going to feel ashamed of the fact that they may suffer from this mental illness. I also really love the characters, especially Liberty, her little sister Gilly, and their mother. Liberty is a lovely main character with whom it was a joy to spend time. Gilly is so sweet and charming and funny, and their mum is such a badass — I really admired her repertoire of outdoor skills and knowledge. Overall, this book was a smashing success; unsurprisingly, King has written another spectacular novel that tackles difficult issues in a unique and interesting way. This is easily one of my favourite books she’s ever written.  

3. Nevermoor and Wundersmith by Jessica Townsend

This is technically two books, but I am reviewing them together. Harry Potter meets The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in the Nevermoor series, Jessica Townsend’s gloriously inventive debut about a young girl named Morrigan Crow who is whisked away from her loveless home into the new and fantastical world of Nevermoor. In Nevermoor, Morrigan must compete in a series of difficult trials in order to earn entrance into the elite Wundrous Society. Think the Triwizard Tournament, but less deadly (but with about the same number of dragons). In Wundersmith, she begins her first year as a member of the Society and begins the process of understanding her unique and dangerous talent: the ability to accumulate and control Wunder (which is kind of like an energy source, or something? I don’t really get it, but I like it nonetheless). 

I have literally no criticisms of this series. It’s fresh, it’s fun, it’s fast-paced, and it has the Harry Potter-ish charm of being enjoyable for both its target demographic and those who outgrew said demographic over a decade ago. One of my favourite aspects of this book is that the characters are so vibrant and vividly rendered. When it comes to quirky characters, I’m more than a little fussy; if the quirkiness is too forced, I immediately disengage, but the eccentricity of the characters in the Nevermoor series is done just right. Each personality is distinct, unique, and utterly weird, and every character is unforgettable, from their outlandish names to their oddball idiosyncrasies and characteristics. Another thing I thoroughly enjoyed is the world. Debut fantasy novels fall under significant pressure to establish the setting and the context in which the story takes place, including establishing the general time period of the story and how much technology the people have. Nevermoor, I feel, does a marvelous job of this, bringing to life an exciting, coloursal, whimsical, steampunk-ish world, somewhat Victorian in terms of time period but without the stuffiness attributed to other Victorian writing. The reader is provided a clear image of what the world is supposed to look like and how the characters operate within it. Overall, Nevermoor was an astonishingly entertaining debut novel, and Wundersmith was an equally fantastic sequel. I can go either way on enjoying middle grade that I didn’t first read as a middle grader myself, but Nevermoor and Wundersmith were a definite success.

2. Heartstopper by Alice Oseman

Again, this is technically two books that I am reviewing together. As an English degree graduate, I feel somewhat of an obligation to elect deep, thought-provoking literary fiction to the top spots on these yearly lists, but then I read books like Heartstopper, and my conviction goes completely out the window. Heartstopper is Alice Oseman’s ongoing webcomic which has been adapted into two graphic novels so far, with the third due for release in February next year. It follows Charlie Spring and Nick Nelson, two boys who meet at their all-boys high school and slowly fall in love. It is EXTREMELY CUTE and made me EXTREMELY HAPPY. The art style is adorable, the characters are unbelievably endearing, and overall, I am completely and utterly obsessed.

When I started reading volume 1 of Heartstopper, I was expecting to enjoy it, but I usually struggle to connect with graphic novels because they’re so short and quick that it feels like I don’t have time to get invested. Therefore, I was surprised to find myself falling head over heels for Nick and Charlie and devouring their story like it was my first full meal in weeks. The thing about Heartstopper is that the best thing about it is how absolutely adorable it is. This series is so precious. The art style is a huge contributor to that; yes, the romance between Nick and Charlie is incredibly moving and sweet, but the art styles really enhances the cuteness of the thing. The way that this series stole my heart snuck up on me. One minute I was enjoying it, having a good time squealing over how cute it is, and then suddenly, overnight, I was completely in love and had to get my hands on my own copy pronto. Hearttstopper is unbelievably charming and sweet. It’s a simple story, which is why it’s so amazing that it managed to endear itself to me so completely; it’s a cut-and-dry love story, but there’s something about it that tugs at your heartstrings in a really special way. A book doesn’t have to be extremely complex in order for you to engage/connect with it; sometimes, a beautiful love story between two loveable characters is all that is needed to capture your readers’ hearts and send them tumbling, head over heels, in love. 

1. Educated by Tara Westover [full review]

I read this book in February, and knew the moment I finished it that no other book I read this year was going to be able to top it. This incredible memoir is one of the most engrossing books I have ever read. It’s the story of Tara Westover, a young woman who grew up in a Mormon survivalist family and whose unconventional upbringing is the subject of her powerful and moving memoir that I have recommended to countless friends, family, and customers in the last year. As I wrote in my full review, Educated is more than just a memoir; it is a deeply self-exploratory piece of writing, and its author is an extraordinary woman whose empathy and introspection add a compellingly personable level to her already fascinating story. 

I think the most remarkable thing about Educated, and the thing that struck me the most, was the fact that Westover wasn’t just recounting her story; she clearly used the process of writing this memoir to analyse and accept the circumstances of her childhood, to find clarity and closure in her trauma. From receiving a non-committal homeschool education until she was 17 years old to receiving an MPhil and a PhD in intellectual history from Cambridge and Harvard respectively, Westover goes on a powerful journey both literally as she describes the events of her life, and intellectually/spiritually as she enters the wider world and discovers that her family’s radical interpretation of Mormonism is a far cry from the actual doctrine of the religion. She writes beautifully and poetically, with incredible discipline and an absorbing grasp of metaphor and descriptive language, about the extreme conditions of her childhood and the great deal of suffering she underwent in order to emancipate herself from her family’s stranglehold on her ideology and develop her own voice and sense of self. I would truly recommend this memoir to anyone with even a mild amount of interest: I promise that you will not be disappointed by this moving and engrossing book. 

Sorry this is so late! x

I AM PILGRIM by Terry Hayes (2014)

"Nobody’s ever been arrested for a murder; they have only ever been arrested for not planning it properly."

THIS REVIEW IS SPOILER-FREE

I Am Pilgrim makes one enormous mistake right from the start: it takes its ridiculous premise far too seriously. Scott Murdock, codename: Pilgrim, is the retired commander of The Division, an intelligence agency so secret that even POTUS doesn’t know it exists. Pilgrim is reluctantly dragged back into the “secret world” when a devout Muslim, codename: the Saracen, takes it upon himself to inflict the “soft death of America” by creating a strain of smallpox that is immune to the smallpox vaccine and releasing it in the US — as revenge for his father’s beheading in theKingdom of Saudi ARabia. (How it’s is the fault of the USA may have been established at some point, but the connection was so tenuous that I don’t remember what it may have been anymore.) This is, somewhat objectively, a ludicrous concept, but that doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing. Yet I Am Pilgrim takes itself so seriously, and shows so little awareness of its own melodrama, that the overall effect becomes grandiose and self-indulgent. It’s like the novel version of a Quentin Tarantino film. Needless to say, I did not enjoy this book, and I am itching to tell you why. 

My first problem with this book is that the point of view makes no sense for the medium in which the story is told. Most novels are told in one of two points of view: first person, when ‘I’ am telling the story about ‘me’; or third person omniscient, when an all-knowing third party narrates the protagonist’s story, ‘omniscient’ due to their knowledge and information to which the protagonist doesn’t have access. With I Am Pilgrim, Terry Hayes made the peculiar decision to hybridise the two into first person omniscient: the protagonist is the narrator and thus has access to his own thoughts and feelings, but also has access to information he usually wouldn’t, such as the thoughts and feelings of other characters. What I find most confusing about the way this point of view functions in the novel is that we have no frame of reference as to the point in the future from which Pilgrim is telling the story, nor do we ever learn how he can access the minds of the other characters. Take the Saracen: since the book is written in first person from Pilgrim’s point of view, we should not see the Saracen’s thoughts — and even if Pilgrim learns about his actions in hindsight, there should still be only a surface-level amount of detail. Yet we receive an account of the Saracen’s story that is so meticulously detailed, it’s almost as if Hayes has switched to a third-party, third person omniscient narrator, and I have a theory as to why. Before publishing this novel, Hayes was a screenwriter most notable for Mad Max 2 (1981) and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985). In movies, you can switch away from the protagonist to one of the other characters without issue, because traditional forms of point of view cease to exist on the screen — you can’t get into the characters’ minds in film as you can in books. Yet Hayes is so used to writing for the screen that he has applied film’s ability to oversee everything to his novel, to ill effect. The story became overly-detailed and confusing; Pilgrim would often spend so much time talking about the Saracen that it became unclear who was the main character. Out of all my issues with this book, this is the most technical, but it grated on me like nothing else. 

My second complaint is that I Am Pilgrim is extremely Islamophobic, racist, and misogynistic. The action/thriller genre is known for its stereotypical racial profiling when it comes to writing villains. Bad guys are usually one of three ethnicities: Russian, German, or Islamic. Hayes selected Islamic off the bad-guy-ethnicity wheel of fortune, and boy, did he come at it with a vengeance. This book is unbelievably racist and stereotypical towards Muslim people. It takes its inspiration from al-Qaeda and the Taliban and applies their radical interpretation of the Islamic faith to the entire Muslim population. The Saracen is a caricature of typical Muslim behaviour, and Pilgrim’s disdain for Islam, Saudi people, and the whole Muslim community. Problematically, the book justifies its anti-Islam stance through the fact that it is set only a few months after 9/11. I might have had slightly more patience with this abhorrent attitude if it was published in, like, 2002, but it came out five years ago. Thirteen years after the September 11th attacks, and Hayes was still under the impression that it was acceptable to blame the entire Muslim community for the isolated act of violence of one fanatical group. There’s also a general level of hatred for all ethnicities that are not Caucasian. One quote summarises it pretty well: 

I was angry at the fucking Chinese for not controlling the wholesale piracy of other people’s ideas and products [...] and I was angry at Arabs who thought that the bigger the body count, the greater the victory (Hayes, 2014).

I mean, really? You’re going to pin something as abstract as “the wholesale piracy of other people’s ideas and products” on the entire Chinese race? Perhaps I’m being needlessly picky, but this seems both ridiculous and extremely telling of the author’s state of mind — and I haven’t even mentioned the rampant misogyny yet. Women are awarded absolutely no respect in this book. They are objects existing solely for Pilgrim’s appraisal, and the first things he describes every time he encounters a new woman are their gorgeous bodies: their high cheekbones, their huge breasts, their shapely asses, their comely legs. It is truly humiliating to read a book like this and watch every female character be immediately reduced to her physical assets. Authors are not their characters, but Pilgrim’s passionate distaste for women and people of colour had an unfortunate authorial authenticity that left a bad taste in my mouth.  

Have I mentioned that Pilgrim is the greatest intelligence agent of all time? Because if I haven’t, Pilgrim would be happy to remind you a hundred more times, just like he does in the book. Pilgrim’s fake-humble attitude, which barely masks his overwhelming arrogance, dominates every page. He’s the world’s greatest intelligence agent, the best the secret world has ever known. We know this because of the countless times Pilgrim tells us that he is the world’s greatest intelligence agent, the best the secret world has ever known. But don’t worry: he’s a very modest man. Every reminder that he is the world’s greatest intelligence agent is prefaced with some variation on "I don't think I'm a boastful person, but...”, just so you’re left in no doubt that even though he’s world class, he’s still humble. Pilgrim is constantly reassuring the reader that yes, he’s the world’s greatest spy, he’s the adoptive child of billionaires, he’s attended only the most elite private schools throughout his education and has never had to truly suffer a day in his life, but guys, he didn’t ask for this life. He didn’t ask to be so brilliant that he becomes the leader of the world’s most elusive intelligence group in his mid-twenties. He didn’t ask to be adopted by billionaires. He didn’t ask to be a genius who has the privilege of dropping out of Harvard Medical School because it wasn't meaningful enough. We’re supposed to reconcile the fact that Pilgrim is an insufferable, egotistical prick with the fact that he didn’t ask for any of this, and perhaps this would be possible if he wasn’t such an enormous douchebag, but he is, so it’s not. 

I Am Pilgrim is a wildly popular book, so my opinion is certainly unpopular, but I stand by my belief that all 55,000 people who gave this book a five-star rating on Goodreads are idiots and my opinion is correct. (My cousin also rated this book five stars, so I hope she doesn’t read this.) This book was an insufferably long snooze-fest that had the potential to be a fun and animated story, but was unfortunately executed in the wrong way and took itself far too seriously for me to enjoy it in any legitimate fashion.

WORKS CITED

Cooper, J. K. (2014, August 21). So Far ‘I Am Pilgrim’ Is the Best Book of 2014. Retrieved from https://www.huffpost.com/entry/so-far-i-am-pilgrim-is-th_b_5518631. 

Erin. (2017, January 29). I am Pilgrim: Arrogant. Retrieved from https://literaryvice.ca/2014/11/22/i-am-pilgrim-arrogant/. 

Hayes, T. (2014). I Am Pilgrim. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.

May, E. (2016, May 15). Emily May's review of I Am Pilgrim. Retrieved December 10, 2019, from https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1639142185. 

Mendel, J. (n.d.). Fiction Book Review: I Am Pilgrim by Terry Hayes. Retrieved from https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-4391-7772-3.

Sharon. (2015, May 8). Sharon's review of I Am Pilgrim. Retrieved December 10, 2019, from https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1275014370. 

Zeko, M. (2019, September 11). An Electrifying Novel That Will Keep You Up Reading All Night. Retrieved from https://offtheshelf.com/2019/09/i-am-pilgrim-by-terry-hayes-review/. 

THE NIGHTINGALE by Kristin Hannah (2015)

“If I have learned anything in this long life of mine, it is this: in love we find out who we want to be; in war we find out who we are.”

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS

The Nightingale is a novel that rewards perseverance. At nearly 600 pages in length, it’s not a snappy read, but the character development that the main characters, Vianne Mauriac and Isabelle Rossignol, undergo makes the effort to finish the novel worth it. This heart-breaking, eye-opening tale of these two estranged sisters in war-torn France demonstrates the different kinds of courage that exist when our lives are put at risk. 

Vianne Mauriac (née Rossignol) is ten years older than Isabelle, living in the quiet French village of Carriveau with her husband Antoine and their daughter Sophie. When Antoine is drafted into the French military, Vianne is left to care for their daughter alone, and once Nazi forces invade France, Vianne is forced to take Captain Wolfgang Beck, a Nazi soldier, into her home. Sent from Paris by their father to live with Vianne, Isabelle rebels against the occupation, but Vianne admonishes her for this behaviour and tells her that if she cannot show appropriate respect for the captain, she will not be welcome in Vianne’s home. She does not tell Isabelle this because she fears for her own safety: she gives this ultimatum because she knows that any resistance could lead to Sophie being orphaned or even killed. Vianne does whatever it takes to ensure that her daughter’s safety, even when this involves cooperating with Captain Beck’s agenda and accepting help and resources from him in times of particular hardship. She does eventually develop an Isabelle-ish kind of courage, successfully smuggling 19 abandoned Jewish children into a French orphanage after their parents are shipped to concentration camps, but it is the quiet endurance she exhibits to protect Sophie that I admire the most. Above all else, keeping Sophie safe is her priority; she will sacrifice anything and everything to keep her warm, fed, and alive during the war. She is not heroic like Isabelle, but she is still brave. 

Eighteen years old and accordingly rebellious, Isabelle Rossignol is angry and defiant, determined to do whatever she can to contribute to the war effort. Women could not join the military, so Isabelle joins the French Resistance, beginning by distributing flyers to French homes and eventually upgrading to helping downed Allied airmen cross the Pyrenees mountain range and reach the British embassy in Spain. Needless to say, the kind of courage that Isabelle demonstrates is radically different to Vianne’s, but Isabelle does not have any empathy for the delicate situation that Vianne is in. Vianne cannot show outward resistance to German occupation as doing so would put endanger Sophie’s life, but Isabelle does not see the whole picture; she finds Vianne’s complacency deplorable and cowardly. To her, the only kind of courage worthy of note is finding a way to actively fight back, despite the risk that rebellion provoked. Isabelle’s brand of bravery is the kind we traditionally hear about in stories of war, and indeed, Isabelle is particularly inspired by the stories of women like Edith Cavell, a British nurse who was executed by firing squad for showing no discrimination in which soldiers she assisted, saving the lives of men from both sides of the war. This undeniably constitutes an outstanding level of daring and tenacity, but is it the only way to be brave? 

This is the core question that The Nightingale proposes. Who was more courageous? Who had greater strength: Isabelle or Vianne? They both begin as distinctly unlikeable characters. Vianne is timid and weak, while Isabelle is judgmental and thoughtless, so neither woman is enjoyable to read about for the first half of the book. However, their character development is absolutely stunning, and so I believe that the answer to the question that the novel poses is that they are both equally strong and brave, just in different ways. Isabelle is traditionally courageous, often to the point of being foolhardy, giving no thought to the danger she will be in if she participates in the Resistance movement. Hers is the tale of bravery to which we are so accustomed in times of war, but that by no means diminishes the courage that Vianne exhibited. Vianne sacrifices her dignity, her image, her humanity in order to keep her daughter alive. She has to do unthinkable things to ensure Sophie’s safety, and on top of all of this, she still decides later in the war to risk her life to save those of orphaned Jewish children, even writing fake identity cards for them to conceal their Jewish heritage from the Nazis. The Nightingale is a triumphant tale about French people fighting back against Nazi occupation, but it is also a tale about sacrificing rebellion in order to keep the ones you love safe. 

Although I was skeptical while I was starting the book, by the end I was enthralled. The complexity of character in this novel, and the incredible amount of character development the characters go through, is inspiring: I have always loved stories about women who demonstrate non-traditional kinds of bravery, resilience, and strength (see: Sansa Stark in A Song of Ice and Fire), and I am happy to add this book to the list. I hope to one day write a novel whose strong female characters are as vivid and complex as Vianne and Isabelle. 

PACHINKO by Min Jin Lee (2017)

"History has failed us, but no matter."

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS

Pachinko begins in 1883 in the fishing village of Yeongdo, Korea and concludes in Osaka in 1989. A sprawling story about four generations of a Korean family living in Japan, it is an intimate cross-examination of the discrimination Koreans faced from the Japanese, and how this distorted the national identity of the Korean people.

(First, a brief history lesson: Japan annexed Korea in 1910. This occupation lasted until the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, after which Japan conceded defeat and surrendered Korea to the Allies. It is necessary to include this quick timeline in order to contextualise the core thematic content of Pachinko.)

The title of the novel comes from the game pachinko, a popular form of gambling in Japan. Pachinko represents several things, but the most important is the treatment of Korean people by the Japanese. After the annexation, Native Koreans experienced terrible discrimination from the Japanese who moved to Korea in search of agricultural work, and this is first exemplified by Sunja, the ‘main character’ of the novel, if one must be assigned. A young woman devoted to assisting her widowed mother to run the family inn, Sunja is one day accosted by a group of Japanese boys while returning home from the market. A section of their taunting is below:

‘Yobos eat dogs and now they’re stealing the food of dogs! Do girls like you eat bones? You stupid bitch [...] I don’t understand you, you stupid Korean. Why can’t you speak Japanese? All of the Emperor’s loyal subjects are supposed to know how to speak Japanese! Aren’t you a loyal subject? [...] The yobo has really big tits. Japanese girls are delicate, not like these breeders’ (Lee, 2017).

This incident is emblematic of the discrimination that Koreans faced, both in Korea and in Japan. Job opportunities were minimal in Korea due to Japanese migration, but the demand for labour in Japan was high, forcing Koreans to migrate east; however, the only jobs available for Koreans were physical labour roles, as Koreans were typically less educated than Japanese. Koreans could only live in particular areas of Japan, usually slums, and during WWII, thousands of Korean men were drafted into the Japanese military, while hundreds of Korean women were conscripted as ‘comfort women’ for the Japanese soldiers. Lee symbolises this discrimination under the simple umbrella of pachinko. A combination of pinball and slot machines, pachinko is a game of chance: winning and losing is based entirely on luck. The Japanese pachinko market is worth more money than the gambling revenue of Las Vegas, Macau, and Singapore combined, but it is also considered a dirty business in which Japanese will not concede to work, instead delegating the role down to Koreans. Even though pachinko supposedly originated in Japan, the Japanese people still believed themselves above such nastiness as operating the businesses, forcing Koreans to take the jobs for which the Japanese were too good.

Korean identity was distorted horribly by the discrimination that Koreans faced, and Lee demonstrates this with Sunja’s eldest son, Noa. In his twenties and attending college in Tokyo, Noa begins dating a Japanese girl, who claims that all Japanese are racist and that she doesn’t see him as a good Korean or a bad Korean; she sees him as just Korean. Noa, however, does not want to be seen as just Korean; what he wants “most of all [is] to be seen as human” (Lee, 2017). Having his racial identity validated is not what Noa seeks. Beneath our skin, our blood all runs the same colour, and Noa wants to be seen and known on this bone-deep level. Indeed, he does somewhat achieve this goal. Sunja is married to a man named Isak, but Isak is not Noa’s biological father; when Sunja was a teenager, she fell for a man who did not tell her that he was already married until after she was pregnant with his child. Isak volunteers to marry Sunja and takes her with him to Japan, where they raise the child Sunja bears as if he is Isak’s own son. Noa does not find out the truth until he is in college, and following this revelation, abandons his education and disappears, determined to relinquish his identity once and for all. He assumes a new identity, taking a Japanese name and a job in a pachinko parlor whose owner refuses to hire Koreans. He does not want to be seen as Korean; he does not want to be seen as any race, to be fair, but anything, even the race of his oppressors, is better than being Korean.

The central internal conflict of Pachinko is one we often see in stories of war: are we willing to give up our identity in order to keep ourselves and our loved ones safe? Pachinko is a novel written about Koreans by a Korean, but it is not about reclaiming Korean culture or standing up for Korean heritage. It is a work of historical fiction, aiming to capture the reality of ordinary Korean life in the aftermath of the Japanese occupation, and ordinary Korean life did not feature great acts of bravery or heroism in the name of saving the Korean way of life. It was about survival, no matter the cost, and surviving does not always leave room for patriotism or cultural pride. If this was a triumphant tale about Korean people fighting back against Japanese discrimination, it would not have the same effect. It is because the characters are forced to sacrifice their identity for the sake of living another day that this book is so tragic, and so enduring: it demonstrates what must be sacrificed in order to survive.  

This is the kind of story that I hope to write someday. Not in terms of the content -- I’m not, after all, descended from any race that has undergone discrimination -- but rather in terms of the significance of the work to one’s own life. Min Jin Lee is Korean American: she was born in Seoul and immigrated to New York with her parents when she was 7, so she knows what it means to sacrifice your identity to survive in a foreign world. Pachinko inspires me to tap into my own history, and draw inspiration from my own experiences to use in my writing. Vast and ambitious, Pachinko is the kind of story that stays with you, and in my opinion, there is no better story than that.

Word count: 1,075

WORKS CITED

• Blackery, E. (2016, August 18). A Very Basic History of North Korea [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8z7u7Agdo8.
• Blakemore, E. (2018, August 29). How Japan Took Control of Korea. Retrieved from https://www.history.com/news/japan-colonization-korea.

DIG by A. S. King (2019)

“The best part of all of you is underground if you keep thinking those people define you. Our grandparents were rotten seed. Kept secrets. Worshipped money. Pitted their kids against one another. But we aren’t them. We can break free.” 

THIS REVIEW IS SPOILER FREE

I have attempted to review the novels of A. S. King countless times and in countless ways. My Google Drive folder for all my book reviews contains several half-finished documents in which I have tried and failed to explain what makes her books so great or perform critical analysis of their thematic content, because try as I might, the reasons why I love A. S. King so much simply elude me. My admiration and adoration are on a level that I apparently cannot articulate, but I’m going to try and do my best with her most recent novel, Dig.

Dig started off feeling a little bit lost, the separate strings of the seven point of view characters loosely tangled and gradually growing more and more taut as the story progressed, until the final act, when the strings finally tightened all the way and an impossible knot formed in the centre. I had a vague sense of something approaching with these characters, some of whose names are not revealed until the last few chapters of the book. Their storylines are mostly detached from each other until the very end, but they are also all linked by a familiar thread of anger and restlessness. There’s the Shoveler, a jaded young boy whose mother shoplifts pork loins from the supermarket to help them get by and whose father he has never known, who carries a snow shovel with him everywhere he goes to make him feel safe; the Freak, an apparition of a girl who flickers from place to place, searching for the home to which she can never return; CanIHelpYou?, who deals drugs out the drive-thru window at Arby’s, hates her racist mother, and is in love with her best friend; Malcolm, a lonely wanderer whose father is dying of cancer and is about to leave Malcolm completely and utterly alone in the world; Loretta, the strangest of them all, who commands a circus of train-hauling fleas and spins through the world in a too-big, red-sequined dress; and Marla and Gottfried Hemmings, the grandparents to these five teenagers, two distinctly unhappy people who have been married for nearly 50 years. Marla and Gottfriend are the poisoned root at the heart of it all. Through sheer dumb luck, they sit atop a seven-figure bank account that Marla refuses to share with their five children, determined as she is for them to thrive without any help. The result of this selfishness is an extended family that despises half of its members and isn’t aware of the rest, a family rotten right down to its core. Marla’s greed and selfishness have festered through the limbs of the family tree like a metastasizing cancer, breeding and perpetuating resentment, but the five teenagers venturing through the wasteland of a life descended from the Hemmings’ have caught sight of the festering wound at the heart of the family, and they can dig themselves out of the tunnel if they can get their shit together.

To be frank, Dig is weird. It’s weird and strange and confusing and not always especially coherent, but that’s the A. S. King trademark, and it’s the thing I have loved about all of her novels so far. King’s stories are not simple, nor are they straightforward. They refuse to provide you with easy answers, instead making you work long and hard to decipher what it is that King is trying to say. Dig is like a puzzle that you can’t begin solving until after you’ve finished reading. The first time through it, you’re just uncovering all the pieces, separating all the edge bits, grouping together all the pieces that look like they belong together, figuring out how you want to approach this; you can’t really begin putting all the pieces together to form a clear picture until after you’ve finished the book, when all the threads have been untangled. This is a book that I think would absolutely reward repeated reading. I almost want to read it again right away, because even though I feel like I somewhat understood this book, I also know that the puzzle is never going to be complete until I go back and approach it with what I know now.

But what do I know now? When I’m trying to guess what A. S. King books ‘mean’, I never feel like I’m getting it right. But that, I think, is what makes her books so special: they are so open to interpretation that I don’t have to worry about being wrong, because the author’s influence doesn’t dominate the meaning of the story. So here’s my interpretation: this is a story about family, both blood and found. It’s a story about race, about a white family whose kids are woke and whose parents and grandparents are not. It’s a story about resentment, about kids who resent their parents, parents who are doing the best with what their own parents gave them, which is not a lot. It’s a story about being lost, being trapped, about not knowing how or where you fit, about being an outcast, alienated, a freak, about resenting the alienation and about being so absorbed in it that you don’t even realise how strange it is. It’s a story about surviving, about coping by any means necessary, and sometimes failing to cope at all. It’s a story about five fictional teenagers, but it’s also a story about you and I and everyone we know and love and hate and respect and despise. It is about systematic oppression and ignorance of problems that are right before our eyes and digging, digging tunnels to hide ourselves from harm but also digging our way out, because life cannot be avoided by simply hiding underground. Am I right? Who knows, but it doesn’t matter: what matters is that this book somehow makes no sense and all the sense in the word, and this collection of oxymorons is the reason why this is one of my favourite books of the year, and yet I can’t even really tell you why.

Sounds vague? You bet it was. The synopsis/analysis I’ve provided above was a monster to write, because A. S. King’s novels are almost impossible for me to explain with any sort of coherence. I understand them, but I can’t unpack them, because the ‘message’ isn’t overt or obvious or presented to you in an easily digestible way. Dig is not an ordinary novel, because King is not an ordinary novelist. This book most definitely won’t be for everyone, but for me, it was perfect; in my eyes, King can do no wrong.

THE ALICE NETWORK by Kate Quinn (2017)

“What did it matter if something scared you, when it simply had to be done?” 

THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS

The Alice Network is a classic World War II literary fiction novel, split into two perspectives with alternating chapters. We follow two women in dual timelines: Eve Gardner, who is recruited as a spy during WWI; and Charlie St. Clair, an American socialite searching for her cousin, who disappeared during WWII. Novels set during this time period oftentimes stun me with the raw and devastating stories that they tell, but unfortunately, The Alice Network failed to amaze me, and particular elements actually disturbed and disgusted me. I can’t wait to get into why.

In WWI, we follow Eve Gardner, whose story is the superior of the two. Eve wants to contribute to the war effort, but because she has a strong speech impediment, she is stuck in a dreary typing job. When she is discovered by a British captain who realises that Eve’s speech impediment will make an excellent disguise, she jumps at the chance to join the Alice Network, a network of female spies gathering German intelligence for the Allies. She begins working in a restaurant owned by Frenchman René Bordelou, the patrons of whom are exclusively German, as René’s vision is to provide somewhere in France for German officers to relax and unwind. He is the perfect person for whom Eve could work, but he is also dangerously perceptive, and Eve must make compromising choices in order to maintain her cover. Eve’s story was superior to Charlie’s because it actually had stakes. The novel begins in 1947, where we meet a very different Eve to the voracious recruit in 1915. We want to find out why Eve has become so disenchanted, so volatile, and so broken; we want to know what happened to her, and this means that her story has stakes for the reader right from the start. On the whole, Eve’s perspective is also a lot more interesting than Charlie’s; to me, the story of a spy working undercover in wartorn France is much more entertaining than a bratty 19-year-old scouring the French countryside for her estranged cousin. I wish that this novel was solely from Eve’s perspective; it would likely have been a four or even five star read if Charlie wasn’t involved.

Charlie St. Clair, on the other hand, is a much less compelling character than Eve. At the start of the novel, Charlie is traveling to Europe with her mother to get an abortion, as she has become pregnant by a boy at her college. However, her real ambition is to find out if her cousin Rose survived WWII, so she gives her mother the slip and hunts down Eve at her London home, as Eve is connected to a report Charlie tracked down that could determine Rose’s whereabouts. Several reviews have complained that Charlie is bratty and childish, and I don’t disagree, but that’s not the thing that I disliked about Charlie’s perspective. It was just… lackluster. It didn’t have the energy or the thrill of Eve’s storyline, and Charlie had a lot of annoying quirks that made her insufferable to read. For one thing, she referred to her unborn child as her “Little Problem”, which strongly reminded me of Anastasia personifying her subconscious and ‘inner goddess’ in Fifty Shades of Grey, so I obviously couldn’t stand that. Charlie is also meant to be a math genius, and so I was hoping that she would end up getting to use her mathematical prowess for actual math -- I thought it would be cool to have a female character in the STEM field in a book set in the 1940s. However, the majority of the mathematical equations Charlie solves are metaphorical. I suppose it’s clever to have a purported math genius character use the phrase “Solve for х” when deciphering real world problems, but I was disappointed that this particular trait ended up being used in the way that it was. On the whole, Charlie’s story was just less interesting than Eve’s, and I would have been much happier not having to read it alongside the exponentially more thrilling tale of the women of the Alice Network.

Mediocre storylines aside, there was one thing in particular about the novel that I found truly appalling: the huge age gaps between the characters and their love interests. In both of their storylines, Charlie and Eve hook up with men who are significantly older than them. In 1915, 22-year-old Eve falls for the same captain who recruited for the Alice Network, and ends up sleeping with him even though he is already married and is at least in his thirties -- it is never specified exactly how old he is. Granted, Eve is 22, a fully-grown (if not a little naive) adult who can sleep with whomever she pleases, even if the age gap between them is rather inappropriate. Charlie, however, was the truly disturbing case. In 1947, Eve has a thirty-year-old Scottish man named Finn working for her, and Charlie tries to hook up with him because she has low self-esteem. However, Charlie and Finn eventually end up together at the end of the novel, and the reason I found this a little horrifying is because Charlie is consistently referred to as being underage. The novel acknowledges that at 19, Charlie is underage, and yet still she finds herself happily making out with a man 11 years older than her. It was so gross to me that these older men were attracted to, and consequently having sex with, these much younger women. I found it pretty alarming, especially due to the regularity with which Charlie is called underage. The novel literally acknowledges that her relationship with Finn is inappropriate, and yet they still end up getting married and raising Charlie’s daughter together. Perhaps I’m a little prudish when it comes to age gaps, but it feels wrong for a teenager to be hooking up with an adult. These disturbing age gaps pulled the quality of the novel down for me, to a point where I really couldn’t enjoy it anymore, knowing that I would be endorsing something I found so inappropriate.

On the whole, The Alice Network lacks the qualities that make some WWII novels so remarkable and affecting. I stand by my claim that if Eve’s story stood on its own, The Alice Network would have been close to a five star read; as it stands, however, I can only award it a three, and that’s when I’m feeling generous and not thinking about the startling similarities between Charlie St. Clair and Anastasia Steele. I do plan to read Kate Quinn’s next novel, The Huntress, as I think she does have a talent for plot; I just hope that she channels all of the Eve energy and none of the Charlie, or I’m going to regret my choice.