The Nickel Boys, by Colson Whitehead: I’ve read two Whitehead novels before – Underground Railroad, which was tremendous, and Zone One, which was disappointing – but my first encounter with his name seems like it was decades ago. It may have been decades ago, because it was in a print magazine and I’m pretty sure I remember the caption “Next up for Whitehead: a novel set in a Band-Aide factory” or something along those lines, and that points to his 2006 novel Apex Hides the Hurt – so the feature in Entertainment Weekly or People or whichever it was would have been after publication of either John Henry Days (2001) or Colossus of New York (2003, but it doesn’t seem as likely as a novel to be featured in a magazine). So…almost two decades, cripes. Anyway, the interviewer asked him about “write what you know” and his response was, “Write what you know? Half the fun is making shit up!” which I appreciated. And now, looking at the descriptions for Apex Hides the Hurt and his first novel, The Illusionists…why haven’t I read those?? My guess is that because Zone One was the first Whitehead novel I read and I was underwhelmed (I remember it garnering a fair amount of praise for being a “literary” zombie novel, but I found it to be the most mediocre/lukewarm of both worlds), I didn’t pick up another one until Underground Railroad. Now the scales are thoroughly tipped and I need to go back through his oeuvre. The ending of The Nickel Boys is pretty much perfect. Many brilliant books have mediocre endings, or endings that are good, but this one is really perfect.
Midnight in Chernobyl, by Adam Higginbottom: See here.
The Memory Police, by Yoko Ogawa: There was something strange about the tone of this, and I couldn’t tell if it was an intentional flatness (it was very Kafka-esque, so in that sense it paired with the story) or if it was related to the translation. The conceit is compelling and the second half of the novel grew more and more engaging, but I felt a remoteness from the narrator (I also realized that, inexplicably, I was picturing the island where the story takes place not off the coast of Japan – where it would be – but somewhere in the Atlantic between Greenland and Iceland if you were looking at the “standard” western map of the world). I did love the novel within the novel – the main character is a writer – and the interplay between that world and the world of The Memory Police. By the end of the book, I was sold.
How to Change Your Mind, by Michael Pollan: The second book about microdosing I’ve read in the past year (in addition to an almost unbelievable number of articles – I think Medium’s algorithm for “what you’ll enjoy” is broken, or people are repeating themselves – and the Reply All episode where PJ and Phia microdose). The last Pollan (the only?) I’d read was The Omnivore’s Dilemma, so it had been a while. I’ve always (okay, not always, but for a long time) been curious about microdosing but equally afraid of it.
Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison: I read The Bluest Eye, Beloved, and Sula in high school and Jazz in college – I’m not sure how I’d not read this until now, though I’m aware of wanting to mete out my Morrison over time (that’s probably not necessary; her work is eminently re-readable, and high school was…a long time ago). It’s incredible, of course. It’s perfect.
