Percival Everett by Virgil Russell

How to review Percival Everett by Virgil Russell? It’s a novel that confounds. On the face of it, it’s a conversation between an aging father and his son. Or perhaps it’s an aging father saying the things he wished he’d said to his now-dead son. Or perhaps, as claimed by the father, it’s a novel written by him in the style he thinks his son would use if his son was a writer. Or maybe it’s the son imagining a conversation with his now dead father.

It’s a book about loss, regret, grief and letting go. It is dedicated to Percival Everett’s father, also Percival Everett, who died three years before its publication. It questions reality and examines writing as an act of creation, taking ideas and spinning them into something more, something that allows both author and reader to change, to also become more. Or less, depending on the context.

The Underground Railroad

The Underground Railroad follows the fortunes of Cora, a slave born on a cotton plantation in Georgia. Colson Whitehead constructs a framework for his novel that is grounded in history, but is more allegorical than factual, a sort of Pilgrim’s Progress through the worst of American history mixed with the satire of Gulliver’s Travels.

My historian brain battled with this, struggling to place the narrative in a fixed time period, questioning the veracity of the experiences Cora has, confused by seeming representations of American history that sources I checked couldn’t verify. There are anachronisms and a prefiguring of certain post-slavery methods of controlling black lives in among the events that have their roots in fact.

Kaikeyi

Vaishnavi Patel’s Kaikeyi is a retelling of the Hindu epic Ramayana from the perspective of Queen Kaikeyi. It begins in Kaikeyi’s childhood, when a brutal disruption leads the princess to seek the help of the gods to put things right again. That help is not forthcoming, but what Kaikeyi discovers about herself in the process transforms her life. She ceases to be the overlooked only daughter of a king and becomes a woman who will do anything to make a better life for herself and other women.

The Sixth Gun Volume 9

After finishing Volume 8 of The Sixth Gun, I couldn’t wait to complete the series, so jumped straight into Volume 9 on New Year’s Day. The final volume brings together the three concluding chapters in this epic, marshalling all the forces with an interest in The Six together for the final battle.

The Six are an ancient force, forged in the early history of mankind. They have taken many forms, and have been used to end and recreate the world many times. Over the centuries, they have evolved, becoming near sentient, able to manipulate their bearers to ensure that, with each remaking of the world, they remain active within it. But their existence is the cause of wars, enmity, power struggles and misery for those caught at the edges of conflict. In Volume 9, Drake Sinclair and Becky Montcrief have set themselves the task of remaking the world without The Six in it. But first they must stop the Grey Witch, Griselda, from remaking the world in her image.

The Sixth Gun Volume 8

It has been a while since I last read a volume of The Sixth Gun. September 2017, in fact. I needed to skim through my review of Volume 7 to remind myself of what had happened. Quite a lot, as it turned out.

Get ‘Em Young, Treat ‘Em Tough, Tell ‘Em Nothing

Get ‘Em Young, Treat ‘Em Tough, Tell ‘Em Nothing is a collection of short stories by Robin McLean, an American author who is new to me. This collection is one of my And Other Stories subscription books from last year.

The stories are snapshots of contemporary American life, taking in the confusion of beliefs and opinions, the complexities of American society, and the day-to-day and personal experiences that define what it is to be a 21st century American.

Its characters seek a path through, towards living the best life they can manage. There are hard choices and compromises, from relationships and child-rearing to healthcare and national security. There are also windows onto how others see Americans whenever a character ventures abroad, whether as tourist or military presence.

Troublesome Words

Troublesome Words was originally published in 1984 as The Penguin Dictionary of Troublesome Words. It was Bill Bryson’s first published book. My copy is the second edition, published in 1997. It is, as the original title stated, a dictionary, but it’s also a sort of style guide for writers. In it, Bryson draws on his reading around the subject of the English language and his skills as a journalist to compile a list of words that often trip us up. He explains their correct use and why incorrect usage is incorrect.

No One You Know: Strangers and the Stories We Tell

Jason Schwartzman is a writer of creative nonfiction. I can’t recall where I first encountered his writing, but I do recall thinking it was the other Jason Schwartzman, the one who acts, and being surprised by how well that acting Schwartzman wrote (I know, he’s a screenwriter as well, it’s called humour). I  realised it wasn’t the actor when I found him on Medium and read his bio. I followed him on Twitter, back when I was on there. I liked his eye on the world, the way he interacted with strangers, and how he wrote about his encounters. I was thrilled when his book No One You Know was announced, tried to buy a paper copy from the publisher, and was disappointed when they sent my money back to me because they weren’t publishing in the UK. Eventually, I got a copy on Kindle, and it was worth my persistence.

Although I had already read some of the pieces in this collection, it was good to re-encounter them set loosely in context with other works. The book is structured into ‘chapters’ – some of these are groupings of stories on a theme, others are longer single pieces. The chapter titles obliquely reference what is going on in the stories.

The October Country

A paragraph that almost shares its title with that of Ray Bradbury’s short story collection The October Country introduces this place as

… that country where it is always turning late in the year. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and mid-nights stay. That country composed in the main of cellars, sub-cellars, coal-bins, closets, attics, and pantries faced away from the sun. That country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts. Whose people passing at night on the empty walks sound like rain …

The Corrections

In Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections, we meet the Lamberts, an American Midwestern family with a whole raft of issues. Or not, if you take the view that to be flawed is to be human, and if you’re in the habit of questioning who makes the rules anyway. Set in the second half of the 1990s, heading towards a new century, Franzen riffs on the economic turbulence of the time. The novel’s title refers to the economic corrections attempted by governments to stave off a global recession, applying the principle to the lives of the book’s characters.