Americanah

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah is an epic tome that spans three continents, across 55 chapters in seven parts. I read the 10th anniversary reissue, which has an interesting introduction by the author reflecting on what America means to her and how living there made her aware that it is possible to be judged above all else for the colour of your skin.

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.

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.

Yellowface

Over the summer, I spotted Rebecca F Kuang’s Yellowface on a number of the book-related Instagram accounts I follow and it intrigued me. Then a friend read it and her flash review made me want to read it even more. So I borrowed it from the library.

Yellowface is about a white woman who publishes a book about the Chinese Labour Corp in the First World War and is subsequently perceived by many as taking on the guise of an Asian American writer to garner a wider audience. There’s good reason for this.

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.

Babbitt

Sinclair Lewis’s Babbitt is a classic of American literature. Set in the early 1920s, it follows the titular George Babbitt, realtor, Presbyterian, civic booster and Republican, through his middle class life in his suburban home. The novel is a satire on the American Dream before the phrase was coined.

The Smell of Other People’s Houses

Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock’s first novel is a snapshot of life in Fairbanks, Alaska in 1970. Told by a small group of teenagers, we see the world through their eyes; the smallness of the town, the strangeness of the adults around them, and the ways they find to survive the transition from childhood to adulthood.

The Heart Goes Boom

Alex Green’s debut/only novel is a wise-cracking examination of the shallowness of the world of acting, particularly late night soap operas, and the story of one man’s epic quest to understand the meaning of true love and immortality.

Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street

Bartleby the Scrivener is a classic short story by Herman Melville concerning an unnamed lawyer and his team of scriveners, or clerks, plus an office boy. His two existing clerks, Turkey and Nippers, are chalk and cheese, switching temperaments halfway through the day so that there is always one irascible man in the office, while the office boy, Ginger Nut, is the son of a man who wants a better life for his boy. When the narrator advertises for a third scrivener to help with an increase in work, he brings into this setup the inscrutable Bartleby.