People I Want to Punch in the Throat by Jen Mann

When your book is blurbed by Jenny Lawson on the front and your writing style is compared to David Sedaris on the back, before I even open the cover, I have high hopes. Like, really high. Also, the title's pretty catchy. And there's a smashed cupcake on the front! Yum, cupcakes...

So, I was a little bit disappointed to discover this book reads mostly like a (sorry sorry sorry) mommy blog. Please believe me when I say in no way do I mean this as a dig - especially after reading a chapter titled "Motherhood: The Toughest Competition You'll Ever Judge" full of passive aggressive oneupmomship. I can't stand that people actually engage in the mommy wars, I'm just using the term so you know exactly what genre you're in for if you choose to read this book. I'm guessing this is likely due to my own ignorance, not having read Jen Mann's blog (or, um, the table of contents) and thinking there was going to be more of a variety of funny. That said, motherhood is funny. It's ridiculous the things your kids say and the unforeseen situations you can find yourself in. And Jen Mann, despite finding herself at one point at the bottom of the hierarchical ladder of playgroups and the social pariah of the suburbs, is a really funny mom. Someone who I'm sure I'd have a blast hanging out with and laughing with. (I thought your dry humour with the neighbours was funny, Jen!) She says what we all think in our heads out loud and will do anything for a good story.

Still, I read mainly to escape and even though the stories about motherhood and small children were pretty funny, I wanted a bit more range. If you're a mom with small kids and you just want to laugh about how hard and silly and unpredictable it all is - and you could envision yourself at a gun range with the other moms on your one night out a week - then this book is definitely for you.

Also, I learned something really quite interesting about white boulders, so there's that. 

Judge the cover: 4/5

Are You My Mother? A Comic Drama by Alison Bechdel

After writing Fun Home about her father, Alison Bechdel felt the need to write a book about her mother. Her mother did not approve. She already felt exposed by Alison's first book and didn't want to open herself up to even more scrutiny.

While I enjoyed Fun Home, I felt that Are You My Mother? got blurred too much by psychoanalysis and external flotsam. The author was heavily immersed in the writings of Donald Winnicott, a psychoanalyst and pediatrician who studied child/mother relationships. She was drawn to his work because she was trying to discover more about her own relationship with her mother. Already part of a fairly non-demonstrative family, she essentially felt abandoned and less worthy than her brothers when her mother abruptly stopped kissing her goodnight at age seven.

As she's showing her experiences with her mother in the frames, many are captioned with Winnicott's theories as to why mothers don't always properly bond with their infants. She also has references sprinkled throughout analyzing the relationships in Virginia Woolf's work, as well as revealing visits with her own therapists whom she confides in over the years. While I appreciate this duality of storytelling and its unique form, for me personally, it got in the way and felt excessive. 

It's not to say that Alison hides behind these sub-stories but I feel that they overshadow her own. It makes sense how she's incorporated these additional references into her own body of work, but after some time, it feels as though we're not getting a focused enough picture of her relationship with her mother. It must be hard to feel compelled to write a memoir when the subject of the memoir is reluctant to be written about. At one point, her mother quotes the following by Dorothy Gallagher about memoirs during one of their conversations: "The writer's business is to find the shape in unruly life and to serve her story, not, you may note, to serve her family, or to serve the truth, but to serve the story." followed abruptly by "I know! Family be damned!" You can sense the unease of her mother throughout the book and a walking-on-eggshells quality to how Alison writes about her. She tries to be as candid as possible, but somehow, with all of these extras going on, I feel that a large part of the narrative is missing. In comparison, Fun Home was written after the death of Alison's father. Perhaps while attempting to write about an uneasy relationship while the other person is still alive (and let's not forget, not entirely supportive of the entire endeavour) was just too much of an obstacle. 

In any case, the author must write what they are compelled to write even if, like life, the story isn't always so straightforward.

Judge the cover: 2/5

How It Went Down by Kekla Magoon

"People make mistakes. They look at the surface of things and see what they want to."

This one quote from the book perfectly sums it up. Tariq Johnson, a black teenager, is just sixteen years old when he is gunned down by a white man. But the question everyone needs an answer to is why? Was he armed as some bystanders said or was he only holding a chocolate bar? Had he just robbed a convenience store or did it just appear that way? Was he a gang member as some claimed or holding strong and resisting initiation as others said? Was the shooter acting in self-defense or was it a race issue? Why was he let off so easily? Was it because he was actually innocent or was it yet another case of white privilege?

This is a story told in multiple perspectives from Tariq's family members, friends and a various members of the rough neighbourhood where he grew up. There are many, many viewpoints, yet the way they're all written, flowing from one into the next with clear captions doesn't makes it at all confusing, so don't overthink it and you'll be just fine. You'll be left with a cohesive panorama shown from many clear points of view.

This is the kind of book that makes you think. It shows how easily people jump to conclusions when these types of terrible events take place. So much depends on individuals' own perspectives, biases, and status. It's how a human life can mean a lot or nothing at all and how people can literally get away with murder when facts and fiction are blurred.

Judge the cover: 5/5

Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls by T Kira Madden

T Kira Madden had everything a girl could want: she lived in a mansion, had access to all of the shoes from her family's empire, barely had any rules growing up, wads of cash in her hands, and her very own pony (yes, her very own pony!). So, she should have been flying high, footloose and fancy free, right?

Well, the high part, sure. But the rest, well, it just goes to show that money can't buy happiness is not just a platitude; for T Kira, it was a fact. Because when your parents are mostly failing at sobriety, you can get away with a lot more than you should. There were so many times when reading this book that I had to check back on her age. The timelines of her memories float back and forth and all around, so when she was talking about being taken advantage of by older men, hanging out with drug dealers, and drinking down half of her father's vodka and orange juice, I'd forget and assume she must have been in her late teens. Sadly, so many terrible things happened to her when she was eight. Nine. Ten. She was a prime target for so many things that should have been safely out of reach. 

This is a story of a privileged childhood fraught with a hell of a lot of money and lot of danger. It's what happens when a beautiful child is left to her own devices in a world where everything comes easy, but forgetting is hard. When things happen to a soul, when innocence becomes a thing of the past even during childhood and when a girl finds her voice and tells her side of the story to the world.

Normal People by Sally Rooney

One thing that makes a book bad is not making the reader care about the characters. I had the opposite problem with Normal People. I cared too much. I literally felt as though this book lifted my heart out of its protective cage, turned it into crystal, and threatened to shatter it at any moment. So many times I caught my breath suspended in the air, my mind hanging onto words that made me forget to exhale.

I felt a longing for the characters as though I was one of them. I felt their needs, their isolation, their heartstrings stretching to capacity and I could hardly take it. At times, I wanted the book to end so I could get myself back to normal, to morph my heart back to its natural state, safely beating at a regular rate within my chest. On the other hand, I didn't want it to end. I wanted it to be endless, this perfect interplay of tension, of giving you everything you want and then ripping it away. It's the perfect formula, yet this book felt unique and anything but formulaic. To be able to immerse yourself in fiction, to be utterly swept up in two people who make you forget all about the real world and anything but what you're reading, is the best kind of way to spend some time.

I am left in awe by Sally Rooney herself, this woman I have never met, whose books I've never read until now, yet I feel like she has such an intimate knowledge of empathy and turmoil and anxiety, of the human condition, of how it feels when you don't feel as though you fit neatly into the world. I can't wait to read more of what she's written. She really has a deep understanding of humanity, a natural conversational tone, and a way of not tying things up neatly. I want to tell you about the plot, to drop crumbs about these people she writes about, especially about Connor and Marianne, but I would ruin the plot, so I just hope you love them as much as I do.

Judge the cover: 5/5 (Perfect cover, perfect book)

Ohio by Stephen Markley

If you're the type of person who thinks action and excitement only takes place in big cities, you haven't let Stephen Markley lead you through the small town of New Canaan, Ohio. You're in for a big surprise or two.

We follow four main characters as they find themselves reconnected to their hometown. Bill Aschcraft has a mysterious package duct taped to his torso and a belly sloshing full of alcohol and pills. Stacey Moore is reluctantly returning home for a dreaded meeting with her ex-girlfriend's mother. Dan Eaton is home from the war in Iraq to meet up with a former flame and Tina Ross is back with a Plan-with-a-capital-P up her sleeve that no one - including the reader - sees coming.

The format switches back and forth from present-ish day (2013) and reflects back to the characters' high school days in the early 2000s. They all know one another from growing up in the same fading town - or at least they think they do - but what a living hell high school can be and everyone's been affected in different ways now that they're in their twenties. Some are frantically grasping back to when they peaked in high school; others are clawing ahead trying to distance themselves as far away as they can from their supposed glory days which were, in fact, anything but.

Though time and distance have separated some of them, their lives are all still tethered in different ways and they find their ways back to each other via dark alleys and crappy bars. The small town rumor mill is in full swing and still can't be avoided. No one seems to have gotten through their youth untouched and while some tried to toss their former selves to the wind, they now find themselves back right where they began. They're pregnant, high, drunk, abused, heartbroken, ashamed, coping, untouchable. They're all looking for an escape from their messed up lives. They're all back in New Canaan and it seems the only way to move forward is to go back and deal with the past.

Judge the cover: 5/5

The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls by Anissa Gray

The Butler girls are hungry. Some are hungry for food, some for attention, all for love and understanding.

This book blows open with the incarceration of the unofficial heads of the Butler family: Althea and her husband, Proctor. They ran a popular restaurant in their small town and were known and respected for their charity work, especially after a giant flood ravaged their community.

Althea is the oldest sister of adult siblings Viola, Lillian and Joe. Althea and Proctor are parents to teenage twins Kim and Baby Vi. Althea took over the role of helping raise her siblings when her own mother passed away at a young age. Their father was a preacher who was chasing his demons and was rarely around. 

When Althea and Proctor are locked up, Lillian primarily takes over caring for Kim and Baby Vi, with the help of Viola who's visiting from out of town. As if the incarceration of their sister and parents isn't enough, each of the characters is also going through at least one other major (generally unrelated) personal conflict. Through all of this, the adults are trying to do their best while trying to also take care of the twins and the twins are trying to adjust to their new situation while battling the challenges of teenage-hood. Throughout all of this complexity, however, they really want nothing more than the pure love of their mother, something she is sadly not able to provide.

All of this drama makes for complex characters and an engaging plot. It's very much a multi-layered story. At one point, I thought it was almost overreaching having so many subplots going on, but upon further reflection I realized it actually made the story more realistic. In real life, people usually don't just have a limit of one struggle per time period; instead, we're untangling many conflicts at the same time. Some are bigger and more tangled than others but usually our struggles affect not only ourselves but those closest to us. This is certainly the case with the Butlers, who are really mired down with not only their own personal problems, but at the same time they're being shunned by association by the majority of the community members who have now turned on Althea and Proctor.

What they all need the most is to be loved and cared for. They need a respite from the strange hell they've been dumped into. The Care and Feeding of Ravenously Hungry Girls shows us that the superhuman strength we all carry deep inside ourselves will gradually find its way to the surface if we have an honest and strong support system. It shows us that as long as we have tight bonds and do our best with whatever events life throws at us, we can overcome and, more times than not, come out even stronger on the other side.

Judge the cover: 5/5