Book Reviews by Jordan Williams
American Microreviews & Interviews, 2017
I’m always impressed by Mohsin Hamid’s writing, which achieves emotional heights without needing ... more I’m always impressed by Mohsin Hamid’s writing, which achieves emotional heights without needing to set much foundation. This is particularly true of his latest novel, Exit West. The novel’s rapid pace is mirrored by the quickness with which its characters must learn to navigate their new environments, both geographically and interpersonally.
American Microreviews & Interviews, 2017
In his foreword to the short story collection, the lead editor of Iraq + 100 makes clear that the... more In his foreword to the short story collection, the lead editor of Iraq + 100 makes clear that the book represents an important cultural project. Hassan Blasim wants Iraqi authors to write fiction set in the nation’s distant future (100 years after the fall of Saddam Hussein, to be exact) not only because it will encourage readers to imagine the long-term consequences of war and occupation, but also because he feels the Iraqi literary world has grown perilously narrow. On this point, Blasim is very direct: “Inflexible religious discourse has stifled the Arab imagination, and pride in the Arab poetic tradition has weakened the force and freedom of narration, while invaders and occupiers have shattered the peace that provided a home for the imagination.”
American Microreviews & Interviews, 2017
Ben Winters’ latest mystery/thriller, Underground Airlines, is set in an America that never fough... more Ben Winters’ latest mystery/thriller, Underground Airlines, is set in an America that never fought its Civil War. In the novel, a long series of political compromises between North and South allow slavery to continue to the present day. This is counterintuitive, to say the least. The novel requires that readers imagine a Confederacy that responds to the 1861 assassination of President-elect Abraham Lincoln by abandoning its rebellion and seeking a compromise that would place hard limits on the legality of slavery. Winters’ characters inhabit a world in which assassinations have the effect of cowing those politicians who would oppose slavery into softening their positions. This violence emboldens slaveowners, but never to the point that they consider negotiations to be a zero sum game. They accept that slavery will be profitable enough with mild regulatory oversight.
American Microreviews & Interviews, 2016
One of the main innovations of the Star Trek TV and film series of the ’80s and ’90s was the intr... more One of the main innovations of the Star Trek TV and film series of the ’80s and ’90s was the introduction of the “replicator.” Replicators are machines that essentially perform alchemy for citizens of the United Federation of Planets. They’re designed to rearrange the subatomic particles that permeate the universe into specific forms of matter upon request. Program a replicator with the molecular structure of a pizza and you’ll have free pizzas for life. The material abundance represented by this fictional invention is central to Manu Saadia’s claims in his new book, Trekonomics: The Economics of Star Trek.
American Microreviews & Interviews, 2016
Basma Abdel Aziz’s The Queue has elicited many comparisons to George Orwell’s dystopian classic, ... more Basma Abdel Aziz’s The Queue has elicited many comparisons to George Orwell’s dystopian classic, 1984. Such comparisons are easy to draw. In Aziz’s novel, a theocratic, authoritarian regime, elusively located beyond the Gate of the Northern Building, seeks to monitor and control all human activity. As in 1984, the regime (referred to obliquely as the “Gate”) goes so far as to confiscate and alter records to bolster whatever version of events suits its needs. Occasionally, disruptive citizens disappear without a trace. The few who return usually evidence severe mental trauma and a newfound tendency toward obedience.
American Microreviews & Interviews, 2016
Peacekeeping is a caustically written political thriller set in Haiti. But it is not, strictly sp... more Peacekeeping is a caustically written political thriller set in Haiti. But it is not, strictly speaking, a novel about that nation. Author Mischa Berlinski was living in Haiti at the time of the devastating 2010 earthquake and published some of his observations in the years that followed. Although he seems to have marshalled all of his impressions of the nation's predicament to produce the main thrust of his narrative, Peacekeeping isn't actually about the impact of the earthquake either.
American Microreviews & Interviews, 2016
Mark de Silva’s first novel, Square Wave, is a challenge to the literary world rather than a debu... more Mark de Silva’s first novel, Square Wave, is a challenge to the literary world rather than a debut. Readers should be tipped off by the fact that its central protagonist, Carl Stagg, is a frustrated academic aiming to publish a genre-bending account of colonial warfare in 17th century Ceylon (modern-day Sri Lanka). De Silva is as insistent as Stagg when it comes to letting his own interests, rather than the expectations associated with his chosen form, determine the scope of his writing. As a result, character development generally takes a backseat to introspection on this intellectual tour de force.
American Microreviews & Interviews, 2016
There is a word game being played throughout Helen Phillips’ debut novel, The Beautiful Bureaucra... more There is a word game being played throughout Helen Phillips’ debut novel, The Beautiful Bureaucrat. The first instance occurs when Joseph Jones, the protagonist’s husband, notices how the sign for a “Diagnostic Laboratory” reads as “Agnostic Laboratory” when a truck parks partly in front of it. This is the couple’s “favorite kind of coincidence.” In dialogue, their give and take is often interrupted by playful homophones and letter substitutions. When describing the protagonist’s inner life, the narrator frequently disturbs the flow of her thoughts with strings of anagrams. Phillips and her characters seem determined to defuse particular words and phrases by dismantling their meanings.
American Microreviews & Interviews, 2016
There’s no question that Pippa Goldschmidt’s professional background as an astronomer triggered m... more There’s no question that Pippa Goldschmidt’s professional background as an astronomer triggered my interest in her fiction. However, I am pleased to discover that Goldschmidt isn’t content to let the cosmos do the heavy lifting in her first short story collection, The Need for Better Regulation of Outer Space.
American Microreviews & Interviews, 2015
I’ve come to think of Percival Everett as a generous writer. One who serves up the kind of subver... more I’ve come to think of Percival Everett as a generous writer. One who serves up the kind of subversively obscure stories most writers would probably scuttle. Come to think of it, Everett’s a bit like Daniel Lowry, the 14-year-old fly fishing protagonist in “Stonefly,” a story included in the author’s latest collection, Half an Inch of Water. When Everett wades out into the shallows of his imagination, he’s likely to bring back a freakish two foot rainbow trout that “couldn’t have been there in the first place.” He’s a writer who loves to expose incongruities in logic. While that usually leads him to a punch line, the stories in this collection tend to drive toward more somber conclusions.
American Microreviews & Interviews, 2015
James Ellroy doesn’t flinch. He has a self-proclaimed “penchant for the extreme” that compels him... more James Ellroy doesn’t flinch. He has a self-proclaimed “penchant for the extreme” that compels him to write America’s most shameful impulses into his historical fiction. It shouldn’t be surprising that he has imagined the ferocious murder of a Japanese American family in his latest novel, Perfidia, which is set at a time when anti-Japanese paranoia was at its height. Ellroy’s commitment to disabuse his readers of their romanticized or revisionist views of our nation’s history is commendable. However, in the case of Perfidia, historicity leads too often to myopia, trapping the novel’s universal concerns in the past.
American Microreviews & Interviews, 2015
In contrast to his previous work, Robert Charles Wilson’s latest offering of speculative fiction ... more In contrast to his previous work, Robert Charles Wilson’s latest offering of speculative fiction is something other than dystopian. That is to say he doesn’t spend much time in The Affinities speculating about humanity’s downfall. Wilson deals instead with existential threats that are contemporary and require little imagination (such as climate change, resource scarcity, political instability, war, and economic inequality) so that he can focus the bulk of his skill on toying with the concepts of civic and personal allegiance that we have probably come to take for granted.
American Microreviews & Interviews, 2015
In the late 1980s, Somalia faced a critical turning point. Two decades prior, Somalis had determi... more In the late 1980s, Somalia faced a critical turning point. Two decades prior, Somalis had determined that their nation must be independent from Britain and Italy, but there still remained the matter of how that independence would manifest itself. Would the nation’s newfound unity be affirmed by a military dictatorship or could rebel forces rewrite Somalia’s complicated history yet again? By now we know that rebel forces did eventually succeed in toppling Siad Barre’s regime. Centralized national power became a thing of the past, replaced mostly by the all-too-familiar brand of stability offered by local, fundamentalist rule. But how fully did this seismic political shift reflect the lives and concerns of Somalis? Mohamed’s novel steps in where sweeping overviews like the one I’ve just offered fail. By writing The Orchard of Lost Souls, Mohamed is in effect asking readers to imagine the role that everyday decisions made by ordinary women play in shaping the soul of a country sitting on the brink of revolution.
American Microreviews & Interviews, 2015
As a mostly straightforward mystery/ghost story, The Supernatural Enhancements qualifies as genre... more As a mostly straightforward mystery/ghost story, The Supernatural Enhancements qualifies as genre fiction yet opens itself up to uninitiated readers. In fact, expectations will probably only interrupt the gratification readers are likely to get if they go along for the ride. Edgar Cantero’s novel isn’t the brain-twisting puzzle of a book that I imagined it to be. Reading it, I found myself less an amateur sleuth and more a kid sitting at the campfire, waiting to be encouraged to sneak into the woods alone at night.
American Microreviews & Interviews, 2015
In its genre (which we might call literary dystopia), Station Eleven sits comfortably between the... more In its genre (which we might call literary dystopia), Station Eleven sits comfortably between the gritty burlesque of Colson Whitehead’s Zone One and the deliberate melancholy and lyricism of Orwell’s 1984. In a nutshell, this means that the novel approaches its few instances of gore and mayhem rather delicately. The novel is more concerned with finding the elements of humanity that are worth preserving than with fetishizing the death and destruction of apocalypse. With this focus, Station Eleven is fertile ground for allusions that run the gamut from Shakespeare to Star Trek, but Mandel is also careful to craft her own world within the novel.
American Microreviews & Interviews, 2015
Citizen is certainly an amalgam of verse, prose, and images. However, something about the poet’s ... more Citizen is certainly an amalgam of verse, prose, and images. However, something about the poet’s sense of purpose leaves me with the distinct impression that the sum of Citizen’s parts amounts to a form we’re expected to recognize. The disorientation we experience from moment to moment in her work ought to be familiar. Rankine’s use of the second person implies as much (the protagonist is consistently referred to as “you”). More to the point, Rankine’s subject matter remains so consistent throughout the book’s various forms, I find it difficult to accept that the disorientation we experience when reading it is anything less than congenital. With Citizen, Rankine is successfully probing the pervasive malignancy of a peculiarly American form of trauma.
American Microreviews & Interviews, 2015
On Immunity is ostensibly a collection of very short essays concerning the ethics of vaccination... more On Immunity is ostensibly a collection of very short essays concerning the ethics of vaccination. It’s aimed at those who are puzzled by this question: Which poses a bigger risk to a newborn child, unmitigated contagion or the controlled introduction of immunity? Since Eula Biss has come to view vaccination favorably, one could reasonably categorize her text as mere proselytism. However, “An Inoculation,” the book’s subtitle, suggests a genre that’s stranger and potentially more intimidating. By labeling her creation an inoculation (a term that has become synonymous with vaccination), Biss risks making readers as wary of her work as they are of the “shots” and “jabs” regularly administered by their doctors. In fact, the book’s third essay opens with a detailed examination of our inoculation phobia. Biss puts it simply: the way we talk about the process demonstrates our belief that “vaccination is a violence.” On Immunity doesn’t challenge this idea directly, although Biss is very interested in the comparison that many have drawn between vaccination and vampires. Instead, what this book challenges are notions of insularity. “Our bodies are not boundaries,” Biss insists. Putting aside the fact that inoculation is based on knowledge that’s both ancient and durable, Biss is a proponent of the morality of inoculation, which prioritizes the protection of whole communities, not just individuals.
American Microreviews & Interviews, 2014
When speaking about his third novel, All Our Names, Dinaw Mengestu has sometimes attempted to dis... more When speaking about his third novel, All Our Names, Dinaw Mengestu has sometimes attempted to distinguish it from his previous work by invoking the title of Chinua Achebe’s classic Things Fall Apart. There’s an interesting reason for this. All three of Mengestu’s novels focus on immigrant characters who lose their homes and loved ones. What’s new in All Our Names, he’s said, is the optimism built into its foundation. In a world where things tend to fall apart, an improbable, dangerous love story can emerge. Read with this dichotomy in mind, the novel becomes, among other things, a rumination on life’s unwarranted joys.
American Microreviews & Interviews, 2014
I read Edwidge Danticat’s Claire of the Sea Light as a suitable follow-up, if not a sequel, to he... more I read Edwidge Danticat’s Claire of the Sea Light as a suitable follow-up, if not a sequel, to her previous book of the same style, The Dew Breaker. While that book explored the more painful memories of Haitian immigrants living in the U.S., in Claire Danticat deals primarily with the haunted landscape of Haiti’s present.
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Book Reviews by Jordan Williams