What is Not Yours is Not Yours by Helen Oyeyemi-Not Worth Your Time

The best thing about this novel by Helen Oyeyemi is its clever title.  Nigerian born author, Helen Oyeyemi's novel "Boy Snow Bird" was a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize in 2014.  I was very taken with this beautifully written, bewitching interwoven tale of myths, familial bonds and reverse discrimination.  In Oyeyemi's new collection of short stories, the author maintains a crafty writing style that is so mysterious I felt left out in the dark.  I'm also at a loss for the signifigance of its taunting title and fail to find the thread that ties the stories together other than they all contain locks & keys.  I understand the metaphors for new pathways but the stories themselves are without spirit or intent.   Reading Oyeyemi's short stories felt to me like passing through the looking glass.  I'd pass on these peculiar and uninspired stories & pick up one of her former novels.

L Lalami's Pulitz Prize Nominated Novel The MOOR'S ACCOUNT

I strongly recommend THE MOOR's ACCOUNT by Laila Lalami  (b. Moroco 1968) which won the Amer Bk Award & was nominated for the Pulitzer ('15.)  This is a historical novel of slavery in its many ugly forms. The novel begins with the slave trade business in Moroco under the Spanish King in the 16th C and then sets off on Spanish expeditions to conquer new lands & riches.  The Castilian explorers set sail for "La Florida" Apalachia & the Aztecs.  This is a brutal tail of the enslavement & destruction of mass populations of Native American Indians & Moors by the Spanish aristocracy.  Esteban, our narrator, is a young Moor from a loving Muslim household with a rebellious nature.  He chooses not to follow his father's guidance.  When his family falls into a financial ruin, Esteban commits the selfless but foolish act of selling himself into slavery to provide his family money. "To go from freedom to slavery was a fate worse than death with its strange customs & unbearable rules."  "Esteban is a masterful storyteller.  He is also resourceful, indomitable, adaptable, affable & an astute observer. These skills enable him to survive in the harsh & life threatening new world.  The master/slave relationship breeds bonds of brotherhood during their years of reliance on each other.  It resorts back once they're reunited with other Spanish colonizers.  As enriching a tale of adventure, this is a reckoning with morality.  We are reminded of the brutal ruination of races, cultures, histories,  traditions and ways of life by white oppressors.  The MOOR's ACCOUNT is a rich novel of 16th C expeditions that changed history through the abuse of power.

Katie Roiphe's Consumption with Death in THE VIOLET HOUR Doesn't Deserve Your Time

I found Katie Roiphe's obsession with confronting death through the lives of 6 famous writers self-indulgent and regrettable.  The 6 people whose lives she dissected under a fractured microscope are:  Sigmund Freud, Dylan Thomas, Susan Sontag, Maurice Sendak, John Updike and James Salter.  Other than Salter, Roiphe (b. Amer 1968) relies on 2nd hand information and doles out tertiary dolts of mundane philosophy.  Her infatuation with death stemmed from her near fatal illness at the age of 12 when she spent a year in & out of the hospital.  There is a disingenuous attempt at drawing parrallels amongst her subjects in regards to their embracing both life & death.  Her summations & insipid observations seem written prior to writing THE VIOLET HOUR.  It reads as a posthumous piece that does not dignify her subjects or provide substantive material to contemplate mortality.  The only person she interviewed was James Salter.  This interview is the most compelling section in the book.  Salter passed last yera at 90.  Roiphe was rewarded with an interesting, intelligent interview.  With regards to death, Salter tells her "Let's not talk too much about this...Don't dwell on it."  Roiphe tells her readers  "Maybe I need to find a way to be less afraid {of death.}"  Take Thomas' poem  "Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night" to heart and make better use of your time than reading minutia of how these famous people spent their waning days.

Rafael Yglesias' novel A HAPPY MARRIAGE is Scripted from His Married Life & Death of His Wife

Rafael Yglesias (b. Amer 1954) is a novelist & screenwriter.  In his latest novel A HAPPY MARRIAGE, Yglesias writes about a young novelist, Enrique, who meets a beautiful young woman, Margaret, whom he falls madly in love.   The novel mirrors his own life.  Yglesias met his wife Margaret when they were in their 20's, married, had 2 sons and were together until Margaret's death from cancer at 50.  We are voyeurs to the couple's lust, loveless marriage and a rebirth in the grace that comes of a longterm commitment.  There are astute observations of what people bring to a marriage, their expectations and what morphs from coupledom.  "So many illusions dispelled.  So much strength revealed. They had sworn love; they had endured hate." Yglesias best captures Enrique's feelings of inadequacies regarding his writing & his wife.  I liked being a peeping tom in the marriage counselor's office as Enrique's ruse to absolve the marriage for his mistress while knowing their union prevails. The novel deals with the inability to confront mortality.  "No warning of the incredible fact of mortality could adequately prepare the primitive brain nature had given him to comprehend its finality."  And while I was fine being a voyeur to sexual exploits in the bedroom, I was extremely disturbed being in Margaret's hospital room & hospice care.  The sum of a marriage comes from the ability to see the world through the other's eye.  A HAPPY MARRIAGE was more than an eyeful of happiness.  It was also morbid & macabre.          

The NEST Familiy Ties that Bind & Unravel Over an Inheritance

Cynthia Sweeney's debut novel is a family dysfunctional dilemma embedded in a lair of interesting quirks & a major jerk.  The Plumb family is meeting to discuss their waning inheritance they're about to receive on the 40th birthday of the youngest sibling.  Melody is the youngest of 4 siblings, and the only parent with teenage twins.  Leo is the leader of the Plumb pack which includes Jack, the gay brother who deals in antiquities & Bea wanna be writer.  Their father prudently put aside a trust to ensure his offsprings a tidy sum to supplant their financial security.  Leo is a self-serving narcissist who oozes charm.  He is the reason for a major debit from the fund.  The novel begins with a catastrophic car crash caused by Leo. Leo lures a young waitress with supposed music connections to abscond in his porsche.  Extremely intoxicated & distracted while driving he runs into an oncoming van.  The accident results in an amputation of the girl's foot and a major cut from the "nest." Their widowed mother, the executor of the estate, thought best, to pay off Leo's indiscretion to avoid scandal.   A familiar familial cry of not fair embroils the others.   All parties had plans for their anticipated & direly needed windfall.  Leo cons his siblings into giving him a few months to adjust for the incremental reduction to their shared nest.  This is a frothy, fast read as we discover the hidden secrets of each siblings' sequestered stash or lack of cash.  We're intrigued by the siblings who are drawn into Leo's commanding orbit & remain tied to one another.  There are plenty of side characters, such as the twin sisters and love interests that keep this novel enticing.  The NEST is a light read of family bonds.  Some fall away and others are sustained.        

Writing My Wrongs: Life, Death and Redemption in an Amer Prison by Shaka Senghor

"Writing" My Wrongs, Shaka Senghor's auto-biography has resounding messages and disturbing accounts of life in prison and on the streets of Detroit as a drug, dealing thug.  I'm going to take a hardline with aspects of Senghor's soul bearing account of his Hellish ordeal & road to redemption.  Senghor was sentenced to 40 yrs in prison for the 2nd degree murder resulting from a drug deal turned deadly.  Senghor bears his gut wrenching life dealing crack & becoming a drug addict as a juvenile.  This candid account is a severe wakeup call for making poor choices and for holding oneself accountable.  What compelled me to continue reading Senghor's life depicting the underbelly of  Dante's Inferno?  Senghor discovered a penchant for writing that proved a turning point. His writing has a clear, inescapable prose.  However, I agree with his 1st parole officer who seemed predetermined to keep him behind bars and did not credit his writings with absolving him of the murder & the severe beating of a prison guard.  I dislike the wordplay "Writing" my wrongs.  It discredits the seriousness of  his heinous & fatal actions.  On the other hand, our nation must reaccess & rectify our inhumane incarceration practices.  Solitary confinement is torture & must be rectified.  Senghor is correct "isolation causes a disconnect in the deepest part of the human psyche."  I do not agree with the death penalty, life without the possiblity of parole or solitary confinement.  "We can never know the power that a word of indness or an act of forgiveness will have on the person who needs it most."  (SS)

"Everything I Never Told You" by Celeste Ng Named Amazon Book of the Year 2014

Celeste Ng's melahcnoly family drama is a poignant portrait of grief, misguided love and missed opportunities.  "Everything…" is Ng's 1st novel.  It garnered numerous Best Book of the Year Awards in 2014.  "Girls at Play," Ng's short story collection received the Pushcart Prize 2012.   The matriach of the family, Marilyn, is one of the few co-eds in 1960.  She finds herself drawn to her history prof. James, the only Asian on campus.  Feeling sympathetic by the shameful bigotry towards the young prof., Marilyn seeks him outside class.  She makes a pass.  An affair ensues and the two marry despite  Marilyn's mother warnings.  She beseeches her not to marry James as "it's not right and she'll regret it."   What Marilyn regrets most is abandoing her medical studies to care for James & their 3 children.  Themes of feeling ostracized as an outsider are prevalent.  The bi-racial family live in a small, all-white,  midwest town.  Yet, it's the dynamics within the family that are most moving.  Ng's novel is both a gripping mystery and a poignant family drama.  The bonds between siblings: Nath, Lydia &  Hannah are each other's life-lines.  But, parental love becomes suffocating & toxic as it tilts towards a favored child.  Marilyn's resentment for her own shortcomings cause her to over burden Lydia.  For Lydia, it was hard to inherit her mother's dream.  "How suffocating to be so loved."  Ng's haunting novel navigates the grief and recriminations felt by parent's and siblings for what was left unsaid that may have prevented the tragedy of Lydia's death.  Happiness is fragile & easily shattered.  "Slowly, they will piece together other things that have never been said."  I'll tell you, read Ng's formidable debut.