NewPages Blog

Guest Post by Liz Bertsch

My pleasure reading is typically done at night, in bed with my Kindle. Mid-pandemic, however, reading has become less a pleasure and more an exercise in mindfulness as my mind drifts towards panic about my family, the world, and my zany and delightful middle-school students. I begin and then abandon many a book, just like my students, because who has time to waste on a book that doesn’t hold you?  And then James McBride’s Deacon King Kong stumbles into view, and any book bold enough for that title is something I’ll consider.

McBride’s novel centers on a crime that takes place in and around a Brooklyn housing project in 1969 when a drunken and elderly character named Sportcoat pulls out a gun and shoots a 19-year-old drug dealer.  The crime occurs early afternoon, and although the audience for the shooting in the housing project is young drug dealers, older churchgoers, janitors, and undercover police, the crime reverberates in the surrounding quiet Brooklyn neighborhood of mob bosses and organized criminals. McBride’s novel is part Greek tragedy, police procedural, crime thriller, and there is a bit of ghosty stuff thrown in for good luck.

The nicknames of McBride’s characters are hilarious, and while reading, I think of my students who would delight in encountering the character of Sister T.J. Billings affectionally known as Bum Bum, and Hot Sausage, a friend of Sportcoats.  And in a vignette when church folk tell stories of Sportcoat’s many near-death experiences, and describe the time, “He went “fatty boom bang!” I laugh and keep on reading because I care about Sportcoat, and I’m happy.

Deacon King Kong by James McBride. Penguin Random House, March 2020.

Reviewer bio: Liz Bertsch teaches in an independent school on the East End of Long Island.  Her essays have appeared in a variety of arts and literary journals.

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Guest Post by Bill Cushing

Although best known for his Dune series, Frank Herbert’s 1982 book The White Plague may be just what the doctor ordered these days.

In a nutshell, Dr. John Roe O’Neill, an American biophysicist visiting Ireland on a research grant, witnesses his wife and twin sons killed from an IRA bombing. To say he “loses it” would be a serious understatement. The first chapter opens with an ancient Irish curse—“May the hearthstone of hell be his bed rest forever”—and Herbert delivers fully on this hex from there.

O’Neill returns to the states, isolated and vengeful, and decides that since a political cause took his wife and children from him, he would reciprocate. Designing a genetic virus that does not affect men but kills females, he adopts the name “The Madman,” releasing his biological scourge on the world by infecting low denomination bills.

Once released, the plague destroys the world in short order, causing whole nations to collapse, even forcing the Vatican to relocate to Philadelphia. As the world descends further into self-isolated tribes killing anyone approaching, Scotland Yard conducts its hunt for “The Madman.”

However, this is not simply the story of investigators trying to locate and capture The Madman. That is there, of course, but there is much more.

Like Thomas Mann’s allegorical Magic Mountain—where he uses a tuberculosis sanitarium as a vehicle for examining European nations on the edge of World War I, Herbert uses this book as a means to study nations and their peculiarities. It also offers the author an opportunity to study people’s reactions to the direst of situations as well as their use and pursuit of power.

At fewer than 500 pages, The White Plague offers a much more restrained analysis of such behavior as is seen in the massive Dune series.

The White Plague by Frank Herbert. 1982.

Reviewer bio: Bill Cushing writes and facilitates a writing group for 9 Bridges. His poetry collection, A Former Life, was released last year by Finishing Line Press.

Guest Post by Doug Mathewson

I watched a TED Talk by Luis Alberto Urrea, and like most TED talks I agreed with every word, but five minutes later I couldn’t remember a one of them. What did stay with me was how smart and well-spoken Urrea was. He has better than a dozen books to his credit, both fiction and nonfiction, as well as numerous awards including a Pulitzer Prize nomination on 2005.

House of Broken Angels is a wonderful book of laughter, family, and heartbreak. Elderly and beloved Mamá has died and grand funeral is planned. The funeral coincides with patriarch Big Angel’s birthday, and he is terminally ill. Big Angel can’t last much longer; his condition worsens daily. The very extended de La Cruz family on both sides of the California – Mexico border comes together for a large farewell party to honor Mamá and Big Angel.

More and more family arrives, and there is food, and there is laughter, but old grievances too. Some to be resolved and forgiven, others as fresh and venomous as ever. New feuds emerge as well. Obscure relatives and friends materialize. Estranged relatives hold back, unsure how they will be received, the pros and cons of reestablishing family contact an ever shuffling deck of emotions. A successor must be chosen for Big Angel, and the logical choice refuses the role.

I loved the world of this book and the de La Cruz family in all of its engaging glory: the romances, the shifts in power, the unresolved mysteries, stories of benevolence, stories of grief and need. The quirky details will make you smile, and the big ideas of the book are very moving and real.

The House of Broken Angels by Luis Alberto Urrea. Little, Brown and Company, March 2018.

Reviewer bio: Doug Mathewson is the Founding Editor of Blink-Ink. His own writing can be found at: www.little2say.org.

Buy this book through our affiliate Bookshop.org.

Guest Post by Dawn Corrigan

I’ve been rereading some of my favorite books from childhood, a form of comfort food. I recently reread The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. Here are my observations.

I was both annoyed by and somewhat seduced by the Christian Scientist / Science of Mind content in the final chapters, which I don’t remember from my many childhood readings of the book, probably because I didn’t understand the context back then.

I liked Dickon much better this time around—he was a little pious for my taste when I was 10. In fact this time he was my favorite character, though Mary was a close second.

When the focus shifted to Dickon in the middle of the book, I was convinced Mary had a crush on him, and was annoyed when I went to Goodreads and learned that in the 1987 made-for-TV movie, Dickon is killed in WWI and Mary marries Colin. But then I got to the Colin part and realized those movie makers were on to something. Mary’s crush shifts to Colin pretty quickly, signaled by her description of each boy in turn as “beautiful.” After she calls Colin beautiful, Dickon starts to fade into the background. I approve of Mary’s boy craziness but disapprove of her choice, which shows she’s still locked into the caste system. Colin is okay, and I’m glad he gets better, but the better he gets the more of a pompous mansplainer he turns out to be. Dickon only provides information when it is asked for. And it’s always on target, and never overly verbose. Plus: Animal Charmer!

At the end of the book, Dickon disappears altogether, and even Mary fades into the background. As Colin gets well, he looms over everything. The ending is not as good as the beginning because we get more Science of Mind and mansplaining and less plot and garden and fewer delicious secrets.

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. 1911.

Reviewer bio: Dawn Corrigan‘s poetry and prose have appeared widely in print and online. She works in the affordable housing industry and lives in Myrtle Grove, FL.

Guest Post by M.C. LeBrun

The Foundling is Stacey Halls’s much-anticipated second novel. Like her debut The Familiars, we are placed in a world where patriarchal powers dictate the mores of the day and women must use their wits to regain their autonomy. This is a tale of two mothers situated on either side of the class divide in 18^th century Georgian London but connected by a child, born to one and raised by the other.

Bess Bright, newly delivered of her illegitimate little girl, is passing through the gates of a Foundling home, ushered along in a line of destitute mothers in various states of despair. There is little time for recovery from trauma, heartbreak, and physical pain when a lack of coin means a life on the streets. For the next six years, Bess does all she can to muster together the money she needs to bring her daughter home for good. However, when the time comes, she discovers her child missing, claimed by another who has stolen Bess’s identity.

From the vivid descriptions of Bess’s life on the streets hawking shrimp and sideswiping lecherous hands, we are introduced to Alexandra Callard, an orphan and widow whose vulnerability is more easily disguised by her wealth and power. Agoraphobic and distrustful of the world, Alexandra tightly controls every aspect of her existence and that of her child, Charlotte. Compulsively repressive and lacking in maternal instinct, Alexandra struggles to understand the needs and desires of Charlotte as separate from her own. When Alexandra is finally coerced to permit the presence of a nursemaid in her child’s life, it is then these women’s worlds collide.

An entangled story of juxtaposed dichotomies unfolds: wealth and poverty, power and deprivation, the expressed and suppressed. We the readers are moved from one subjective reality to the other, playing judge to their choices and witnessing the powerlessness of the child at the center of it all. What makes a good mother? Stacey Halls’s finely tuned and richly evocative historical narrative transports us to another era to explore this very modern question.

The Foundling by Stacey Halls. Manilla Press, February 2020

Guest Post by Olga Zilberbourg

I’ve just finished The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell. It took me about six weeks to read it—it’s a big book, and I’ve had snippets of time. What I loved about it is the way it moved from being a historical narrative into science fictional territory, creating something of an alternative reality for Zambia’s near future. I don’t really know any other novel that does this movement in quite this way. The story is told by a chorus of voices, each of whom is engaging in their own way, and another fascinating way about this book is the unexpected way they come together at the end. I still need to mull it over.

The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell. Hogarth, May 2020.

Reviewer bio: Olga Zilberbourg’s fiction has appeared in Confrontation, World Literature Today, Narrative, Outpost 19’s Golden State 2017 anthology, and others. She co-hosts the weekly San Francisco Writers Workshop.