Sing, Unburied, Sing

Sing, Unburied, Sing

Chris Mathers Jackson
Contemporary Fiction

Many people have spoken of the power in Jesmyn Ward’s novel Sing, Unburied, Sing (2017), but nothing can prepare its reader for the heart-wrenching narrative held within its pages. This story, told in alternating, first-person perspective, is a story of place. A native of the Mississippi Delta, Ward knows Sing, Unburied, Sing’s setting intimately. The delta, and its many unburied spirits, come to life in this moving coming-of-age story rich with themes of belonging, loss, addiction, and so much more.

James

James

Chris Mathers Jackson
Contemporary Fiction, The Classics

So often writers tease out an elaborate story by asking a series of compelling what-ifs. In the case of Percival Everett’s most recent novel, James (2024), this is certainly the case. Everett spins an alternate history of American slavery that draws the reader in and provokes readers to reconsider certain narratives. Because, what if? James is the tale of the enslaved man readers met a century ago in Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, but Everett’s Jim is far more complicated and dynamic than his literary debut (à la Twain) depicted.

The Signature of All Things

The Signature of All Things

Chris Mathers Jackson
Contemporary Fiction

Peppered with factoids and historical references that dangle carrots over plenty of delightful rabbit holes, Elizabeth Gilbert’s novel, The Signature of All Things (2013), is a thoroughly researched historical fiction that quickly drew me in. Readers absorb all sorts of botanical and nineteenth-century truths— like ginseng is native to North America (Midwest to Maine)— and countless other little facts, references, and interwoven historical moments. Gilbert’s hefty historical fiction deftly interweaves scientific and historical research into the life of a nineteenth-century woman. Indeed, the novel centers on the life of one woman. Readers observe her, from birth to death, and the many scientific and social shifts witnessed over the century during which she lived. The novel opens with her birth, then takes a momentary pause in her story to tell that of her father’s youth. The Signature of All Things explores myriad themes, bold characters, and plenty of actual historical facts, but upon careful consideration, this is a story about adaptation in both scientific and human terms.

Lincoln in the Bardo

Lincoln in the Bardo

Chris Mathers Jackson
Contemporary Fiction

George Saunders’ first novel, Lincoln in the Bardo (2017), is an astonishingly genre-bending tale set primarily in the in-between space that follows death and precedes whatever comes after. As the novel’s dust jacket explains, “bardo” is a Tibetan Buddhist term for the place souls occupy between death and reincarnation. Saunders is a master of written word (called the greatest American short story writer of our time by many), but this is his first foray into longer form fiction; and he dazzles.

Beowulf

Beowulf

Chris Mathers Jackson
Poetry, The Classics

Maria Dahvana Headley’s new translation of the iconic Old English poem, Beowulf (2020) presents modern readers with a perfect blend of direct translations of Old English phrases and hyperbolically contemporary verbiage. Indeed, she translate kenning (the compound word phrases frequently used in Old English poems) after kenning alongside words like “bro,” “hashtag,” and, yes, “fuck” (although the later may well have been frequently used among the warrior class of individuals depicted in Beowulf). What Headley presents is not traditional high poetry like that championed by many medievalist of yesteryear (among them the likes of Tolkien), but it is lyrical, delightfully readable, and very accessible. What’s more, it is arguably representative of the original feel of Beowulf’s oral roots. Alliterations and lyrical turns of phrase collide with 21st-century slang in Headley’s entertaining and approachable new translation of this oldest of English poems.

My Murder

My Murder

Chris Mathers Jackson
Contemporary Fiction

What if science could bring people back to life complete with memories created prior to premature death? Surely such abilities would be fraught with ethical questions and ramifications. What if a serially killer targeted young women alone in the dark? What would the tipping point be at which the public would rally for these women to be brought back? These are some of the questions from which Katie Williams’ novel My Murder (2023) stems. Williams’ novel takes readers to a not-so-distant future when technology—medical and otherwise—changes certain fundamental certainties in life. Most notably, My Murder is set during a time when death need not be forever.

What You Are Looking For Is in the Library

What You Are Looking For Is in the Library

Chris Mathers Jackson
Contemporary Fiction

Michiko Aoyama’s slender novel, What You Are Looking for is in the Library (2020, English translation 2023) connects a series of vignettes about largely disconnected individuals living in contemporary Tokyo. The central hub of the many spoked story is the community library with its large librarian who seems like a character who has stepped out of a Miyazaki film like My Neighbor Totoro.

The Anxious Generation

The Anxious Generation

Chris Mathers Jackson
Nonfiction, Reading & Parenting

You don’t need to be a social psychologist to recognize the social crisis of modernity. It seems particularly visible among the generation currently coming-of-age with record high levels of mental illness and increasing instances of “failure to launch.” If you happen to be a social psychologist, however, you might find yourself better equipped to unpack the underlying reasons for the generational shift. In The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness (2024), Jonathon Haidt, famous for previous books like The Righteous Mind (2012) and The Coddling of the American (2018, see previous review), zooms in on the questions of why Gen Z faces such unique challenges.

Excellent Women

Excellent Women

Chris Mathers Jackson
The Classics

One of the things I love about reading books like Barbara Pym’s Excellent Women (1952) is the way the characters and language transport me to mid-20th century England—London in this case—and highlight the myriad Britishism that a Yank like me pauses and considers. Surely, we think “slut” must mean something else; as in: “‘You'd hate sharing a kitchen with me. I'm such a slut,' she said, almost proudly” (4). And, indeed it does. But the linguistic differences is just the start of what makes Excellent Women so, well, excellent. Pym’s novel emerges from the first person perspective of Mildred Lathbury, “an unmarried woman just over thirty, who lives alone and has no apparent ties” (in her own words on page 1). Her world quickly alters as Mrs. Napier moves in to the flat below her; the flat with which she shares a bathroom. Mrs. Napier and her husband, the much-anticipated Rockingham, are not what one might expect from a married couple. Excellent Women quickly populates—around the life of Miss Lathbury—with eccentric and entertaining characters. While the novel is set in London, it has a decidedly village feel and Mildred Lathbury is a wildly likable narrator.

The Fell

The Fell

Chris Mathers Jackson
Contemporary Fiction

Try as we may, all of us remember the feeling during Covid lockdowns and quarantines when we wanted to escape the confines, climb out of our skin, anything to escape the mindless numb of every day. Sarah Moss puts flesh on those feelings in her post-pandemic novella, The Fell (2021, first American edition 2022). Coming in just under 200 pages, Moss’s latest fiction will haunt readers just as much as our own memories of COVID’s darkest days.

Damnation Spring

Damnation Spring

Chris Mathers Jackson
Contemporary Fiction

Some books zoom in on a place and its local culture, bound to the setting both in terms of geography and time in ways that pull the reader in. Ash Davidson’s debut novel Damnation Spring (2021) does just that. Readers cozy up with the book firmly in the 21st-century, but within sentences Davidson’s prose transports them to 1977 amid the coastal redwoods and gritty logging families of Northern California. As anyone with knowledge of 1970s logging communities knows, this book deals with some very difficult themes (things like premature death, poverty, miscarriage, and adultery to name a few). Rural towns like the one readers come to know intimately in Damnation Spring, witnessed major cultural upheaval during the 1970s. Growing public environmentalist sentiment and dwindling old growth logging opportunities led to heated conflicts which often pitted neighbor against neighbor. It is a conflict that continues to play out in logging

Home

Home

Chris Mathers Jackson
Contemporary Fiction

Marilynne Robinson’s Home (2008) is the story of a family with a son whose sorted past and heavy heart, continue to define and limit him well into middle age. As his father—“Reverend” to even his sons— faces the final journey after a long and upstanding life, Jack returns home to the town of Gilead, Iowa to face his inner demons and the setting for his earliest shame. This novel tells the story of his return, reception, and renewal. Robinson writes this novel, the second of four in the Gilead series, alternating close third-person perspectives between Jack, the wayward son, and his youngest sister Glory.

Wellness

Wellness

Chris Mathers Jackson
Contemporary Fiction

Nathan Hill’s new novel, Wellness (2023), peals the onion of modern, middle-aged life. It nails so many truisms about contemporary life in terms of fitness, AI, health trends, Facebook wars, married life, love, polyamory, mindfulness groups, parenting in the digital age, careers in academia, and urban gentrification, to name a few. Many of the contemporary elements are laugh-out-loud funny, others are crushingly depressing. Woven into the pre-pandemic age of twenty-teens Chicago contemporary storyline are a number of backstory character-driven vignettes. These reach back in time to highlight traumas and generational family dysfunction with which the main characters live, whether they are conscious of that fact or not. Many read almost as stand-alone pieces, but together they create the patchwork of Hill’s characters’ lives. Wellness is witty and poignant, delightful and difficult

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