WWW Wednesday # 222

Happy midweek everyone! Woah. I hope that 2024 will usher in more blessings and good news for everyone. I hope that everyone will be happy and healthy, in body, mind, and spirit.

With the midweek comes a fresh WWW Wednesday update, my first this year. WWW Wednesday is a bookish meme hosted originally by SAM@TAKING ON A WORLD OF WORDS. The mechanics for WWW Wednesday are quite simple, you just have to answer three questions:

What are you currently reading?
What have you finished reading?
What will you read next?

What are you currently reading?

Like what I have done in the past two years or so, I am kicking off my 2024 reading journey by catching up on 2022 and 2023 releases I was not able to read in the past year/s. Among these titles is Nita Prose’s The Maid. Prior to 2022, I have never heard of Prose before nor have I encountered any of her works. However, her debut novel was ubiquitous. The curious cat that I am cannot resist wanting to dip my toes into her work. I just started reading the book this morning. The titular maid is Molly, a young woman working for a hotel. She takes pride in her job. Nothing was out of ordinary until one day, following the death of her Gran – she was abandoned at a young age by her parents – she found the lifeless body of a hotel client. I kinda see the direction the story is going to take, especially as it seems that Molly has some sort of psychological or mental impairment. From what I can glean, she has Asperger’s or something close to it. I can’t wait to see how Prose will steer the story forward.

What have you finished reading?

A three-book romp commenced with Jonathan Escoffery’s If I Survive You. Like Prose, Escoffery is a new-to-me writer; I only heard of him through the Booker Prize when his novel was longlisted, and eventually shortlisted for the prestigious prize. This makes If I Survive You just the fifth book from the longlist – and third from the shortlist – that I read. The book was just announced as part of the longlist for the 2024 Dublin Literary Award, another prestigious literary prize.

At the heart of Escoffery’s debut novel is a Jamaican immigrant family of four who moved to Miami in the 1970s. The parents, Topper and Sanya, moved to the United States in search of greener pasture and stability; they fled from the violence that took over their hometown of Kingston, Jamaica. They had two sons, Delano and Trelawny; the latter was the main character of the eight interconnected short stories comprising the book. Through their story, we read about the struggles of immigrants as they integrate into a new culture. They had to face blatant racism and discrimination. Trelawny, for his part, was struggling to find his identity at a young age. His brown complexion made him a virtual nonentiy as he was rejected by the white kids and the African American kids. His fellow children of Jamaica immigrants also rejected him because of his American demeanor. As he treads these two lines, Trelawny grew up passive aggressive. Overall, If I Survive You is a compelling and thought-provoking story.

When I picked Megan Kamalei Kakimoto’s Every Drop Is a Man’s Nightmare during one random excursion at the bookshop, I was not expecting it to be a collection of short stories. What reeled me into the book was its interesting book cover and title. Had I read the synopsis, I would have learned that it was a collection rather than a novel; for context, I have an aversion to short story collections as I prefer full-length prose.

But since I started reading the book, there is no turning back for me. As I started reading the book, I was slowly being reeled in by a different brand of literary magic. It started with a list of superstitious beliefs by a “mother” who could be the author’s. The first story which carried the book’s title immediately established the tempo for the rest of the story. It is the story of a young girl who found herself the beneficiary of an unwanted curse by a supernatural being. Her offense: carrying home a slice of pork. The supernatural was prevalent in the stories comprising the collection. Magic and mythology were ubiquitous. But in Kakimoto’s world, the world of mythology is a vessel to explore seminal and timely subjects. The subject of colonialism was subtly woven into the book’s lush tapestry. Feminism, liberation of the body, identity, and sexuality were also prominently explored in these stories. There were very interesting stories about Hawaii, its people, history, and culture. I hope Kakimoto writers a full-length prose.

I concluded the week with a book I was really looking forward to. Like Escoffery, it was through the 2023 Booker Prize that I learned about Paul Lynch. His novel, Prophet Song, was named the winner of the prestigious prize. Being in the longlist was enough to convince me to read the book but being declared the winner more than tripled my curiosity about the book. I planned to read it last year but my copy of the book arrived late in December, hence, I was not able to read it. However, I made sure to include it in my 2024 Top 24 Reading List, making it the first book from the aforementioned list that I read.

Prophet Song was set in a dystopian future which looks like it is closer than farther from the present. The Republic of Ireland was slowly turning into a police state; this reminded me of Orwell’s 1984. A teacher’s union strike prompted the right-wing National Alliance party to seize control of the government. A secret service bureau was created to monitor potential insurgents. Among those they identified was Larry Stack, a teacher and trade union leader who was arrested and held without charge. His wife, Eilish, a scientist, was left to care for their four children and her father, who has dementia. Eilish exhausted all means to have her husband be released but it was all for naught. She also lost her job and she and the rest of the family was placed under constant surveillance. Meanwhile, trouble was brewing as rebels were slowly gaining numbers. It all came to a head when the friction between the government and the rebels turned into a civil war that found its way into the Stack’s driveway. One can relate to the plight of Eilish. However, there is a lack of context for what led to the political crisis that keeps the reader offhand from the experience of the ordinary Irish. Still, it was a riveting read.