The Revisionaries, by A.J. Moxon: The Author Is God

This freakin' beautiful mess of a novel is likely what would happen if David Foster Wallace, Thomas Pynchon, and Tom Robbins got together and tested the limits of how much a reader can stand before giving up and throwing the novel against the wall. But then Kurt Vonnegut showed up halfway through and goes, "But my dudes, we have to make it entertaining as well." And so they did.

I think I understood about two-thirds of what A.J. Moxon is up to here in his long, post-modern, super-meta novel, The Revisionaries. And I consider that a win. It's certainly a novel you need to read more than once, which is a tough ask at 600 pages. But also, in the moment, you're so dazzled by Moxon's language and sentences, you almost don't notice, that a) you're aggravated, because b) you only have a passing sense of what is happening and why. That's especially true in the last 100 pages or so as it's supposed to all be coming together, but it's told in a fractured, multi-perspective way that frankly drove me nuts.

So what's going on here? This is a novel about God, but it's sure not religious. It's a novel about the role of fiction, the author's authority, the reader's power, and where all those might intersect...but sometimes don't? That's my best guess anyway. 

The plot, which is important, but so zany it's almost beside the point here, is about a bearded acrobat woman, a preacher who performs a miracle in a place called Loony Island (so named because of it being home to an insane asylum) and builds a new church, a kid who flickers in and out of existence, a cult of weirdos dressed up as cardinals, and a guy who discovers a magical fountain and uses it to erase people's memories and recreate them as he sees fit.

Are you with me? IT'S SO WEIRD! But in a strangely good way. 

Again, I can't claim to fully understand this, but part of the point is how the author is God, but the reader still has veto power, even over God, because of how s/he interprets, understands, derives meaning from, feels about, etc., the text. And this is because each reader brings to bear a unique experience, education, philosophy on life, philosophy on reading books, politics, mood, etc. on every book s/he reads. I think?

Would I recommend that you read this? Yes, but with a bunch of caveats. If you like to be challenged, if you are okay with not completely understanding why or how or even what is going on all the time, and if you like something that's truly creative, inventive, and probably unlike anything else you've really ever read before, pick this novel up. Moxon is smart enough (you should absolutely follow him on Twitter, by the way — that is one of main reasons I bought this novel and read it), that someday soon, he's going to publish a novel that absolutely dazzles us. I can't wait for that, but I'm glad I read this one now.

Small World, by Jonathan Evison: Striving Together for the American Dream

Jonathan Evison's new novel Small World is, no exaggeration, his masterpiece. He had mentioned on Facebook a few years ago that he felt like this is the novel he was born to write. And he wasn't wrong. 

Small World is a huge, ambitious, but incredibly immersive Great American novel about how we're all connected in striving for the Great American Dream. A huge cast of diverse characters both in the present and in the 19th century populate this novel with interconnected stories about how beating injustice and flourishing in this Great American Experiment is at its essence a team sport. 

So as a train speeds through a snowy night in Oregon, several passengers on this train are connected in ways they couldn't possibly know. A mom trying to give her basketball prodigy son a leg up. A woman escaping her abusive boyfriend. A family making a huge change in their lives. And the train engineer, on his last run before retirement. We get the stories of each of these people, but as importantly, we get the story of the 19th century ancestors of each of these people. An enslaved person who escapes in Illinois. Irish immigrant twins who try to make their ways in Chicago and then the sprawling West. A Chinese immigrant who pans for gold in California. And a Native American girl who yearns for open spaces and freedom. 

It's a lot, for sure. But Evison nails it! You never feel overwhelmed or have trouble keeping these characters straight. Without question, this structure was risky: There are literally eight different strands of story (and really nine, because we get both of the Irish twins' stories), and so this could've easily gone sideways. 

But I couldn't wait to get back to each story. Would the Irish twins find each other after they're separated? Would the basketball superstar get his time to shine? Would the woman escaping her a-hole boyfriend truly escape? How are all these people connected, both in the past and the present? But most importantly, how would all of these characters be able to overcome injustice, inequity, and a deck stacked against them to strive toward their American dream? 

To be honest, I'm just about done with long novels of interconnected stories (thanks a lot, Cloud Cuckoo Land). Everyone's doing it now and it's getting a little tiresome. But I'm glad I got this one in under the bell before I got tired of these, because this one is a paragon of the genre. If you've been a New Dork Review reader for any amount of time, you know I'm huge Evison fan. I've read everything he's written, and I can happily report this novel represents a major step forward for him as a writer. I've really enjoyed all his novels, but this is my favorite since The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving, which is still my favorite of his. But this is now a very close second. Highly, highly recommend. 

The Love Songs of W.E.B. DuBois, by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers: The Power of History

Ron Charles, the esteemed book critic for the Washington Post and one of my all-time favorite book reviewers, is almost solely responsible for talking me into picking up this 800-page novel. 

Charles wrote: "Whatever must be said to get you to heft this daunting debut novel by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, I’ll say, because The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois is the kind of book that comes around only once a decade. Yes, at roughly 800 pages, it is, indeed, a mountain to climb, but the journey is engrossing, and the view from the summit will transform your understanding of America."

So heft, I did, not without some trepidation, frankly. But now, I owe Mr. Charles a beer. Because it was just as engrossing and transformative as he said. I actually included it on my top 10 of 2021 before I'd even finished it. 

The story itself is two-fold. It's a coming of age story of Ailey, a young Black girl growing up in "the City" (presumably NYC?), and visiting relatives during summers in rural Georgia. It's also the story of Ailey's ancestors, enslaved people on a Georgia plantation. So yes, it's a multi-generational family saga, but told as two separate narratives. Both stories are fascinating, and there are a TON of characters. You're warned of this with the extensive family tree Jeffers includes at the beginning. 

As good as this is, it's not an easy read from a content standpoint. Serious trigger warnings here for sexual abuse, pedophilia, and drug addiction. 

But it really is as engrossing as Charles says — it's an epic story of America, injustice, racism, the power of knowing and understanding unvarnished history, and the strength of family. 

Cloud Cuckoo Land, by Anthony Doerr: Stories Are Timeless

They used to say that when writers are out of ideas, they write about writers. These days, however, it seems like when writers are out of ideas (or just want to pander to readers) they write about books, or the power of storytelling, or the importance of literature, etc., etc. I'm mostly here for it. But it's not always completely successful.

To wit, I give you this lukewarm review of Anthony Doerr's much heralded new novel, Cloud Cuckoo Land. It's, you know, fine. But it's a long, needlessly complicated, questionably structured journey to arrive at the point: Stories are timeless.

So Cloud Cuckoo Land is three stories in one, and it's like Doerr put them all in a blender and then drizzled parts of each out onto the page. There's a story told from both sides of the siege of Constantinople in 1452. There's a modern-times story of a Korean War veteran directing a play in a library and an eco-terrorist who is planning to bomb the real estate company next door. And then there's the pre-teen girl hurtling through space on a space ship several centuries in the future, presumably escaping a destroyed Earth, and along with her shipmates, hoping to restart human civilization on a distant planet.

For the first half or so of the novel, I was enthralled, and the structure of skipping back and forth between these stories, seemed to work fine. But then I got tired of it because I couldn't figure out the why. Why was it necessary that each of these stories needed to keep interrupting the others. Each story builds drama, but then we're whisked off to the others. And once we start to see their central point of converge, frankly it's a bit of a letdown. The stories seem to collapse under their own weight of expectation. 

I started this book hoping for a David Mitchell-esque display of storytelling. And the premise and structure are certainly inventive and imaginative. I just wasn't sure Doerr landed it all successfully. I'm certainly in the minority in this somewhat tepid opinion, because this has landed on many "favorites of 2021" lists. But to me, it just didn't quite deliver on what it promised.

(Side note: This book is listed at 620+ pages. It's maaaaayyyybe 450. There are tons of chapter breaks and blanks pages. And this bugged me to no end, I'm not sure why. Like the publisher wanted to make the book feel more substantial than it is.)

The New Dork Review's Top 10 Books of 2021

On the cusp of 2022, we're still feeling the effects of 2020. But in 2021, at least in terms of books, that was mainly a good thing. Because many 2020 releases were delayed due to the pandemic, 2021 was quite the embarrassment of riches for new novels. Every week, as we put out the new releases at RoscoeBooks, we were astounded at not just the number of new releases, but the number of big-name authors (especially this fall) who published books this year. It was truly an amazing book year. 

Even so, I actually read less this year than any in the last 10 or so (around 60 total books and about 23,000 pages). I'm not sure why, it just happened that way. But I still read a ton of amazing books. And actually posted here more than any year since 2015. So that's a plus!

And but so, here are my top 10 favorite books of the year. These are in no particular order, except for No. 1. Since I read it this summer, Damnation Spring has been my no-hesitation answer for favorite book of the year. And it still is.

10. Mary Jane, by Jessica Anya Blau — Rock stars: They're just like us. Only waaaaaay cooler. Of any novel I read this year, I think this one surprised me most for how much I loved it. Yes, the "Almost Famous" comparisons are apt, but that's only one of about 10 reasons this novel is fantastic. One of my favorite parts of this novel is the coming-of-age aspect: How Mary Jane reacts when she collides with new ideas and new ways of thinking.

9. Every Day Is A Gift, by Tammy Duckworth — If you thought a memoir about a woman losing her legs in a helicopter crash couldn't also be freakin' hilarious, well, then please meet Tammy Duckworth. I was a huge fan of hers before, but after reading this, I'm in total awe of her. Truly inspirational! And she'll be the first to tell you, she has a lot of work left to do.

8. Crying In H Mart, by Michelle Zauner — This is the second year in a row I've had a musician's memoir in my top 10 (last year was Mikel Jollet's Hollywood Park), and in both cases, the book itself was barely about music. Zauner writes about her often fraught relationship with her mother, her Korean heritage and her attempt to reconnect with it through food, and her grief from her mother's death. Her prose here is clear, precise, and powerful. I fancy myself pretty knowledgable about music, but I had never heard of Japanese Breakfast before reading this memoir. Do yourself a favor, and check out the band's most recent album, which is sort of a companion to this book — it's really great, and of course this book is, too.

7. Bewilderment, by Richard Powers — This novel has more than a little in common with No. 1 on my list, and continues a recent trend in publishing, which I am completely here for: Novels with a decidedly environmentalist bent. This story of a father and his son also has a lot in common with No. 2 on my list below: It's a lesson in empathy. Both of these qualities add up to a richly rewarding reading experience, which, if you've read Powers before, you know is par for the course with him. 

6. All Together Now, by Matthew Norman — This quintessential summer novel doubles as a near-perfect "old friends reunion" novel. Matthew Norman is a must-read for me whenever he publishes, and thankfully, he writes quickly. This, his fourth novel, is my favorite of his. Jonathan Tropper, my erstwhile favorite "dude lit" writer, hasn't published anything in 10 years (he's busy writing TV), so I'm thankful Norman has stepped in to fill the void. But with this novel, Norman definitely moves beyond the traditional dude lit. This one's got all kind of heart, and more than a few twists and turns.

5. The Love Songs of W.E.B Dubois, by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers — Full disclosure, I'm not yet finished with this 800-page novel. But I'm close enough to the end that I can confidently add it to this list. This is an epic story of a Black girl's coming of age in modern times, and also the fraught history of her family. Populated with several vivid and fascinating characters, this is a brick of a novel that's actually difficult to put down. 

4. The Night Always Comes, by Willy Vlautin — Something this short shouldn't be this powerful. It's almost too cliche to describe novels about poverty and drugs as "gritty," but this novel absolutely is. And it has such an air of authenticity. Just blew me away. 

3. Crossroads, by Jonathan Franzen — Of course, The Franzen would make the list. But I'm not just fan-boying by myself over here. Many readers I've talked to have lauded this book as a huge step forward for an already incredibly accomplished novelist. And as the first in a trilogy, it's exciting to be able to look forward to seeing these characters again down the road.

2. Klara and the Sun, by Kazuo Ishiguro — What a gift for readers that a current Nobel laureate is still publishing terrific novels. We have so much to learn from Ishiguro's books, and as with all Ishiguro's stories, he uses parable to make complex ideas simpler, but incredibly profound. Here, a robot teaches us a master class in empathy. 

1. Damnation Spring, by Ash Davidson —Damn. Damn. Damn. This is sooooo freakin' good. I loved every second I spent with this book, even with some pretty harrowing plot twists. I cared about these characters so much. It's a truly great American novel.