amoraobscura | Books Read in 2024

1. Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea by Rita Chang- Eppig
2. Commonwealth by Ann Patchett
3. The Premonition by Banana Yoshimoto
4. Second Hand Love by Yamada Murasaki
5. The Dutch House by Ann Patchett
6. Heaven by Mieko Kawakami
7. Roman Stories by Jhumpa Lahiri
8. The Meaning of Mariah Carey by Mariah Carey
9. Wise Child by Monica Furlong
10-14. The Singing Hills Cycle Books 1-5 by Nghi Vo

Some thoughts about some of the books...

Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea

I didn’t like this book. I feel like the author, in an attempt to humanize Shek Yeung, a woman who I have no doubt has been historically vilified, seems to decide that this needs to be done by making her overly passive and whitewashing her moral decisions.

I don’t mind passive characters, but for a person, and a character, like Shek Yeung, it makes no sense. This is a woman who rose to become a pirate captain. This is a woman who, after her husband’s death, married her ward in a move to keep herself in power. You don’t do any of that by being passive. But in Deep as the Sky, despite making a few decisions here and there, Shek Yeung just kind of falls into being a pirate, and things just kind of happen. It often feels like the narrative skirts around it any actual decisions she makes, and, just as often, I feel it white washes and elides many of the actual things were told she does. Other people do bad or ruthless things, but she never does. Which is ridiculous when your character is a pirate.

Deep as the Sky started interesting enough, but it only ended up annoying me in the end.

Commonwealth:

I loved the structure of this novel. I love how each chapter was its own sprawling short story, albeit one that interconnected with the others.

I think the most interesting thing about Commonwealth is how the novel’s biggest, inciting incidents happen off page. The extra-marital affair that kicks the novel off, rearranging both families in the process—we don’t see it. A major character death that reverberates throughout most of the novel— we aren’t told the details of the death until the very end, and, even then, it’s less about being a gotcha reveal for us readers than it is to provide peace for the character’s mother.

And that’s what Commonwealth is really about. It’s about the big moments that happen in your life, but not the moments themselves. It’s more about how you think of them, how you remember them, how you tell it as a story and what you choose to do with that information.

The Premonition:

It didn't really care for it, but there was something really relaxing and refreshing about the writing. I think it was all the descriptions of plants and greenery and water and rain. It was nice.

I also realized something about Banana Yoshimoto’s’ writing. I think her quirky, idiosyncratic style is really suited to her subject matter, to writing about healing. Healing is something so specific and so different to each person, and I think Yoshimoto’s quirky plots capture that better than more cookie-cutter stories. I feel like her stories about ghosts and psychics deal with pain and trauma in a more realistic way than other more “realistic” stuff.

Roman Stories by Jhumpa Lahiri

Jhumpa Lahiri is an unusual author for me. Unusual in the sense that even though her English language books are so well-regarded, I’ve never read any of them. Whereabouts, In Other Words, and now, Roman Stories, are the only books of hers I’ve read. I’m sure her earlier, English language novels are good, but I have no desire to read them.

I also feel that Roman Stories, her most recent book, a short story collection, is unusual as a short story collection. It’s a good book. It’s as well-written as you’d, no doubt, expect from Lahiri at this point, but it’s unusual in tha I like thinking of Roman Stories as more of a novel, with each story functioning as its own small facet, each building on the other and out, to show us Lahiri’s much larger vision of Rome. It’s about the city.

I’ve never been to Rome, but Roman Stories, more than anything, made me miss living in the city I used to live in.