How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue

Published by Random House on March 9, 2021

How Beautiful We Were tells a sorrowful story from multiple perspectives. The story is of Kosawa, an African village that has survived multiple challenges imposed by the outside world. The villagers avoided the Europeans who came with chains to snatch slaves for Americans. The villagers listened politely to missionaries who threatened them with damnation if they did not accept the white Spirit, but chose not to worship a Spirit who would “throw us into a fire if we hadn’t done anything to offend it.” Europeans arrived to take young men at gunpoint to work in rubber plantations, wiping out a generation. After the demand for rubber abated, villagers learned to live with Europeans and their strange notions of money and religion, in part because Europeans were less often visiting “not to befriend us but to make us do whatever it was they wanted us to do.”

The village’s latest ordeal involves an oil company called Pexton. The national government gave Pexton land that is adjacent to the village. Pexton has been drilling for oil and fouling the river with runoff. Village children are dying after drinking water contaminated by spillage. Attempts to negotiate with Pexton have resulted in smiles and promises of future action that never come to fruition. When a few villagers try to take matters into their own hands, fourteen villagers are massacred by soldiers. When a journalist tells an American audience about the oil company, their country’s president deports the journalist for hurting the president’s image. Villagers who dare to criticize the president are executed.

Five chapters are narrated by five key characters. Yaya is a grandmother and widow, the mother of Sachel, who lost her husband Molabo when he decided to travel to the capitol and ask for the government’s help. Tribal tradition prevents Sachel from taking another lover, although it is a tradition that Sachel longs to break. Yaya no longer believes in any tradition that binds women to the demands of men. She also comes to understand that traditions of secrecy might bind a village while destroying its inhabitants.

Sachel has a daughter named Thula who becomes the novel’s central character. Thula’s sister gets a chapter to describe life from a local perspective. Thula escapes the boundaries of Kosawa when she goes to America to pursue an education. She becomes a social justice warrior, writing letters that inspire the youth of her village to sabotage Pexton, much to the chagrin of village elders who worry about the consequences of protest. Thula preaches nonviolence but some of the village youth choose not to be limited by Thula’s vision. Whether they make the right choice is for each reader to decide.

Thula’s experiences in America are enriching, as is her relationship with the deported journalist, but they make her yearn for home. She has grown up eating savory dishes: pepper soup with goat meat, land snails with tomato sauce and rice. The cuisine to which she is exposed in New York has its merits, but it isn’t home cooking. Thula is therefore happy to return home, where she is granted a teaching position because the government needs people who are well educated. Thula’s goal is to inspire students and citizens to replace the dictator with a democratically elected government, but the government doesn’t worry about her because, after all, she’s just a woman.

The subordinate role of women in her society is one of the novel’s themes. Thula does make an impact on her village and nation, but revolutions are not easy to ignite, particularly the peaceful revolution that she champions. The gap between dreaming of change and bringing it about is another theme.

How Beautiful We Were is not a feel-good story. The title is in the past tense for a reason. The story spans decades. Villagers grow up, grow old, watch husbands disappear and children die while little about their relationship with Pexton changes.

Much of the story is tender and moving. Scenes of loving children caring for aging parents, of parents grieving for lost children, of celebratory dances and somber death rituals, illuminate lives that are superficially different from western experience yet fundamentally the same.

At the same time, the novel reads like a documentary. Despite (or perhaps because of) its first-person narration from multiple perspectives, the characters seem a bit distant. About half of the chapters are narrated by “the children,” a device that makes it easier to feel empathy for the characters than to make an emotional connection with them. By spreading the focus among multiple characters, some of them nameless, the novel loses some of its power.

Still, the horrifying story conveys a horrifying sense of reality. Corrupt dictators who rule in their own interests and in the interest of wealthy companies that support them cause havoc in developing nations around the world. The story takes an honest view of corporate America’s elevation of profit above morality and of the American government’s hand-off approach to foreign injustice caused by American businesses. The final chapter is sad only because it is honest. In the real world, stories of the powerless and oppressed always have a sad ending.

RECOMMENDED

Lurkers by Sandi Tan

Published by Soho Press on March 30, 2021

The characters in Lurkers are connected by their mutual residence on Santa Claus Lane in Alta Vista. A blue couch travels from one neighborhood home to another, while the owner of a third home wonders about its incongruence. A man writes bad fiction that his wife shares with a neighbor who is a published writer. Characters who occupied one home end up living in another. Characters’ lives are affected by neighbors they barely recognize.

Beverly Joon Park is a widow with two daughters. Her father was the pastor of a Korean evangelical church. Her husband converted to Christianity to marry her. When Beverly’s father died, her husband felt an obligation to take over as the church’s pastor. After her husband’s suicide, Beverly’s only desire is to sell her house (after she rids it of termites) so she can return with her daughters to Korea, a place she claimed to despise in the past. Now she just wants to live in a place that will not make her feel like a second-class citizen.

Beverly’s older daughter, Rosemary, is “a mysterious black box of womanly secrets.” She loses her virginity to a 16-year-old loser who turns out to be a bad choice for sexual partnership. Her obsession with a married drama teacher who might be a sexual predator is probably even worse. Yet Rosemary feels caged; only vigorous and frequent sex allows her to taste the freedom she craves. Beverly’s younger daughter, Mira, works to sabotage the move to Korea, a place where she imagines “all the men wore fake Air Jordans, burped kimchi and spent their spare time beating up their wives.”

Another neighborhood homeowner, Raymond van der Holt, is an aging gay man who made some money writing zombie novels and now spends his days brooding about his “casual brushes with the supernatural.” His muse has deserted him but he doesn’t want to write nonfiction, “a genre cherished beyond what it deserved by NPR-addled Americans.” His belief that Mira has been stalking him, masquerading as a demon, might be the product of a failing mind, as might certain other incidents that only Raymond perceives.

The other key neighbor is Kate Ireland, who occupies a house owned by her mother, Mary-Sue. Kate’s high school friend Bluto breezes into town and looks her up, bringing an underage girlfriend along for the ride. Against her better judgment, Kate ends up pregnant and stalked.

An ominous atmosphere pervades this darkly amusing novel. A police helicopter regularly circles the characters’ homes, perhaps looking for burglars who are plaguing the neighborhood. Men wearing hoods make threats and commit arson. A naked girl repeatedly slams her body against Raymond’s window, leaving smudged breast prints on the glass. At least two male characters are taking advantage of teenage girls. Sandi Tan leaves the impression that most men would do the same if they could get away with it.

While this is a novel of connections, few of the connections reach beyond the superficial, which I assume to be the point Tan is making about LA suburban life. Raymond is lonely, with only spirits to keep him company, in part because the people he encounters do not live up to his standards. Rosemary uses sex as a substitute for intimacy and sees nonphysical relationships as something to be endured. Kate has only her mother and the baby she created with Bluto, but it isn’t clear that she wants either of them in her life. There is little balance in this novel, little joy as a counterweight against gloom, but Tan peppers the story with enough moments of humor to keep the reader from joining Mr. Park in suicide. And despite the superficiality of their lives, the characters are developed in a satisfying degree of depth.

A letter from Beverly at the novel’s end might best sum up the novel’s philosophy. While she talks about Korea’s “culture of sadism, paranoia, and pointless rivalries” that, along with consumerism, keep people subservient, Beverly could just as easily be talking about her suburban life. The glimmers of hope we see in that old letter will, we know, eventually be lost.

An act of malice ends the novel on a surprising note, although the story’s absence of direction makes it surprising only in Tan’s refusal to compromise by delivering a happy ending. This isn’t a feel-good story. Life doesn’t always deliver the pleasure we desire. For some, pleasure is rare. Lurkers reflects that reality but does so in a nuanced way that never becomes overbearing or oppressive.

RECOMMENDED

A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine

Published by Tor Books on March 2, 2021

Science fiction novels that emphasize diplomacy over war are less common than military science fiction, but they aren’t rare. C.J. Cherryh and Keith Laumer once dominated the field, but a new generation of writers has made diplomacy a strong theme in their work. Richard Baker’s Breaker of Empire series tends to give equal weight to fighting and negotiating, while Arkady Martine’s Tiexcalaan series tips that balance decidedly in favor of exploring political relationships. The series’ second entry, A Desolation Called Peace, moves the focus from the threat of war among humans to the fact of war with aliens whose behavior seems particularly ruthless. Why the aliens are attacking is difficult for humans to understand because, whenever the aliens make sounds that might be an attempt at communication, humans feel the urge to vomit.

As we learned in Arkady Martine’s excellent A Memory Called Empire, Mahit Dzmare is an ambassador to Tiexcalaan from Lsel Station. Mahit has been implanted with an imago that carries the memories of her predecessor. By the end of the first novel, Mahit has a second imago, the first having been sabotaged. Now she is up to date on the memories her predecessor formed before his death. Some of those memories reveal that her predecessor didn’t behave exactly as an ambassador should, or at least not as Lsel Station expected. Now Mahit is back on Lsel and is worried that the Councilor of Heritage will learn of the second implant and arrange for her to die on the operating table when it is disconnected from her brain.

While Mahit ponders her fate, Three Seagrass, a bureaucrat from Tiexcalaan whose job includes diplomacy, travels to Lsel on her way to the fleet flagship, where she has been tasked with establishing communications with aliens who have wiped out a Tiexcalaan colony. The aliens travel in ships that seem to appear from nowhere and ooze a substance that disintegrates opposing ships, which fleet pilots find particularly creepy. Their anxiety is magnified by a new technology that lets them communicate with other without a time lag, a technology that even the emperor doesn’t know about.

Three Seagrass decides to bring Mahit on her diplomatic mission because Mahit is good with languages, communication, and diplomacy. Besides, Three Seagrass kissed Mahit in the previous novel and would like to do it again, even if Mahit is regarded as a barbarian by polite society on Tiexcalaan. Who says barbarians can’t be sexy?

The problem with establishing communication with aliens is always interesting. Mahit and Three Seagrass approach the challenge in logical ways (using mime and drawings while trying to make sense of the vomit-inducing sounds), but their diplomacy often takes a back seat to other political issues that drive the story. Once is a conflict between Nine Hibiscus, who is prosecuting the war for the Emperor as the fleet captain, and the commander of one of the legions, Sixteen Moonrise, who is determined to take more aggressive action than Nine Hibiscus is willing to authorize.

Another conflict is unfolding on Tiexcalaan between the current emperor and Eight Antidote, a 90% clone of the former emperor who will one day inherit the title. At the moment he’s only eleven so he still has some growing to do, but he’s an exceptionally bright and mature kid. Eight Antidote is spying for the emperor and he isn’t happy with the emperor’s response to some of the information he’s acquired. He’s particularly unhappy about a plan to annihilate an alien world on the theory that boy, that’ll teach ‘em. Warmongers are just as troublesome in the future as they have always been.

The story moves in ways that are complex and fascinating. Martine makes it easy to suspend disbelief as she imagines aliens who are hostile only because they don’t understand humans any more than humans understand them. The story’s ending is satisfying while opening the door to the next chapter of the series.

Martine writes with a keen understanding of human nature, no doubt acquired during her alternate gig as an historian. She gives her characters full personalities. She builds tension as her characters take dangerous steps to avoid the dangers of war. And she writes with a sophisticated prose style of literary quality. More than that I can’t ask.

RECOMMENDED

Raft of Stars by Andrew J. Graff

Published by HarperCollins/Ecco on March 23, 2021

Raft of Stars begins as a crime story and transforms into an adventure story, pitting three pairs of characters against nature (and sometimes against each other) as they navigate a river and forest during a violent storm. Dale Breadwin (“Bread”) and Fischer Branson (“Fish”) are best friends. Bread’s father abuses him. Fish’s father is dead, although he’s kept that a secret from Bread. The story begins with Fish shooting Bread’s father. The father had it coming, but Fish and Bread decide that running away is the better part of valor, so they set out on a Huck Finn adventure, building a raft and heading down the river.

Sheriff Cal investigates the shooting. Cal left a job in Houston after he behaved in a way that was evidently too violent even for the Houston police. Coping with crime gave Cal a drinking problem. His former boss in Houston somehow got Cal a job as interim sheriff in a northern Wisconsin county. Cal isn’t much of a cop but the county probably doesn’t need or want much of a cop.

Fish’s grandfather, Ted Branson, has a gruff manner and a good heart, a combination found in fiction more often than reality but one that appeals to readers. Ted teams with Cal to follow the kids on horseback. Ted does most of the work because Cal is no friend of horses. They exchange philosophies of life as they track the kids. Cal hates being a cop and is thinking about taking up farming. Ted hates farming — it bores him to death — but he gave up his dreams when he had a child because responsible people “give things up instead of burning the whole thing down. You just don’t light the match. You suffer when you need to.” There aren’t enough people like Ted in the world.

Tiffany Robins was born in the small Wisconsin town and expects to die there. Opportunities have not graced her life. She sees the new sheriff as an opportunity. Before she gets to know him, however, Bread and Fish are on the run and Tiffany has lost the sheriff’s dog. She teams with Fish’s mother, Miranda, to follow the boys in a canoe. Their adventure is a lesson in self-confidence for Tiffany.

Some of the story is familiar. There are bears because you can’t have a wilderness adventure without bears. There are rapids because you can’t have a river adventure without rapids. There’s a love interest because, well, just because. Yet the story isn’t entirely predictable, in part because the characters are more important than their adventures. And despite the familiarity of scenes involving bears and rapids, the scenes are so well written that they create the excitement and tension an adventure novel should deliver.

The story as a whole is sweet, occasionally bordering on saccharine, but not so often that the artificial sweetener becomes annoying. At times, the story is a bit too corny (even the names Bread and Fish are corny in tandem). I could have done without the apparent heavenly intervention that helps Fish out of a jam. Still, the novel works because the characters grow and change, in part because quarreling with each other forces them to take stock of their lives. The novel’s merits easily outweigh its flaws.

RECOMMENDED

My Friend Natalia by Laura Lindstedt

Published in Finland in 2019; published in translation by W.W. Norton & Co./Liveright Publishing on March 23, 2021

My Friend Natalia is a novel of therapy, told from the perspective of an unnamed therapist whose gender is never explicitly identified (I’ll call the therapist “she” for the sake of convenience). Natalia is the therapist’s patient. Her name probably isn’t Natalia; she encouraged the therapist to tell her story so the therapist is apparently preserving confidentiality when she says “Let’s call her Natalia.” As the title suggests, the therapist comes close to crossing professional boundaries, although it’s not entirely clear that she really regards Natalia as a friend. She does, however, allow Natalia to masturbate on her office couch during one of the therapy sessions, which is a pretty friendly thing to do. Natalia makes clear that she has a sexual attraction to her therapist, but it isn’t unusual for Natalia to feel a sexual attraction to the people in her life.

Natalia is pursuing therapy to address her obsession with sex. It’s all she ever thinks about. Sex is interesting, so Natalia’s stories about her sex life are interesting. They aren’t particularly titillating, so My Friend Natalia doesn’t work as porn, notwithstanding two impressive sketches of a penis and vagina that Natalia creates for her therapist. Nor are they particularly enlightening, as I doubt that Natalia’s personal experiences can be generalized in a productive way. The therapist draws conclusions — “Natalia went through both men and words as a way of masking her own vulnerability” — that might be more insightful than Natalia’s stories of sexuality unbound.

The therapy sessions are based on story-telling exercises, in which Natalia must invent stories that incorporate key words provided by the therapist. Natalia is loquacious. Her stories cover the chosen words like spilled water, flowing along multiple paths, seemingly at random, one element giving birth to a tangent that flows seamlessly into another. Natalia begins a story with a pornographic comic that she encountered in her childhood, then veers into a lecture on Sartre’s view of women as holes, discusses cinematic technique, and relates memories of her father peeling potatoes before she explains how her discovery of a woman’s buried body turned out to be something quite different .She discusses feminism. She ponders whether it is better to be a head without a body or a body without a head (she chooses the latter because a head can’t masturbate).

Laura Lindstedt’s prose is graceful and imaginative. I enjoyed her description of an erection as “a plea for the waiting to end.” Still, I think it likely that the novel’s meaning eluded me. A fair amount of attention is paid to a work of art hanging on the therapist’s wall called “Ear-Mouth,” a work that once belonged to Natalia’s grandmother. It disturbs her to see it on the therapist’s wall. It disturbs the therapist that Natalia perches an alarm clock on her belly during the sessions, keeping her own track of time. What does any of that mean? I don’t have a clue. Some of the story’s moments are sufficiently bizarre that they amuse, but I imagine there is more to the story than amusement. The ending sort of trails away. As is generally true of talk therapy, no obvious self-awareness ensues, although Natalia claims to have changed. Perhaps my inability to give My Friend Natalia more than a middling recommendation is my fault, but I can only bring what I have to the table, and what I have is confusion.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS