writer
The Strange Bird: A Borne Story by Jeff VanderMeer
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Those of us who loved Borne are blessed to have this companion novella from the same world, out of Jeff Vandermeer’s spectacular and strange imagination. The Strange Bird is a troubling, surreal, but ultimately delicate elegy to the world as it once was. The imagery here is, once again, insane. The strange bird is made of all of us. Just lovely.
Memoirs of a Polar Bear by Yōko Tawada
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Memoirs of a Polar Bear travels to depths of weirdness that few books ever do, but it still manages to touch something primal and moving. Tawada’s prose is a whimsical dance that cartwheels from social commentary to absurdist humor to magical realism and probably eighteen other places that I missed along the way as I was puzzling over the blurred narrative boundaries that travel from bear brain to human soul, sometimes within the same creature, sometimes between two creatures of the same mind. Tawada’s message lands somewhere in the realm of commenting on our desire as humans to perform our lives for others, so as to have something to write down in the story of our lives. It also addresses the natural and unnatural bonds between humanity and animal kind. But it also includes things like a bear hallucinating the mentoring ghost of Michael Jackson in a broken computer monitor, so… either this book is totally brilliant, or Tawada just got away with writing whatever came into her brain and calling it a novel. Take it as you will.
Reservation Blues by Sherman Alexie
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
In Reservation Blues, Sherman Alexie blends blues lyrics, a Faustian deal with the devil, anachronistic historical figures, and a group of Native American musician characters with a need for life-changing music. This book is a masterful example of magical realism: the plot is at turns impossibly insane and off-puttingly real. It’s safe to say that readers who “don’t do” magical realism won’t enjoy or understand its beauty. Those who are up for the challenge will be vastly rewarded by its mysticism, straight talk, sorrow, and groove. In case you needed more proof that Sherman Alexie was born to set things on fire with his words, in case you forgot that the world is exactly as bizarre as you thought it was, in case you thought that justice could be manufactured cheaply or that real music could be born for free, please read Reservation Blues.