Author Archives: sadie

Book Review of The Twenty-Seventh City, by Jonathan Franzen

Leave a reply

I picked up a copy of Jonathan Frazen‘s The Twenty-Seventh City at Goodwill, because it’s set in Saint Louis (my town). I then suggested it as my bookclub’s November book and it was chosen. 

Description from Goodreads:

St. Louis, Missouri, is a quietly dying river city until it hires a new police chief: a charismatic young woman from Bombay, India, named S. Jammu. No sooner has Jammu been installed, though, than the city’s leading citizens become embroiled in an all-pervasive political conspiracy. A classic of contemporary fiction, The Twenty-Seventh City shows us an ordinary metropolis turned inside out, and the American Dream unraveling into terror and dark comedy. 

Review:

I had a really hard time deciding if I liked this book or was just charmed that it’s largely set in my neighborhood. And I mean neighborhood, not just city. Though a transplant, not a native, I live in Webster Groves, where a lot of the book takes place (and apparently the author grew up). There really is a Schnucks on the corner Franzen says there is. The high school team really is the Statesmen. A lot of the attitudes people hold in the book really are ones I’ve encountered in Webster Groves (for better and worse). I live in the not so posh side of the neighborhood from the characters in The Twenty-Seventh City, but it was still amazing to read a book set SO LOCALLY. 

If I try to decide how I feel about the book outside of my familiarity with the locale, I find that I didn’t dislike it. I thought it was cleverly written and, though 30 years old, quite relevant to today.  I was uncomfortable with some aspects of it—the villains being so obviously cultural Others, the blatant way race was addressed (though Saint Louis is a notoriously segregated city, so this rings painfully true), the way women who were infidelious all seemed to come to a bad end, while the same wasn’t true for even the skeeviest male cheater. (Rich white men get away with so much after all.)

All in all, however, I have to say it kept me interested

Annihilation

Book Review of Annihilation (Southern Reach, #1), by Jeff VanderMeer

Leave a reply

I borrowed an audio copy of Jeff VanderMeer‘s Annihilation through my local library.

Description from Goodreads:
Area X has been cut off from the rest of the continent for decades. Nature has reclaimed the last vestiges of human civilization. The first expedition returned with reports of a pristine, Edenic landscape; all the members of the second expedition committed suicide; the third expedition died in a hail of gunfire as its members turned on one another; the members of the eleventh expedition returned as shadows of their former selves, and within months of their return, all had died of aggressive cancer.

This is the twelfth expedition.

Their group is made up of four women: an anthropologist; a surveyor; a psychologist, the de facto leader; and our narrator, a biologist. Their mission is to map the terrain and collect specimens; to record all their observations, scientific and otherwise, of their surroundings and of one another; and, above all, to avoid being contaminated by Area X itself.

They arrive expecting the unexpected, and Area X delivers—they discover a massive topographic anomaly and life forms that surpass understanding—but it’s the surprises that came across the border with them, and the secrets the expedition members are keeping from one another, that change everything.

Review:
I really wanted to see the movie of this when it came out, but never managed it. So, I figured I’d listen to the book. I had no real idea what to expect though, as the preview for the movie was all mysterious and that’s all I had to go on.

I enjoyed it. I thought the main character was pleasantly self-aware and liked that the husband was the more emotionally attuned of the two. I wouldn’t call it a romance by any stretch of the imagination, but I appreciated the little whisper of romance here and there. (That’s how I choose to interpret it.) Don’t go in looking for any firm answers though.

I struggled with McCormick‘s narration in the beginning. I felt it was far too fast (and slowing it down sounded funny). However, I either got used to it or she slowed down after the first couple chapters. After that, I thought she did a fine (if somewhat flat) job of it.

Etiquette and Espionage

Book Review of Etiquette & Espionage, by Gail Carriger

Leave a reply

I borrowed an audio copy of Etiquette & Espionage, by Gail Carrier, from my local library.

Description from Goodreads:

It’s one thing to learn to curtsy properly. It’s quite another to learn to curtsy and throw a knife at the same time. Welcome to Finishing School.

Fourteen-year-old Sophronia is a great trial to her poor mother. Sophronia is more interested in dismantling clocks and climbing trees than proper manners–and the family can only hope that company never sees her atrocious curtsy. Mrs. Temminnick is desperate for her daughter to become a proper lady. So she enrolls Sophronia in Mademoiselle Geraldine’s Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality.

But Sophronia soon realizes the school is not quite what her mother might have hoped. At Mademoiselle Geraldine’s, young ladies learn to finish…everything. Certainly, they learn the fine arts of dance, dress, and etiquette, but they also learn to deal out death, diversion, and espionage–in the politest possible ways, of course. Sophronia and her friends are in for a rousing first year’s education.

Review:

Carriger just never fails to amuse me. This is a more MG/YA delivery than the Parasol Protectorate series, which is one of my favorites. But I still laughed out loud more than once and loved seeing early appearances of some later familiar characters. In the end, I passed it to my daughter, sure she’ll love it too.

Quirk does a marvelous job with the narrations.