Book Club, January 2022

I don't usually rate books I disliked, but I think this one is actively harmful. The author doesn't appear to understand statistics, and his thesis is essentially that illnesses from ALS to cancer to inflammatory bowel disease are caused by some kind of semi-Freudian repression of the emotions, usually related to childhood trauma. I was hoping for something a little more science-based, and found the sections that are essentially transcripts of him haranguing his palliative care patients until they admit that maybe they do harbor resentment at their parents to be evidence of terrible medical ethics, not to mention personally upsetting.

If you are looking for a science-based book on epigenetics and how stress causes illness, this is not it.

So anyway, that book made me really mad. However, on the "Books about navigating grief and stress" front, I also read a much better one--Megan Devine's It's Okay That You're Not Okay. I thought I had read it previously, but I think I read a long article excerpting part of it, and well, memory is fallible. I found this to be a kind, generous book about navigating grief, defending your boundaries, and finding community. I think some of her points might not work for everyone (sometimes, the healthiest answer to loss, in the long term, is to let go of the immediacy of the feeling and understand that that's not a betrayal) but that has to always be a choice the person grieving makes. And our culture's tendency to bury grief, to not allow it space, to judge people harshly when they feel a loss and show that feeling (while simultaneously judging them for not grieving enough, or performing their grief in the "wrong" way, or whatever) is incredibly toxic. 

I checked in with some short fiction this month, courtesy of Levar Burton Reads, and was delighted by both stories: Pat Cadigan's "The Final Performance of the Amazing Ralphie" and Stephen Graham Jones' "To Jump Is To Fall," both of which I greatly enjoyed. Cadigan is a remarkable writer, and Ralphie is a remarkable story, with layers and interpretations and the slightest suggestion of an unreliable narrator up to hijinks, perhaps. I found myself musing (trying to avoid spoilers here) as to the narrator's motivations, and on the assumption that they were a protagonist driving the plot in some way and not merely a witness, what they might have done and just... not told the reader about, and why.

Seriously excellent work.

Jones is another remarkable writer, and I am a sucker for stories about ethical quandaries. This one's a little more straightforward, and does what it says on the box... but it's well worth your time.

I also read a couple of older Val McDermid novels. One, Killing the Shadows, was pretty much the most exactly Val McDermid Val McDermid novel I have read. If you wanted a representative sample of her ouvre, boy, this is it. It's full of prickly people and elaborate mysteries. I did find it frustrating because the plot relies on an idiot-ball juggling act that involves every single one of the characters in a Fargo-like ballet of incompetence and denial... but it does have a pretty intense and clever climax.

I liked Crack Down much better, which I think might also be the title of a Sara Paretsky novel, and maybe also a Dick Francis, but I am too lazy to go look. Some thriller titles get used a lot, I'm afraid. That's one of the Kate Brannigan ones, which I am very fond of so far. They're lower of messy bitches who love drama than a lot of McDermid's work, and after the last few years and the Messy Bitch Who Loves Drama In Chief (aka The Former Guy) I just want some quiet competence and adult professionalism from my protagonists.

Last but not least, I read Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows by Balli Kaur Jaswal, which is a lovely little story about love, diaspora, and generations of women learning to love, empower, and accept one another. Loved it.

How about you? What did you read in January?