April Reads of the Month
An allegory, a compelling novel, and another divorce memoir.
Spring seems to be here in Knoxville at last. We are starting to see veggies in our garden. We’ve had two radishes—bitter, as early radishes often are—and our greens are going crazy. We planted the tomatoes and marigolds (to keep the bugs afield) last weekend.
This season has never been a favorite, but something about growing things after all the death of winter is truly lovely. My peony bushes come alive with wild and fragrant blooms, and they showed up on a day I really needed that reminder of resurrection life.
I can smell them as I write this, as they have littered their gorgeous petals all over my living room and kitchen from their little bud vases.
This month wasn’t a great reading month in terms of volume, but it was in terms of quality. A compelling piece of magical realism, a sweeping novel that takes on the 70% of our planet we know the least about, and another divorce memoir.
Shark Heart by Emily Habeck
This book has been recommended to me by a couple of folks, and I found it at the local used book store, snatched it up, and then let it sit on my shelves for a while. I just couldn't get on board with the premise: a couple, married less than a year, receives a diagnosis, and the husband is slowly becoming…
…a great white shark.
Yep, that’s it.
A beloved theatre teacher, Lewis must decide what to do with the time left in his human body, and his wife, Wren, must care for him until he can survive in open water.
Okay, so the weird premise is out of the way. Bear with me and trust me.
Do not let this sit on your proverbial shelf as long as I did.
Told in piercing vignettes and keenly structured scenes of a play, this was such a beautiful reflection—through the lens of magical realism—on what makes us human. As Lewis loses his limbs to fins, what part of him is still Lewis? As Wren sees him less and less, she continues to be amazed by the moments when she still sees Lewis in there. And she is continually borne back to memories of her mother, as she cares for someone again.
This could be read as an allegory of anyone going through a terminal illness, but the interesting part is the life after in the sea for Lewis. I absolutely loved the reflections on motherhood and love (which often made me weep), and the prose was magnificent.
This one took me by surprise.
Essentially unputdownable. I could not recommend it more!
Playground by Richard Powers
Richard Powers has done it again. What he accomplished in The Overstory with trees—the deeply scientific and yet melodically mystical understanding of our connectedness to the created world—he has done with our vast and unknowable oceans. And, the ending. It blew my mind in a way I’m not sure any book has ever done. I am still thinking about it.
This novel blends the play of a three-thousand-year-old game among two prep school friends who could not be more different, the story of a small French Polynesian island faced with an existential choice (again), the rise of artificial intelligence, the history of deep sea diving (told through the story of Evelyne Beaulieu, who is based on the life of Dr. Sylvia Earle), and the sentience of ocean creatures—and what how wondrous and fragile the existence of all this truly is.
Rafi and Ina have found a home after wandering across Illinois on the tiny isle of Makatea, one of 82 residents on the small island with their two children.
Evelyne has sought out this island after her storied career in deep-sea diving. Now, in her 90s, she wants to spend what’s left of her days on daily dives into these most pristine of reef climes.
And now, American billionaires wish to pilot seasteading—the creation of self-governing, autonomous, mobile communities in international waters—from the home base of this tiny island, using Makatea as infrastructure framing (e.g., schools, hospitals, manufacturing).
This choice has the potential to create a better life for the islanders or become another instance of Western capitalist greed’s predation on those least able to resist. And Powers ties it to exploitations of other kinds, from the data we give away for free to social media companies to the interpersonal controls we exert on one another through relationships built on false hierarchies.
Wrapped in ancient wisdom and myth of these island seafaring wanderers, this story of a forgotten people on the edge of the world truly captivated me. As one of the characters notes, “The people here do not live on a tiny, isolated island. They live on a road-crossed, crop-filled ocean bigger than all the continents combined.”
I absolutely loved this novel: I found the prose captivating, the ideas challenging, and the characters endlessly surprising. And some passages describing ocean life brought me to tears with their beauty.
And the ending?
It gripped me and has not let go since. Highly recommend.
I Thought It Would Be Better Than This by Jessica N. Turner
Well, this book could not have been any more timely. I followed Jessica once upon a time when she started side hustling solid mom content while working a nine-to-five corporate job. I always found her fringe hours methodology helpful and appreciated how she preached about the difficulty (and necessity) of being a whole person while being a full-time working mom.
Over time, I kept up peripherally with her life. I heard about her divorce and the complex circumstances (her husband—and incredible children’s book author—Matthew Paul Turner, came out as gay). My heart broke with her, yet seeing her so publicly supportive of him was such a witness.
Fast forward several years, and I find myself in similar circumstances for different reasons. But my reality has been no less jarring and dissonant.
I am living in our home, which is now my home.
I am parenting our child, who now swaps between two houses each week.
I am getting to know myself for the first time in my adult life.
And y’all—I like her.
Hearing from someone several steps ahead of me that it is indeed good on the other side was such an encouragement to read that, though grief never entirely leaves, grief itself is not the story. New life, resurrection, and hope are. What a timely Eastertide message for this very season of my life.
Thank you, Jessica, for your vulnerability. I am grateful.
Now, for what’s cooking in my current reads pile for May. I have started all of these lovelies and I can’t stop thinking about Orbital and Careless People. For reasons that could not be farther from one another.
That’s all for the April installment of reads of the month. See you later this month for a special installment of RSM’s Best Of Series, May will focus on biographies and memoirs!
Cheers from my shelves to yours,
RSM
Your selections and insights never cease to amaze me, Rachel. We share the same thoughts and reflections on those we have both read. I look forward to reading those which I haven’t yet read! Thank you for being open and vulnerable!