Tag: Literary Fiction

Book Review:: Butter: A Novel of Food & Murder | Asako Yuzuki (Translated by Polly Barton)

Butter is a Japanese literary fiction novel hinged upon the premise of a journalist investigating the story of a renowned serial killer – a woman accused of murdering a string of lovers by preparing them tainted food. As the investigation unfolds, the journalist, Rika, begins to notice and analyze the world around her with apt attention and nuance and discovers as much about herself in the process as she does about the woman she’s investigating.

Butter: A Novel of Food & Murder Asako Yuzuki Book Cover

In the beginning, Rika is having trouble getting Kajii, the accused, to grant her an interview. A friend suggests asking Kajii for a recipe, knowing women tend to share more than necessary when such a question is asked. It works, and Rika finds herself sitting with Kajii discussing her favorite recipes – how to prepare them, and how to enjoy them. Since Kajii is unable to enjoy whatever food she likes in her detainment, she lives vicariously through Rika’s experiences of her favorite dishes. One recipe at a time, Rika carefully pieces together Kajii’s story in hopes of writing an exclusive story that will propel her career to new heights.

That’s what happens, but that’s not what this book is about. This book is an exploration of societal expectations, especially on women, and how those expectations inform the thinking and actions of those women, and in turn, everyone around them – and society itself.

Japanese women are required to be self-denying, hard-working and ascetic, and in the same breath to be feminine, soft and caring towards men.

It’s about judgment and comparison in all the major categories – weight & body, gender roles in relationships & the home, careers or the sacrifice of career in favor of family – and little ones too. Food is used as metaphor again and again as Rika explores new dishes and makes observations of herself and those around her. Simple ingredients, tedious preparations, presentation. Enjoying food in the first place as opposed to simply consuming it as a means to an end.

Speaking of the food: I have never read descriptions of food and eating it as I have in this book. I mean, pornographic levels of description. It’s incredible. I feel like I’ve been eating wrong my whole life after reading about how these characters care about food. I think that alone is enough to recommend this book. It is poetry, truly.

“I feel like I understand better now that I’ve started cooking myself. Cleaning and cooking are much more rock and roll than I thought. What you need above all is strength. A fighting spirit that can withstand the tedium of everyday life without being blunted by it.”

This novel is carefully crafted to take Rika on a journey of self-actualization, learning lessons that are important for us all through her strange relationship with a disturbed woman. What is real? What are her biases? Can she be trusted?

I really enjoyed the experience of reading this novel. With translated works it can be difficult to tell if the cadence comes from the author, the one translating, or both, but whatever the case, Butter is as decadent in its style as it is in its descriptions of food. It flows well and doesn’t feel detached or stilted the way some translated works can. It was a pleasure to read, and easy to get lost in.

I found myself craving a stronger sense of suspense and tension as I read. With a serial killer premise, I did hope for some kind of thriller vibe, but if it was there, it was quite subtle. However, I cannot fault the tagline either. This novel is about food and murder.

I would recommend this book for feminists and foodies alike. Also, this is apparently based on the true story of “The Konkatsu Killer”. I’m not sure how I feel about that. I think I’m going to have to do some googling…

Details

Title:: Butter: A Novel of Food & Murder
Author:: Asako Yuzuki
Genre:: Contemporary Fiction
Publisher:: Ecco
Length:: 464 pages
Audio Length:: 17h 12m
Audiobook Narrator:: Hanako Footman
Audiobook Publisher:: Harper Audio
Published:: April 16, 2024
The Litertarian Rating:: 4-Stars

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If you liked this book, check out…

The Midnight Feast | Lucy Foley
The Last Love Note | Emma Grey

Book Review:: Malibu Rising | Taylor Jenkins Reid

Family is the most complex thing there is. The history. The responsibility. The everyday choices and the ones that come once in a lifetime. The mirrored features and gestures. The shared experience, or absence from them. All of these things cumulate into how we experience family. What are the expectations of being a parent, or a sibling, and what happens when those expectations aren’t met? Are blood ties enough to support relationships, no matter what? And what of marriage vows? Trust, betrayal, forgiveness? What do we owe those we’ve made promises to, and who created us?

I’m probably taking things too far here for an introduction, but Malibu Rising is a phenomenal work of literary fiction that had these very questions running through my head. It is an exploration of family in many forms, and an intriguing family saga that hooked me from page one and still hasn’t let go.

Malibu Rising Taylor Jenkins Reid Book Cover

The Riva family has been through a lot. Four siblings, bonded by love through hardship, are now on their way into adulthood. They have two things in common – their famous deadbeat father, and their deep love of surfing. Jay is a professional surfer, Hudson is the photographer who captures all his best shots, Nina is the older sister who got famous modeling on her surfboard, and Kit, the baby, might just be better than any of them at the sport. Every year they throw a party to close out the summer. Anyone who finds out about it can come. Celebrities of all shapes and flavors don’t dare miss it. It’s the talk of the town. But this year the party will leave the siblings changed forever.

Life is messy. In great novels, the mess happens all at the same time in a slow but relentless crescendo that keeps us riveted until the cacophonous finale. Each of the Riva siblings is at a crisis point in their lives, and we’re taken through their family origin story to help us understand how they got to this moment, and why they might be making the choices they make. One sibling is deeply in love with someone he’s not supposed to be, one is falling out of love, one thinks he’s found the one after a single night, and one is having doubts she has the capacity for romantic love at all. Their parents, Mick and June, had an explosive type of love that led to heartbreak when they were both unable to break the patterns of the families before them, leaving wounds and wreckage in a blazing trail behind them.

Taylor Jenkins Reid continues to astound me with her capacity for storytelling. I mean, the details she includes are just incredible. Her omniscient tendency allows her to showcase happenstance from all the interesting angles and explore human nature in all its nonsensical and sometimes beautiful inevitabilities.

I think I loved every single aspect of this story. The experience of reading was a pleasure in itself. Every sentence was interesting. Every facet of each character the author chose to showcase…so interesting. As in, it literally captured my interest. It kind of reminds me of the character of Vida Winter in The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield, the disillusioned storyteller who isn’t interested in anything that doesn’t serve a story. Like the storyteller in Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin. Crafting story is simple. Just make it interesting. This is how I imagine Taylor Jenkins Reid as she’s sifting through ideas for her stories. She’s on a higher plane of storytelling. She’s a weaver. She’s a curator. She’s a master.

This is the kind of story that begs to be appreciated. It’s not one thing that makes it stand out. It’s all of it together as one thing. One awesome, specific, thing. I hope you read it. But if you don’t like it, don’t tell me. I don’t think I could take it.

Details

Title:: Malibu Rising
Author:: Taylor Jenkins Reid
Genre:: Contemporary Fiction
Publisher:: Ballantine Books
Length:: 369 pages
Audio Length:: 11h 5m
Audiobook Narrator:: Julia Whelan
Audiobook Publisher:: Random House Audio
Published:: June 1st, 2021
The Litertarian Rating:: 5-Stars

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If you liked this book, check out…

The Most Fun We Ever Had | Claire Lombardo
Summertime Punchline | Betty Corrello

Book Review:: Amazing Grace Adams | Fran Littlewood

Have you ever had a bad day? Bad week really. Months, even. Or a decade, if we’re being honest. Grace has. And she’s kept it together, mostly, through most of it. But you can only hold together for so long once your vessel is cracked and leaking and you refuse to acknowledge it.

Amazing Grace Adams, Fran Littlewood, Book Cover, Book Review

Grace Adams is a mess. A perimenopausal, hot-flashy mess, stuck in a traffic jam that is preventing her from reaching her estranged daughter’s birthday party. Everything has gone wrong lately. Everything. And just maybe if Grace can deliver the custom inside-joke birthday cake she had made to the party she was never invited to, her daughter would forgive her. Her ex-husband might forgive her. Everything might take a step back in the right direction. But she can’t get there if she’s stuck in the misery of traffic until it’s over. So, as a hail-Mary last-ditch effort, she opens the door of her car and walks away from it. Right there, in the middle of traffic, and foots it the rest of the way to the bakery. This is only the first of many questionable decisions Grace makes that day.

The genius of this story is in the revelations. While the present Grace is on a frantic quest to fix everything she thinks she’s broken in one desperate grand gesture, we’re traced back through the steps that led her to such a desperate moment. The magical meeting of her eventual husband at a linguistics conference, their unconventional courtship and marriage, the family dramas they’re forced to navigate, the trials of new parentship, partnership, and beyond. Each petal is pulled back and back and back until we get to the real hurts that Grace and her family are struggling with. And they’re big ones. Heart shattering. I sobbed for…a long time…as I read through the last chapters. Right there on the couch, while my family watched TV. This book is devastating and beautiful and the writing is so lovely and clever. Here are some of the quotes I underlined:

A message that has made him fizz inside with what? Laughter?

She has doughy skin that makes her look like one of the pastries she’s selling.

Amazing Grace Adams Uncensored Book Cover, Fran Littlewood, Book Review
The uncensored cover.

They stand without speaking until the woman has moved past. As if in tacit agreement that their conversation is private, a secret between them.

If she could, she would walk out of any room that she was in.

Grace is hugging her knees to her chest and listening to the hypnotic suck and pull of the filter system.

This is a great book, and it was a pleasure to read. Fran Littlewood has delivered a story that is witty, passionate, and a little bit manic. It explores depths of love and forgiveness and grief that won’t soon be forgotten. I love all of it. The title, the cover, and the gift that is the prose.

I would recommend this book to women around Grace’s age. A woman who’s seen it all. Marriage, children, the chaos of it all, and the monotony of it too. The routine. The staleness. That, I think, is the audience who will get the most out of it. Who will understand her. But of course any fan of literary fiction might enjoy it. It’ll probably make you cry, so try not to go into it with a fragile heart.

Details

Title:: Amazing Grace Adams
Author:: Fran Littlewood
Genre:: Literary Fiction
Publisher:: Henry Holt & Co.
Length:: 272 pages
Audio Length:: 9h 51m
Audiobook Narrator:: Claire Skinner
Audiobook Publisher:: Macmillan Audio
Published:: September 5th, 2023
The Litertarian Rating:: 5-Stars
Spice Rating:: 1 (brief, not explicit)

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If you liked this, check out…

The Most Fun We Ever Had | Claire Lombardo
The Last Love Note | Emma Grey

Book Review:: The Most Fun We Ever Had | Claire Lombardo

This isn’t a book you read for entertainment. This is the type of book you read to remind yourself what it is to be human. To connect on another level to humanity itself. To recognize little pieces of yourself in the stories of others: the bright pieces, and the dark ones too. It teaches you things you don’t even realize you’re learning. It’s not a surface level book – it reaches deep parts of you that are often forgotten or neglected. It’s a revelation.

The Most Fun We Ever Had Claire Lombardo Book Cover

The tangled web of emotional turmoil within the Sorenson family is taut with tension. The steadfast love between Marilyn and David produced four beautiful daughters who are grown now and living their own lives. Wendy, the girl who was always too much as a child grew into a woman all too acquainted with grief. Violet, the good girl, has a picture-perfect life complete with two point five kids and a loving husband. Liza, the third child often forgotten in the chaos of her two older sisters, is still struggling to find purpose. And Grace, the baby, is being crushed by great expectations pressured by the weight of the family who all came before her. But when a fifteen-year-old secret walks back into their lives, the effects ripple through them all, bringing many old hurts and hidden feelings to a much-needed reckoning.

Lives are shaped by the butterfly effect. One little moment leads to the next, leads to the next. On and on we go. An overheard and misunderstood conversation can plant the seed that sets roots of anxiety and doubt deep in the psyche of a young girl. An avoided occasion can set long-burning embers of animosity to light that sizzle and pop for decades. Actions have consequences, and they won’t always be the ones you expect to confront.

The narrative is presented in a constant flow of the now and the before, exploring family experiences from multiple sides, because when things happen in a family, it isn’t only about one person. Everything affects everyone, to different degrees. Not only did I find it engaging all the way through, by the time we arrived at certain landmarks in the family history, I found myself simultaneously surprised and satisfied. We’re given so much context to understand the complex feelings between the family members. It feels real. It feels like the Sorenson’s are out there somewhere, having lived these lives we get to read about.

I don’t even know how you write a book this bold and beautiful. The complexity that is the Sorenson family is at once romantic and heartbreaking and tender and sometimes so cliche in a way that is simply human nature. Children are born with personalities, and they will cause tension and conflict and love and joy too. This family isn’t broken, but it isn’t perfect either. They are bound by love, in both the best and worst ways, and Lombardo highlights them both with skilled artistry.

I loved this book in the most surprising way, and I will cherish this experience of reading it for the first time as long as I can, because I know it won’t be the last.

Details

Title:: The Most Fun We Ever Had
Author:: Claire Lombardo
Genre:: Literary Fiction
Publisher:: Doubleday
Length:: 532 pages
Audio Length:: 20h 33m
Audiobook Narrator:: Emily Rankin
Audiobook Publisher:: Random House Audio
Published:: June 25th, 2019
The Litertarian Rating:: 5-Stars

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If you liked this book, check out…

Amazing Grace Adams | Fran Littlewood
The Last Love Note | Emma Grey

Book Review:: We’ll Prescribe You A Cat | Syou Ishida

Cats are the heroes of the internet. They bring smiles to even the grouchiest faces. But what happens when you go to someone for psychiatric help, and they send you home with one as treatment?!

We'll Prescribe You A Cat Syou Ishida Book Cover

Shuta is a timid corporate drone in Kyoto with low mental health. Nothing has seemed to work for him, and when he hears of a unique clinic through the grapevine, he decides to give it one last chance. He is miserable at his job, and after a desperate plea to be seen right away, the doctor prescribes him a cat to look after. Shuta is stunned, and takes the carrier filled with a cat named Bee and a large bag of supplies home with him in a stupor of shock, wondering how in the world he ended up here.

This is the first of four parables in this book about the mysterious Nakagyo Kokoro Clinic for the Soul. Those in need of healing find themselves drawn in by the clinic by word of mouth and leave with a new feline companion. In each case, the cat draws attention to a true cause of turbulence in their life (whether they realized what it was beforehand or not), harking to a whole-istic type of medicine. Heal the soul, the rest will follow.

As the book progresses, an element of magical realism begins to seep through until it culminates in a resolution in the last chapter. I was happy to learn more about the elusive clinic-it is the string that runs through what would otherwise simply be a book of short stories.

We’ll Prescribe You a Cat has been translated by E. Madison Shimoda from the original Japanese. Something about the style makes everything feel a little bit exaggerated. The situations, the internal monologue of the characters, and even the dialogue. It feels like a cultural difference compared to more western-style novels, and it was refreshing to read, in a way. While there were plenty of details, it felt more descriptive than immersive for me.

This book is a charming reminder that humans need connection. Opening the door to new experiences will usually lead to new opportunities that would have otherwise passed you by. Sometimes the simple act of caring for another living creature is enough to bring us out of our own issues enough to make a meaningful difference. If nothing else, the cats in this book will make you smile.

Thank you to NetGalley & Berkley for sending me an ARC copy of this novel for free in exchange for an honest review.

Details

Title:: We’ll Prescribe You A Cat
Author:: Syou Ishida, translated by E. Madison Shimoda
Genre:: Literary Fiction
Publisher:: Berkley
Length:: 304 pages
Audio Length:: 7h 8m
Audiobook Narrator:: Naruto Komatsu & Natsumi Kuroda
Audiobook Publisher:: Penguin Audio
Published:: September 3rd, 2024
The Litertarian Rating:: 4-Stars

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Amazon Affiliate Links
[Hardcover] [eBook] [Audible]

If you liked this book, check out…

My (Not So) Perfect Life | Sophie Kinsella
Amazing Grace Adams | Fran Littlewood