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Carla Jean Whitley

NonfictionMemoir

The Smallest Lights in the Universe

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

Sara Seager has a hard time connecting with people. Despite a meaningful relationship with her father, she often feels a bit removed from others, a bit challenged by social norms. Instead, Seager feels at home when she’s gazing upward. The night sky has held her attention since she was a child and a babysitter took her and her siblings camping several hours away from their Toronto home. When she saw the stars, Seager was certain she’d discovered a new world.

As an adult, this continuing desire to discover new worlds propelled Seager’s professional life, but she remained less gifted in social relationships. So she was surprised when she found a connection with Mike, a fellow member of the Wilderness Canoe Association in Toronto. As the pair paddled the Humber River, Seager realized they were in sync. Off the water, their interests seemed divergent—he was an editor, she was an astrophysicist—but they complemented each other. He understood the day-to-day concerns of living, while she dreamed of grand possibilities. 

When Seager and Mike moved to Massachusetts for her academic career, she found herself torn between two loves: the stars and her growing family. Seager’s work as an astrophysicist was demanding, and Mike supported her stargazing. But when he was diagnosed with terminal cancer, Seager recognized the personal cost of searching the universe for planets that could sustain life. After Mike died, she was left to reconcile her thirst for discovery with her grief and the concerns that occupy everyday life.

In The Smallest Lights in the Universe, Seager shares a passion for the universe so deep that even this reviewer, a physics dunce, could grasp why she would spend her life gazing toward other planets. Analytical yet lyrical, Seager’s memoir is an examination of the parallels between searching for new life in the multiverse and starting over with a new life on Earth—the sort of connection only an astrophysicist might make.

Sara Seager has a hard time connecting with people. Despite a meaningful relationship with her father, she often feels a bit removed from others, a bit challenged by social norms. Instead, Seager feels at home when she’s gazing upward. The night sky has held her attention since she was a child and a babysitter took […]
NonfictionNatureEssays

World of Wonders

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

Poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s writing often praises the earth and its bounty. In her first nonfiction work, World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments, Nezhukumatathil expands her reflections into essays accompanied by illustrations by Fumi Nakamura.

Nezhukumatathil’s delight in the world isn’t dulled by the world’s racism, but she doesn’t shy away from sharing her experiences of being on the receiving end of discrimination. In third grade, for example, Nezhukumatathil drew a peacock, her favorite animal, for the class animal-drawing contest. She had just returned from southern India, her father’s native country, and she was elated by its colorful animals. Her teacher was less enamored. “Some of us will have to start over and draw American animals. We live in Ah-mer-i-kah!” the teacher declared after spotting Nezhukumatathil’s drawing.

Both of Nezhukumatathil’s parents are immigrants (her mother is from the Philippines), and throughout World of Wonders, she describes the foundation they laid for her and her sister. As their family moved across the country, her parents encouraged their daughters to experience the outdoors. No matter their ZIP code, Nezhukumatathil followed her curiosity and found a home in the natural world. 

That childhood connection to nature echoes through her adulthood, where plants and animals connect Nezhukumatathil’s present to her past. The catalpa tree offered shade for Nezhukumatathil and her sister as they walked from their home in Kansas to the hospital where their mother worked. When Nezhukumatathil moves to Oxford, Mississippi, to teach at the university, she expects to need the catalpa tree to provide shelter from people’s curiosity about her brown skin. But no one stares at her in Mississippi. Instead, the trees provide shade as she rushes to class, just as they did years ago.

By examining the world around her, Nezhukumatathil finds an ongoing sense of connection to that world, signaling to her like a firefly: “They blink on and off, a lime glow to the summer night air, as if to say: I am still here, you are still here, I am still here, you are still here, I am, you are, over and over again.” World of Wonders is as sparkling as an armful of glass bangles and as colorful as the peacocks that first captured Nezhukumatathil’s imagination. 

Poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s writing often praises the earth and its bounty. In her first nonfiction work, World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments, Nezhukumatathil expands her reflections into essays accompanied by illustrations by Fumi Nakamura. Nezhukumatathil’s delight in the world isn’t dulled by the world’s racism, but she doesn’t shy […]
FictionComic Fiction

Anxious People

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

Fredrik Backman’s gift for portraying the nuances of humanity is well known to his many loyal fans. With Anxious People, Backman once again captures readers’ hearts and imaginations.

An armed, masked robber attempts to hold up a bank in a Swedish city. But as the thief approaches, the apathetic young teller is unmoved. It’s a cashless bank, the teller says. Doesn’t the would-be robber know that? Well, no. The robber doesn’t. As police arrive, the robber rushes into the street, through the nearest open door, up a set of stairs and into an apartment’s open house. When the potential buyers and real estate agent see the thief, they assume they’re being held hostage.

Backman describes these events with a light touch, making clear early on that, though there’s a crime at the heart of this story, his novel is much more than this series of events. Father and son police officers Jim and Jack try to understand how a bank robber slipped, unnoticed, from an apartment full of people. As the officers interrogate the witnesses, Backman reveals glimpses of each character’s past.

Anxious People could reasonably be called a mystery, but it’s also a deeply funny and warm examination of how individual experiences can bring a random group of people together. Backman reveals each character’s many imperfections with tremendous empathy, reminding us that people are always more than the sum of their flaws.

Anxious People could reasonably be called a mystery, but it’s also a deeply funny and warm examination of how individual experiences can bring a random group of people together.
FictionDystopian Fiction

The New Wilderness

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

Bea hunches over the earth, burying her stillborn daughter. She’s broken with grief, even for this child she did not want, whom she couldn’t envision bringing into such a hopeless world. But there’s no time to linger, as Bea lives in the wilderness. Animals are circling, hoping to find food for their own young, and Bea’s community is about to move on. She must redirect her attention to her living daughter, 8-year-old Agnes.

“They had seen a lot of death. They had become hardened to it. Not just the community members who had perished in grisly or mundane ways. But around them everything died openly. Dying was as common as living.”

In The New Wilderness, Diane Cook deepens her study of the relationship between humans and the earth, which she previously explored in the short story collection Man V. Nature. Bea and her husband, Glen, are part of a nomadic community in a wilderness state. Life in the City was untenable, especially after Agnes became so ill that Bea was prepared for her daughter’s death.

“The Community” starts out with 20 people, though its numbers fluctuate as members die and others procreate. There isn’t a lot of privacy—even young Agnes is aware of the adults’ copulation—and community members know they must stick together, even with those they dislike. Community members submit to being fingerprinted, having their cheeks swabbed and other tests. They’re being studied, but for what, they can’t say.

The wilderness feels dystopian to Bea, but it’s nearly all Agnes can recall. As they navigate a changing terrain and their own emotional landscapes, Cook incorporates the whole of human experience. The New Wilderness examines our relationships to place and to others as the Community considers its right to be on the land and whether others have any business sharing the space.

The New Wilderness examines our relationships to place and to others as the Community considers its right to be on the land and whether others have any business sharing the space.
NonfictionMemoir

Notes on a Silencing

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

One night in October 1990, a young Lacy Crawford took a phone call at her dorm, surprised to hear an older boy pleading for her to come help him. Crawford was mystified but convinced there must be a reason, so she slipped across her boarding school campus and met the boy at his dorm window. When she climbed inside, she was confronted by the boy and his roommate, both stripped down to their underwear. That night would haunt her for decades to come.

In Notes on a Silencing, Crawford emphasizes that the sexual assault she experienced was not unusual. “It’s so simple, what happened at St. Paul’s. It happens all the time,” she writes. “First, they refused to believe me. Then they shamed me. Then they silenced me.” She describes St. Paul’s as a lauded, sometimes lonely place where privileged teens were obsessed with their academic futures. (The author, when faced with the possibility of not returning for her senior year, pleaded with her parents: But what about Princeton?)

Crawford, a novelist, uses her storytelling skill to illuminate the myriad ways female students were taught that their desires and bodies were less valuable than—even subject to—those of their male peers. She’d had other sexual experiences as a teenager, a fact her teachers later used against her. When she began to experience physical ailments because of her assault, Crawford was certain it was a result of “what she had done.” She was so wrecked by the experience that she saw herself, not the boys, as the one to blame.

Crawford’s detailed account of her assault and its aftermath relies on an indelible memory as well as careful research. Medical reports and other documentation help her piece together the school’s reaction when she revisits it decades later, after other victims began holding the school accountable.

Notes on a Silencing is a ghastly account, beautifully told, of a teenage girl learning that people in power often value reputation above all else.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Love audiobooks? Check out Notes on a Silencing and other nonfiction audiobook picks.

One night in October 1990, a young Lacy Crawford took a phone call at her dorm, surprised to hear an older boy pleading for her to come help him. Crawford was mystified but convinced there must be a reason, so she slipped across her boarding school campus and met the boy at his dorm window. […]
FictionLiterary Fiction

The All-Night Sun

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

Lauren Cress has been drifting through life for the 10 years since she became an orphan. Her relationships with men are often perfunctory. She’s slow to open up to her colleagues at the college where she works as an adjunct instructor, teaching writing to international students. But in the classroom, Lauren comes to life. She’s a dazzling teacher who connects with her students, even when they don’t understand why they’re required to write personal essays.

“Knowing how to express yourself to one another in real ways . . . it can help with loneliness and distance,” Lauren explains.

Lauren’s insatiable but hidden desire to be known and understood thrusts her into an all-consuming friendship with Siri Bergström, a student from Sweden. Siri also knows the pain of losing a parent; her mother died when Siri was 5, though no one knows exactly how. When Siri invites Lauren to come home to Sweden with her, Lauren dives headfirst into the friendship, though she knows it’s unwise.

As the Swedish summer celebration of Midsommar draws near, Lauren finds herself swimming in the complexities of her relationships with Siri and the friends and siblings who welcome her. But when her friendship with Siri threatens to unravel, Lauren withdraws into herself, blocking out all signs of life around her.

In The All-Night Sun, author Diane Zinna displays her deep understanding of the writing craft, born in part of her experience as a creative writing teacher and former executive co–director at AWP, the Association of Writers & Writing Programs. Her stunning debut novel is a twisting tale of grief, hope and self-deceit, a story as mesmerizing as the young women at its heart.

Lauren’s insatiable but hidden desire to be known and understood thrusts her into an all-consuming friendship with Siri Bergström, a student from Sweden. Siri also knows the pain of losing a parent; her mother died when Siri was 5, though no one knows exactly how. When Siri invites Lauren to come home to Sweden with her, Lauren dives headfirst into the friendship, though she knows it’s unwise.

FictionFamily Drama

My Kind of People

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

Sky is only 10 years old, but she’s experienced as much pain and confusion as someone three times her age. Although she was abandoned at a fire station as a newborn, she found a home with her adoptive parents. Now she’s starting over again, and this time she’s old enough to be aware of the pain. Sky’s adoptive parents have died in a car crash, and their will designates that Leo, Sky’s father’s best friend from childhood, would become her guardian.

Leo is torn up at the loss of his friend, and now he must create a loving home for Sky. Her presence sends Leo and his husband, Xavier, into a tailspin. The couple never wanted children, and Xavier is committed to their life in Boston. Leo doesn’t understand why he was named Sky’s guardian, but he loves the girl and the Massachusetts island where he was raised. He relates to her; they are some of the only dark-skinned people on the island, and they’ve both worked to find the people whom they can call home.

In My Kind of People, novelist Lisa Duffy paints a portrait of a community of people trying to find out who they are—and with whom they can be themselves. As neighbors jump in to help raise Sky, or to weigh in on what Leo could do better, Sky and Leo wrestle with their understanding of their changing circumstances. What caused the crash that killed some of the most important people in their lives? And can they form a new family with each other?

Duffy’s story is sweet but never cloying, and she’s unafraid to depict uncomfortable circumstances as the tale unfolds. My Kind of People is an emotionally complex tale that leaves some threads dangling—much like life—but still comes to a satisfying and hopeful conclusion.

In My Kind of People, novelist Lisa Duffy paints a portrait of a community of people trying to find out who they are—and with whom they can be themselves.
FictionPopular Fiction

Happy and You Know It

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

On its surface, Laura Hankin’s debut is a quick read, a novel that could be categorized as a beach book. Certainly, Happy and You Know It is the sort of novel that can suck a reader in and hold them until a whole day has passed, but it’s also a multidimensional story with riches revealed through close attention.

After Claire is fired from her band, she’s trying to pay her way through New York City life, and a gig as a playgroup musician will have to do. The mothers in the group are wealthy and wellness-obsessed, leading lives far more polished than the existence Claire is eking out. But Claire finds herself drawn to them anyway. The women incorporate Claire into their lives, and she welcomes the inclusion.

But proximity also reveals the chinks in the armor of their carefully styled lives. When one of the women’s husbands gets sick and is forced to work from home, he pushes the women to hold their playgroup elsewhere. Claire recognizes his belief that his activities are more important than his wife’s. “Back in Claire’s hometown, the church drummed into girls at Sunday school that they were special, meant to be cherished, but that ultimately, husbands were the boss. Apparently you could get a degree from Harvard and a fancy New York apartment, and still, some things would stay the same.”

As the playgroup moms work out their insecurities—within themselves and within their friendships—the metaphorical masks they wear begin to slip. With a light hand and a touch of mystery, Hankin’s debut explores feminism, class and the expectations placed on mothers. This is a romp with substance, consumed easily as a beach read but offering ample opportunity for self-reflection.

On its surface, Laura Hankin’s debut is a quick read, a novel that could be categorized as a beach book. Certainly, Happy and You Know It is the sort of novel that can suck a reader in and hold them until a whole day has passed, but it’s also a multidimensional story with riches revealed through close attention.

NonfictionEssays

Places I’ve Taken My Body

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

Travel. Sex. Work. Living alone. They’re universal topics, but for women, they’re often accompanied by societal expectations and restrictions. And for Molly McCully Brown, these realities are even further restrained.

From birth, Brown has been without complete control of her physical self. She and her twin were born early—too early. Her twin, Frances, died. Brown went too long without oxygen in the birth canal and was born with cerebral palsy.

In the essay collection Places I’ve Taken My Body, Brown reflects frequently on her connection to Frances and the ways her own body influences her movement through the world. While visiting Europe for a writing fellowship, for example, Brown writes, “A few weeks in, I’m discovering that being abroad in a wheelchair requires an intense kind of myopia that feels both necessary and dangerous. . . . I worry that, because my body goes with me everywhere, it won’t matter how far I travel, that I’ll still just be telling its same small story over and over again. That this is all wasted on me.”

But it isn’t. Whether she’s writing about traveling Italy in a wheelchair or managing a classroom of adolescents in Texas, Brown offers poetic, contemplative insight about her experiences. Yes, these moments are all, necessarily, observed from the vantage point of her particular body. But even when she revisits an idea or a location, the ideas are always fresh.

Brown has won awards and acclaim for her poetry collection The Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded, and her prose is equally lyrical. This affinity for poetry comes naturally for Brown because of the way poetry complements her corporeal experience. She writes, “In my daily life, I was desperate to wrench away from my body and I hated how stumblingly and ploddingly it moved, but in poetry, I found a form that not only mirrored my own slowness, but rewarded the careful attention with which I had to move through the world.” That careful attention shines in this essay collection, which opens a window into Brown’s graceful interior life. 

Travel. Sex. Work. Living alone. They’re universal topics, but for women, they’re often accompanied by societal expectations and restrictions. And for Molly McCully Brown, these realities are even further restrained. From birth, Brown has been without complete control of her physical self. She and her twin were born early—too early. Her twin, Frances, died. Brown […]
NonfictionNatureAnimals

Becoming Wild

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

What can humans learn from the animal kingdom? Quite a lot, it turns out, and Carl Safina is eager to glean all he can.

As an ecologist, Safina studies the wild creatures with whom humanity shares this planet. He’s won MacArthur, Pew and Guggenheim fellowships, and he shares his passion for conservation and nature as a professor at Stony Brook University in New York. The Safina Center, the nonprofit he founded, blends that scientific knowledge with emotion and then prompts people to act to protect the natural world.

As an author, Safina furthers his educational efforts with award-winning books about the natural world. In his 10th book, Becoming Wild: How Animal Cultures Raise Families, Create Beauty, and Achieve Peace, Safina turns his insatiable curiosity to sperm whales, scarlet macaws and chimpanzees. Though the specifics of the book’s three sections vary, throughout Becoming Wild, Safina studies how these animals aim to live the best way possible in their individual environments.

Safina brings his considerable expertise to his research, and it’s clear he doesn’t leave his heart at home. Of an early morning spent observing scarlet macaws, he writes, “In a few minutes it will be 8 a.m. How long and rich a morning can be if you bring yourself fully to it. Come to a decent place. Bring nothing to tempt your attention away. Immerse in the timelessness of reality. Attention paid is repaid with interest.”

Becoming Wild is full of such rich observations, as well as many others by scientists who recognize their own humanity in the animals they study. “Trying to learn what the whales value has helped me learn what I value,” behavioural ecologist Shane Gero explains to Safina. “Trying to learn what it’s like to be a sperm whale, I’ve learned what it’s like to be me.”

But Safina and the researchers he joins are not focused merely on what humans can learn from animals; they find joy in the animals’ very existence. Becoming Wild offers readers a window into the complex and curious lives of the three species it depicts and invites humans to observe the beauty and joy of each species’s nuances.

What can humans learn from the animal kingdom? Quite a lot, it turns out, and Carl Safina is eager to glean all he can. As an ecologist, Safina studies the wild creatures with whom humanity shares this planet. He’s won MacArthur, Pew and Guggenheim fellowships, and he shares his passion for conservation and nature as a […]
FictionComing of Age

Godshot

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

We’ve all seen them: people with charismatic personalities who seem to brighten a room. When they speak, we listen. In Peaches, California, that man is Pastor Vern, who leads Gifts of the Spirit Church—and the shine is often literal. When Vern wants to bring his congregants to a spiritual climax, golden glitter falls from the church’s rafters.

In the eyes of his congregation, Vern often has just cause to call down god glitter, but the rest of Peaches’ residents mock the churchgoers for their blind obedience to a man who claims he’ll save their parched land. Fourteen-year-old Lacey May often faces that ridicule at school, but within the church, she and the other girls who recently became “women of blood” stand in a place of honor.

Lacey May doesn’t remember the days before Peaches’ drought. She hadn’t been born yet when Pastor Vern first called down the rains that made the congregation devote itself to him. She follows this faith because the people who love her do, and because she’s heard the stories of what life could be without Vern and without his church.

Some novels tackle issues with a light hand, drawing the reader into a fun story even as the author tackles difficult topics. Godshot takes another approach. Debut novelist Chelsea Bieker leans into her story’s heft. It’s a deeply affecting picture of a megalomaniac who treats his congregation as his puppets. It’s a portrayal of what can happen when people are so hungry for hope that they abandon reason. It shows a world where women’s bodies are not their own, where one man has the authority to determine what happens to those bodies.

It’s a heightened portrait, but Godshot is a story that parallels some of the challenges faced in the United States today. Bieker, a native Californian, has already established her voice with bylines in McSweeney’s, Electric Literature, Catapult magazine and others. Her debut novel, though, is a shout to the world: I’m here. I have something to say. And I can capture your imagination as I do it.

It’s a heightened portrait, but Godshot is a story that parallels some of the challenges faced in the United States today. Bieker, a native Californian, has already established her voice with bylines in McSweeney’s, Electric Literature, Catapult magazine and others. Her debut novel, though, is a shout to the world: I’m here. I have something to say. And I can capture your imagination as I do it.

NonfictionMemoir

Everything I Know About Love

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

Parties. Dates. Friends. Jobs. Life.

Each of those terms is crossed out on the cover of Dolly Alderton’s memoir in favor of the simpler title, Everything I Know About Love. Love serves as an appropriate catch-all term for the experiences Alderton explores. But there are indeed plenty of parties, dates, friends, jobs and life detailed within the pages of this debut book.

Alderton is now a familiar name to many, thanks to a column in the Sunday Times, the pop culture and current affairs podcast “The High Low,” which she co-hosts, and her bylines in a variety of publications. But in the years her memoir describes, Alderton was just another fun-loving Londoner trying to make her way in the world.

Everything I Know About Love recounts Alderton’s mishaps—including a drunken evening when she thought she was in Oxford, not London—through essays, satirical emails and recipes. Alderton isn’t afraid to share unflattering moments or to laugh at herself, and readers may find solace in realizing they aren’t alone at the party.

But the heart of the story is Alderton’s bonds with her friends. These women support her when she needs help paying for cab fare, and they encourage her to chase a freelance writing career. They’re her chosen family, and they’re the people she rallies alongside during their own heartaches and tragedies.

Everything I Know About Love is a vivid retelling of a woman’s growth from neophyte to independent adult, and the depth of the essays increases as Alderton’s own life experience increases. This memoir, already a bestseller in England and translated into 20 languages, is sure to remind others that it’s OK—even normal—to stumble on your way through life.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our Q&A with Dolly Alderton and seven other new and emerging memoirists.

Parties. Dates. Friends. Jobs. Life. Each of those terms is crossed out on the cover of Dolly Alderton’s memoir in favor of the simpler title, Everything I Know About Love. Love serves as an appropriate catch-all term for the experiences Alderton explores. But there are indeed plenty of parties, dates, friends, jobs and life detailed within […]
Science Fiction & FantasyFictionScience Fiction

Riot Baby

Review by Carla Jean Whitley

Kevin’s birth was uneventful, but in that moment, the world was roiling, and his life is forever shaped by that violence. Kev was born in Los Angeles during the riots of 1992, sparked by the acquittals of the police officers who beat Rodney King during a 1991 arrest.

Kev and his older sister, Ella, have powers. Ella calls them her Thing. She can visit places she’s never been, past and present, and see how events will unfold. Ella struggles to control her powers, which are ignited by her anger—and she has plenty to be angry about in a country built on structural racism. As a young girl, she recognizes the dangers of the gangs in her Los Angeles neighborhood and worries about the day when her unborn brother will be forced to declare allegiance. Kev’s future is as his big sister expected, and he spends years in prison, where she visits him both through the system and by using her powers.

During a visit to their mother’s former pastor, Ella recounts the context of Kev’s birth. The pastor responds, “Violence didn’t give you your brother.” But Ella, who has always recognized the turmoil that would surround Kev, responds, “But it will get him back.”

Young adult novelist Tochi Onyebuchi makes his adult fiction debut with Riot Baby, a novella that shimmers with Ella’s frustration and desire for justice. Onyebuchi expertly weaves supernatural elements through an all-too-realistic, thrilling story.

Kevin’s birth was uneventful, but in that moment, the world was roiling, and his life is shaped by that violence.

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