A Review of Hari Kunzru’s Red Pill (Knopf, 2020).

[jacobballew]

After having read Hari Kunzru’s White Tears, I was supremely interested in what Kunzru had coming down the pipeline, a novel titled Red Pill (Knopf, 2020). Yes, the title does refer to that pivotal scene in The Matrix when Neo downs the “red pill” to find out he lives in a simulated reality. The truth at stake in Kunzru’s novel is not quite so literalized, but let’s let the official marketing blurb give us some background:

“After receiving a prestigious writing fellowship in Germany, the narrator of Red Pill arrives in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee and struggles to accomplish anything at all. Instead of working on the book he has proposed to write, he takes long walks and binge-watches Blue Lives—a violent cop show that becomes weirdly compelling in its bleak, Darwinian view of life—and soon begins to wonder if his writing has any value at all. Wannsee is a place full of ghosts: Across the lake, the narrator can see the villa where the Nazis planned the Final Solution, and in his walks he passes the grave of the Romantic writer Heinrich von Kleist, who killed himself after deciding that ‘no happiness was possible here on earth."’When some friends drag him to a party where he meets Anton, the creator of Blue Lives, the narrator begins to believe that the two of them are involved in a cosmic battle, and that Anton is ‘red-pilling’ his viewers—turning them toward an ugly, alt-rightish worldview—ultimately forcing the narrator to wonder if he is losing his mind.”

The last line of this description is probably the operative one, as much of the novel makes the reader have to situate this narrative on the hinge point of whether or not you think the narrator is losing his mind. I fell on the side that he was not. While Kunzru’s narrator does question his own sense of reality at times, what he seems to be struggling with is whether or not there is any chance for his wife and his child to be safe, given all the possible bad things that can happen. Kunzru’s narrator, while on his writing retreat, seems to be wrestling with the reality that he cannot ensure that his wife and his child will ever be truly protected from all the different things that can harm them. The narrator’s connection to Blue Lives is thus quite thorny: he sees the show as too naturalistic and thus pessimistic in its determinism. There must be some sense of possibility and optimism despite so much darkness that can erupt in life. Indeed, there is a sequence involving a refugee father and her daughter that has the narrator question whether or not there is any justice at all for the weak and the impoverished. As the novel truly crashes into its apocalyptic ending, you begin to understand where Kunzru is really leading us. In this sense, the novel achieves its most devastating revelation and makes the entire sequences leading up to it pale in comparison to the danger that seems to have befallen all of us. Sparkling with this kind of darkness, the novel is certainly a compelling read for these complicated times.

 

 

 

Buy the Book Here:

 

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/red-pill-hari-kunzru/1135275383

 

A Review of Rowan Hisayo Buchanan’s Starling Days (Overlook Press, 2020).

[jacobballew]

I remember enjoying Rowan Hisayo Buchanan’s debut Harmless Like You, so I was happy to see she put out another novel: Starling Days (Overlook Press, 2020)! Let’s let the official marketing description get us off the ground:

“On their first date, Mina told Oscar that she was bisexual, vegetarian, and on meds. He married her anyhow. A challenge to be met. She had low days, sure, but manageable. But now, maybe not so much . . . Mina is standing on the George Washington Bridge late at night, staring over the edge, when a patrol car drives up. She tries to convince the policeman she’s not about to jump, but he doesn’t believe her. Oscar is called to pick her up. With the idea of leaving New York for London—a place for Mina ‘to learn the floorplan of this sadness’—Oscar arranges a move. In London, Mina, a classicist, tries grappling with her mental health issues by making lists. Of WOMEN WHO SURVIVED—Penelope, Psyche, Leda. Iphigenia, but only in one of the tellings. Of things that make her HAPPY—enamel coffee cups. But what else? She at last finds a beam of light in Phoebe, and friendship and attraction blossom until Oscar and Mina’s complicated love is tested. A gorgeously wrought novel, variously about love, mythology, mental illness, Japanese beer, and the times we need to seek out milder psychological climates, Rowan Hisayo Buchanan’s Starling Days—written in exquisite prose rich with lightly ironic empathy—is a complex and compelling work of fiction by a singularly gifted young writer.”

So, I hate making slippery comparisons, but as I moved further and further in the text, I couldn’t but think of the movie The Break-Up, which starred Jennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn. It’s pretty clear early on in the text that Oscar and Mina’s relationship is on the rocks. Buchanan immediately cues us into Mina’s fragile state, especially when Oscar has to leave London to help out with some business dealings related to his father. Mina, while she’s on her own in London, finds herself gravitating toward Phoebe. This occurrence is not a surprise, as Buchanan’s third person narrator continually provides us a strong sense of the attraction that Mina already feels. It seems only a matter of time before Mina is falling for Phoebe, or at least she’s becoming incredibly attached. For his part, Oscar is wrestling with how to remain in a relationship with someone who has changed, at least in terms of mental health. So, the novel really shows us how a once in-love couple starts to drift apart. Buchanan’s most compelling depiction appears in her razor-sharp ability to show exactly how a couple eventually disintegrates. Yet, in terms of plotting, this kind of narrative has a sort of retrogression that does not always proceed with the kind of alacrity that a reader might want. Buchanan must always be lauded for her careful and meticulous depiction of depression; her narrative does much to remind us that people must deal with depression cannot simply take a pill and feel better, nor is it simply a trick of changing one’s perspective. Mina’s own obsession with the women who survive the myths is not only an academic one. It’s clearly a way for her to ponder the challenges she faces herself: why should she live? what is the point of her existence? These questions bog her significantly down. Buchanan doesn’t leave us with a sentimental ending, but there is just enough of a glimmer of hope that we have the sense that Mina mind find her way out of quagmire that is depression.

 

Buy the Book Here:

 

https://www.abramsbooks.com/product/starling-days_9781419743597/

 

A Review of Marie Lu’s Skyhunter (Roaring Brook, 2020).

[jacobballew]

Well, you know, I didn’t expect to have such a strong reaction to this novel even though I’m a huge fan of Marie Lu. I’ve read pretty much everything she’s written (with the exception of Kingdom of Back, which I must get to). I enjoyed her Legend series, the Young Elites series, and the Wildcard series. She’s moved onto a new series inaugurated with Skyhunter! Let’s let official marketing description get us off the ground:

“Talin is a Striker, a member of an elite fighting force that stands as the last defense for the only free nation in the world: Mara. A refugee, Talin knows firsthand the horrors of the Federation, a world-dominating war machine responsible for destroying nation after nation with its terrifying army of mutant beasts known only as Ghosts. But when a mysterious prisoner is brought from the front to Mara's capital, Talin senses there’s more to him than meets the eye. Is he a spy from the Federation? What secrets is he hiding? Only one thing is clear: Talin is ready to fight to the death alongside her fellow Strikers for the only homeland she has left . . . with or without the boy who might just be the weapon to save—or destroy—them all.”

This description is pithy precisely because if there was any more written about the narrative much would be revealed, so I will try to keep things under wraps. The strikers are basically trained to protect Mara; they learn to fight in pairs. A striker is simultaneously their partner’s shield. Talin’s partner ends up being injured by a Ghost at the opening of the novel. The problem with this kind of injury is that if you’ll end up turning into a Ghost, so Talin actually has to kill her own partner and thus her own shield. The plot really starts to move forward once the mysterious prisoner shows up. Talin decides that there’s something strange about this prisoner and advocates for him just before he is to be executed. Talin ends up saving the prisoner’s life but not without cost: as a kind of indirect punishment, Talin is forced to pair up with the prisoner, nicknamed Red, who is now supposed to become Talin’s shield. Lu’s done some fantastic world building in this novel, and I think it’s truly her best fantastic landscape. The Federation is an awe-inspiringly evil big bad, so you desperately want Talin and her comrades to find a way to survive, even despite almost impossible circumstances. As the narrative moves on, I generally found it a little bit dark for my personal tastes, but I know that Lu is also setting up for at least one other installment, so there has to be some stakes. Where the first novel ends up, you’re absolutely wondering how Lu will manage to get some of the major characters out of the predicaments there are in, but I for once am eager to find out if there will be some form of justice in this darkly drawn fictional world. An unputdownable YA fiction!

 

Buy the Book Here:

 

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250221681