THE YEAR OF THE HORSES

THE YEAR OF THE HORSES BY COURTNEY MAUM

When someone who rides horses is asked about their connection to the four-legged, half-ton creatures who make the pastime possible, answers tend to fall in one of two categories: the simple, wherein the horse’s presence is something so everyday, so necessary, that you might as well inquire about the person’s connection with breathing; and the fiendishly complicated, wherein the horse is bound inextricably with the horse-person, yes, but in such a manner that the person can’t help but poke at the places where they’re tied together, looking for answers to explain how they got there. In her memoir The Year of the Horses, Courtney Maum shows herself to be in the latter camp, which is a stroke of luck for the reading public, since the introspection and self-knowledge present on every page of the book are as stunning as the prose itself. 

Maum’s book is an exploration—not only of the way that horseback riding helped her return to herself and her family after a period of prolonged depression, but also of the ways that her own nature does and does not mesh with that of the horse, and the places in her life where this is particularly visible. This is a deeply affecting memoir that leaves no proverbial stone unturned—marriage, motherhood, politics, the female body—but always returns to the horse in the end, and for good reason. “I don’t care where you stand on horses,” she says toward the end of the narrative, “if you set out to debunk the hold they have on people, take away their power, prove that they aren’t as enchanting as they seem to be, you will lose, because they are that powerful, they are that moving, they have something that there aren’t words to explain.” Maybe, as Maum says, the world doesn’t contain quite the right words to describe the human connection with horses. But The Year of the Horses gets as close as can be, with an under-the-skin magic reminiscent of the animals themselves. 

Tin House.

—Review by Lily Buday

THE OFFICE OF HISTORICAL CORRECTIONS

THE OFFICE OF HISTORICAL CORRECTIONS BY DANIELLE EVANS

Danielle Evans takes on both the vagaries of time and the inescapability of history in The Office of Historical Corrections, a thematically-linked collection of a novella and six short stories. The settings and backgrounds of Evans’ tales lean into the more surreal side of the realistic—a not-quite-life-sized replica of the Titanic, an art installation consisting entirely of apologies—while the plots follow happenings that feel all-too everyday. A white girl thoughtlessly dons a Confederate flag bikini and is unwilling to face the consequences. A family deals with the multi-generational fallout of racism and unjust imprisonment. Two Black historians are forced into simultaneous companionship and competition. As the denizens of The Office of Historical Corrections wind their way through a series of repeating images—gift shops, estranged families, cancer-stricken mothers—they are confronted time and again with “the sometimes brutality and sometimes banality of anti-Blackness, the loop of history that was always a noose if you looked at it long enough.”

One of the many stand-out skills of Evans’s writing is the flexibility of her narrative voice, drawing in the reader with close, self-aware first-person speakers as well as ironically detached third-person reports. These engaging narrators, coupled with the finely-balanced juxtaposition of the very serious with the seemingly absurd, make for a mesmerizing collection that it is easy to get lost in. Structurally, the stories in The Office of Historical Corrections have a fascinating tendency to end in the middle of a moment, without coming to a complete or entirely comfortable resolution. Such is the cyclical nature of history, Evans seems to say. No moment is ever truly over.

Riverhead Books.

—Review by Lily Buday

THE SHAME

THE SHAME BY Makenna Goodman

Makenna Goodman’s novel The Shame opens with a challenge to the reader: if you’re trapped on a tiny island surrounded by molten lava with only the requisite but unpleasant nutrition that will keep you alive, do you stay there? Or do you risk everything to cross the lava to “a lush and beautiful forest… [where] you can eat pasta with clams, pasta with cheese, pasta with toppings unlike anything you could imagine?” Goodman’s narrator, a Vermont wife and mother named Alma, tells us immediately what her answer is: get off that island, get to that land of never-ending pasta no matter what you have to do to make that happen. But setting aside Alma’s delectable metaphor, what does it actually mean to set out in search of a life that is rich, and full, and satisfying? Alma doesn’t know. I’m not sure that The Shame does, either— but that’s all right, because the novel hinges on the very complexity, the very unanswerability of that question.

Goodman weaves her depiction of Alma’s life on a farm with her husband and children with lush, generous language. But the very fecundity that is present in her prose represents Alma’s struggle— surrounded by plant and animal life and tucked into her daily homemaking routine, she is isolated from society— especially other women— and from any sense of self. She craves, at times, a lightness and a minimalism that is not forthcoming. She wants to be made new.

At the end of the day, The Shame is about what it means to build a life in a world increasingly governed by contradiction, striving to be both ethically and personally fulfilled. There are no easy answers to be found within these pages, but there is something heartening nonetheless about Goodman’s brilliant embrace of the questions themselves.

Milkweed Editions.

—Review by Lily Buday

SANSEI AND SENSIBILITY

SANSEI AND SENSIBILITY BY KAREN TEI YAMASHITA

In her collection Sansei and Sensibility, Karen Tei Yamashita blurs the genre lines between essay and story, between fiction and nonfiction. All the while, she draws new lines for her readers— lines of connection, roads that twist and turn between the Japanese American neighborhoods of the mid-twentieth century and the Georgian drawing rooms of Jane Austen’s England. Sansei and Sensibility is divided into two distinct parts: a Sansei half that is dedicated to particular aspects of the Japanese American immigrant and descendent experiences, and a Sensibility half that explores these cultural realities through the use of rather satirical Austen pastiches.

The Sansei portion of the collection shifts between short stories and personal essays without warning, barring the occasional footnote. “But never mind arguing whether fiction is true or not,” as Yamashita says in one story-essay, “… it is the speculative aspect of the anthropological project here that intrigues me, how in fact an investigation of culture might predict human reactions and outcomes.” And indeed, Yamashita’s dizzying amalgamation of fiction and history results in something that is both speculative and truthful. This feeling is not disrupted, but rather expanded, by the inclusion of the collection’s Sensibility half, which offers such Sansei/Janeite delights as an LA County Mansfield Park, a 1960s Emma with revolutionary inclinations, and a Lady Susan consisting of post-war postcards and aerograms between Tokyo and California. All in all, Karen Tei Yamashita’s latest is a gratifying jigsaw puzzle of a book, certain to enrapture readers with both its individual pieces and the larger picture those pieces create.

Coffee House Press.

—Review by Lily Buday

THE LAST SUMMER OF ADA BLOOM

THE LAST SUMMER OF ADA BLOOM BY MARTINE MURRAY

In Martine Murray’s novel The Last Summer of Ada Bloom, a family begins to crumble in the oppressive Australian heat, weighed down and broken by secrets and the inescapable passage of time. Martha and Mike’s marriage is unraveling, and it only partially has to do with Mike’s affair. Golden boy Ben drinks up all of his mother’s approval, leaving no scraps for black sheep Tilly. Meanwhile, pensive and fey little Ada is convinced that an unsettling discovery she has made in the bush is causing a rapidly unfolding spiral of doom and death. Using a roving third-person narrator that flits from one family member to another, and with shrewd prose that moves quickly without missing a trick, Murray carefully pieces together a tale that no one character could tell on their own.     

At the heart of the novel are the ideas of time and human connection. Murray reminds us that while growing up and aging are unavoidable, the rapid passing of years does not necessarily heal old wounds— particularly when there is a new generation to whom those wounds can be passed on: “There they were— back to where they started, with Tilly emptied of love and Ada swollen with secrets. It was just like the tides and it wouldn't stop. People were always filling themselves up and emptying themselves out again.” Like a tide, Murray’s writing lets itself swell with detailed observations, before releasing in short, almost biting sentences. This book is both languid and thorny, and Murray walks that tightrope expertly.

Tin House.

—Review by Lily Buday