An Island

This short novel by the South African author Karen Jennings came to my attention by being longlisted for the Booker Prize. Of all the titles and plot summaries included on the list, An Island seemed the most promising to me, and it did not disappoint. As a study of the effects of isolation and violence, it is astute; as an unfolding narrative switching back and forth in time, it is skillfully done.

The Book of Joan

Judging by a name I had never heard before, I assumed the author of this novel, Lidia Yuknavich, was from Eastern Europe and that the book had been translated. Turns out she is an American living in Oregon. At its simplest, The Book of Joan is a dystopian novel in which a ruined planet is abandoned by the wealthy who live in an orbiting station. Joan, a human savior figure, has tremendous and unexplained "superpowers" that derive from her connection to the soil. The author's prose, when it rings with clarity, is excellent. The messages, thinly veiled, warn of where the planet is heading both environmentally and politically. There is quite a bit more in the plot, but I'm not sure it was worth following down every rabbit hole. There is also a fair amount of gore, which was in fact refreshing.

Q&A

Edwin Torres followed up Carlito's Way with this crime novel, like the earlier book also made into an entertaining film. Torres has a great ear for dialogue and a talent for pacing. The time jumps to flesh out the characters' back stories are seamless and effective.

Mecca

This novel by Susan Straight offers insights into the Californian communities that live mostly in the shadows, at least from the point of view of the Anglo world. These are not immigrants in the common usage of the term, but people whose roots to the state date back in some cases hundreds of years. And yet they are still treated as aliens, outsiders, and dangerous. The book appears to have been fused together from several stories, and the welding joints are not smooth. Straight also has an annoying habit of spewing perfectly quotidian details, firehose style, as if they were pearls of wisdom. In a few moving passages the characters transcend archetype, but much of the novel fails to launch.