Mr. Loverman, by Bernardine Evaristo

 I recently heard that Barack Obama has recommended Booker Prize winning British author Bernardine Evaristo as an author worth reading. I totally agree. Her novel "Mr. Loverman, is her 7th book. Although the premise is rather "tragic" - the story of a long-dysfunctional marriage between two Jamaican immigrants living in London, it is written with great heart and even has a positive resolution to the seemingly intractable domestic conflict at the heart of the book. The novel's protagonist, "Mr. Loverman", is 76-year old dandy Barrington Jedidiah Walker Esq, otherwise known as Barry. It so happens that the love of his life is not his wife of 50 years, but his gay lover who he has known since adolescence back in Jamaica. The backstory of Barry's connection to Morris, his wife and the intervening years get told in a series of flashbacks. Barry, by no means a spotlessly character morally, suffers from living his double life and it turns out that his wife Carmel has a few secrets of her own over the years. Both characters are treated very warmly and humorously, and the book is a joy to read.

For a review of the book from The Guardian, click here: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/aug/31/mr-loverman-bernardine-evaristo-review

The Twilight Zone, by Nona Fernandez

 "The Twilight Zone" is a National Book Award finalist novel about the turbulent and sometimes surreal recent history of Chilean politics told through a narrator who lived through it as a girl, a young women and an adult in the 1970s through current times. She uses many elements of pop culture from those 50 years, including the central metaphor of the Twilight Zone TV show brought bizarre and darkly ironic stories into our living rooms and embedded themselves into our consciousness. The story's anchor is an interview read by the narrator of a self-confessed killer and torturer who implicated himself in many of the dark deeds that occurred during the long period of oppression under the Pinochet regime. The killer, usually referred to as "the man who tortured people", had a crisis of conscience and provided evidence of the killings, kidnappings, disappearances, etc. that sometimes had links to the narrator's life (a classmate murdered, familiarity with some of the henchmen, etc.). The novel is translated by Natasha Wimmer, who also translated Roberto Bolano's "The Savage Detective" and "2666". It's a harrowing and depressing story, but the strangeness of Chile's rebuilding is perfectly reflected in the Twilight Zone metaphor and it's well worth reading.  

For a review of the book from the NY Times, click here: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/16/books/review/nona-fernandez-twilight-zone.html

Interior Chinatown, by Charles Yu

 I was keen to read "Interior Chinatown" by Charles Yu after hearing good things about it, and I wasn't disappointed. The novel's title perfectly encapsulates the theme. The author uses a screenplay format to explore the stereotyping of Asian-Americans in the media, and by extension, in American society in general. As a bit actor in a cop buddy series "Black and White", the protagonist, Willis Wu, finds himself excluded from both the white majority and black minority experience, and relegated to "generic Asian man". The full eventual assimilation into "generic American man" seems out of reach as he first struggles to achieve success as "Kung-Fu man", which eludes him. The novel is very funny, and also thought-provoking as it examines the psychological effect of this social stereotyping - hence "interior Chinatown", that psychological condition that reflects the physical ghetto of exclusion Asians have been relegated to despite two centuries of presence in America. 

For a review of the book from the Washington Post, click here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/charles-yus-interior-chinatown-brilliantly-skewers-hollywood-typecasting/2020/01/27/4d04be48-3711-11ea-bf30-ad313e4ec754_story.html