An adventure tale rife with creatures and immersed in the Hadrami culture of Kenya.
Join a girl and a talking cat on a magical realist sea voyage.
In this debut novel, Aisha, a Mombasa girl, goes to sea on a boat made of a fish skeleton to find her missing father. Accompanying her is a wise, skinny, yellow, and very talkative cat, Hamza. This is magical realism, Kenya-style. The author reaches into the mythology of her Hadrami culture to conjure talking animals and discursive sea creatures as she charts her heroine’s journey from home and back. “There are things in the water that could eat you alive,” Hamza tells Aisha. “Though I’m sure you already know this and quite well.” (Hamza is a bit of a smart aleck.) This is a novel of tradition, ritual, and mystical adventure: “On the tables of kings, candle wax had dripped down the cat’s skull and whiskers. An obedient, trained creature, but at heart: a philosopher and spy.” And a cat. Aisha sails away with her feline friend, pulling us into a series of dialogues and riddles, few of them with other humans. Then they return, and things get strange. Even if you’re not a fan of magical realism, this window into Hadrami culture should at least stoke your curiosity.
An adventure tale rife with creatures and immersed in the Hadrami culture of Kenya.Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-64445-068-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Graywolf
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
The range and virtuosity of these stories make this Mosley’s most adventurous and, maybe, best book.
A grandmaster of the hard-boiled crime genre shifts gears to spin bittersweet and, at times, bizarre tales about bruised, sensitive souls in love and trouble.
In one of the 17 stories that make up this collection, a supporting character says: “People are so afraid of dying that they don’t even live the little bit of life they have.” She casually drops this gnomic observation as a way of breaking down a lead character’s resistance to smoking a cigarette. But her aphorism could apply to almost all the eponymous awkward Black men examined with dry wit and deep empathy by the versatile and prolific Mosley, who takes one of his occasional departures from detective fiction to illuminate the many ways Black men confound society’s expectations and even perplex themselves. There is, for instance, Rufus Coombs, the mailroom messenger in “Pet Fly,” who connects more easily with household pests than he does with the women who work in his building. Or Albert Roundhouse, of “Almost Alyce,” who loses the love of his life and falls into a welter of alcohol, vagrancy, and, ultimately, enlightenment. Perhaps most alienated of all is Michael Trey in “Between Storms,” who locks himself in his New York City apartment after being traumatized by a major storm and finds himself taken by the outside world as a prophet—not of doom, but, maybe, peace? Not all these awkward types are hapless or benign: The short, shy surgeon in “Cut, Cut, Cut” turns out to be something like a mad scientist out of H.G. Wells while “Showdown on the Hudson” is a saga about an authentic Black cowboy from Texas who’s not exactly a perfect fit for New York City but is soon compelled to do the right thing, Western-style. The tough-minded and tenderly observant Mosley style remains constant throughout these stories even as they display varied approaches from the gothic to the surreal.
The range and virtuosity of these stories make this Mosley’s most adventurous and, maybe, best book.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-8021-4956-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
For connoisseurs of speculative fiction who enjoy detailed worldbuilding.
In the near future, the world is run by WellCorp but all is far from well.
Stephens’ debut begins in “Zone 874, Pacific Ocean, 29 Days Post-Launch,” where we find one of our two heroines, Maggie, alone and afloat in a vessel called a WellPod, which is about to serve her a so-called latte made of mushrooms and root vegetables. "When Maggie could see the brown sludge that coated the bottom of the mug, she placed it back on the coaster, triggering its descent into the table at the same time her gratitude journal slid out from a lower compartment.” A passion for worldbuilding continues to drive this story of Lenses, Devices, Injectibles, Pohvees, WellNests, EarDrums, and much, much more as we go landside and meet Maggie’s live-in partner, Noa, who works at WellCorp’s Malibu campus, where she and Maggie have been assigned a high-tech apartment. With wildfires, earthquakes, and drought having wiped out most of the rest of California, volunteering for a Pod voyage was Maggie’s only option for getting out of town—and she really needs a break to figure out what to do about her unexpected pregnancy. Oops. In chapters dated by number of days pre- and post-launch, a complicated story unfolds. One has to do with corporate malfeasance and whistleblowing at WellCorp—were the Pods really ready to launch, and is there a major storm underway? Others involve infidelities and betrayals both past and present. It’s hard to keep up with which scary threat you’re supposed to be worrying about and which characters you’re rooting for—and the constant explanations and exposition dry up the juice. The novel is happiest when preparing and serving futuristic meals. “The hatch of her NutriStation opened and Maggie reached inside for her plate. The diagram projected through her Lens mapped out the baked coconut bacon, sun-yellow cherry tomatoes cooked in lab-grown avocado oil and coated in ancient grains aside tempeh topped with a dollop of collagen- and protein-fortified macadamia nut labneh.” Sounds better than the latte, anyway.
For connoisseurs of speculative fiction who enjoy detailed worldbuilding.Pub Date: June 25, 2024
ISBN: 9781668034316
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Scout Press/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 23, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2024
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