A personal view of karma, likely to appeal mainly to readers curious about reincarnation and related topics.
A semiautobiographical guide to the dynamics of karma in everyday life.
A Los Angeles–based shaman and “spiritual empath,” Dunblazier stays faithful to the spirit of her earlier books, which include Heal Your Soul History (2017). She sees karma as “the accumulation of the energy of all your actions and the responses to them over time and space”—in both your past and present lives—and says that in her past lives, she’s been an African tribal leader from around 1000 BCE and a French American from the 1900s. Each of the five parts of her book begins with a parable from one of her past lives and goes on to cover a range of everyday challenges from time management to how to handle feeling attracted to someone already in a relationship. At the end of each section, the author suggests a self-help ritual that can help you achieve a goal, such as “Free Yourself from the Opinion of Others.” Dunblazier keeps her message positive, reflecting her belief that “regardless of your circumstances right now, your patterns do not obligate you to continue them if they no longer serve you,” and she packs an extensive amount of material into 325 pages. Not everyone will buy her views on subjects like demons or telepathy, and Penn’s bold illustration of a concentration camp prisoner, in an image that also shows a crowd of smiling, well-dressed people around a table bearing a vast amount of food, will strike some as insensitive. Nevertheless, even readers skeptical of whether they are reading the words of a reincarnated Chief Running Bear may be intrigued by her information on how people make use of concepts like totem animals. For most readers, this book will provide different ways of looking at things. And who wouldn’t want to believe, as the author does, that in the end “you are the master of your universe”?
A personal view of karma, likely to appeal mainly to readers curious about reincarnation and related topics. (notes, bibliography)Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-9963907-6-7
Page Count: 324
Publisher: GoTracee Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 11, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Unclassifiable, dizzying, and gorgeous.
A short, genre-bending book that interrogates themes including art, race, and doubt.
The cover of the third book from novelist Hannaham features a disquieting, arresting image: two airplane passengers bent over in their seats, hands clasped above their heads, as if bracing for impact. Early in the book, the author offers something of an explanation: “I have so many systems to monitor as I work; each aspect of the writing might as well be a knob or a dial on the console of an airplane….It’s as if I am a pilot without knowing anything about how to fly an airplane.” Hannaham’s book—not quite a novel, not quite a short story collection, not quite like anything else—is a clever series of reflections on art, doubt, race, and impostor syndrome. Written as a response to the poetry of Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa, the book mixes artwork with brief pieces that blur the line between prose and poetry, many focusing on aviation. In one section, a despondent pilot steers his own aircraft into the ocean; he still considers himself a “good person,” reasoning that his passengers’ families will get insurance payouts. Another section showcases Hannaham’s mordant humor: “Do I want to die in a plane crash? I can think of some good reasons to do so. It would bring more attention to this book. It was as if he knew, the reviewers would say, always eager for a prophet.” Hannaham can switch gears quickly from the tragic to the comic, and the ensuing whiplash the reader experiences is as fascinating as it is destabilizing. Each section of the book is beautifully executed in its own way, whether it’s about a pedophile who agonizingly fights his urges or a White police officer who pulls over a driver of color and recites the opening lines of famous poems at him. This book might be impossible to classify, but it’s easy to admire—Hannaham continues to be one of the country’s smartest and most surprising writers of fiction (or whatever this book actually is).
Unclassifiable, dizzying, and gorgeous.Pub Date: Nov. 30, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-59376-701-3
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Soft Skull Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
A pointed but hazy bildungsroman with little in the way of plot.
A woman seeks freedom from an oppressive system in Steinberg’s novel.
From a young age, Arianna observes the world around her in Texas, trying to make sense of the stories her sister, Lori, tells; her father’s and grandfather’s drinking; and the condescending way that her teachers talk to her. She knows that their family is poor but that “their poverty was special. Them being poor was in the moonlight with her mother singing and her grandfather playing the violin.” Young Arianna also observes other power dynamics around her, particularly between men and women (rendered as mxnand womxn). When she reaches adulthood, she manages to escape to college, but she still deals with the complexities of sex, gender, money, and religion. As she moves on to grad school and eventually marriage and children of her own, can Arianna find freedom of expression, or will she be anchored forever to the same dynamics that informed her early years? Steinberg’s prose is effectively layered and fluid, shifting between Arianna’s stream-of-consciousness thoughts and the editorializing voice of a third-person narrator. In both registers, however, the dense text is often unclear in its meaning. At one point, for example, Arianna (or the narrator) discusses an English paper on sex and religion: “It was the kind of topic that everyone wished they had and no one wanted to talk about; like the way a naked womxn felt in a movie walking towards a bed, knowing everyone in the world was going to have their own opinion of exactly what she was doing there.” Why exactly is the topic so desired yet forbidden, and how is it related to the imagined thoughts of a nude actor? Such unexplained assertions are a recurring feature of the text. The book sets itself up as a tale of critique and rebellion, but with its nebulous narrative and a cipher for a protagonist, it befuddles much more than it enlightens.
A pointed but hazy bildungsroman with little in the way of plot.Pub Date: Aug. 12, 2021
ISBN: 979-8455358999
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Sept. 22, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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