Tag: Knopf

Review: The Antidote

Leave a comment

Title: The Antidote
Author: Karen Russell
Pages: 432
Release: March 11, 2025

Karen Russell uses the historic Black Sunday dust storm as the backdrop for her interwoven, intergenerational, and inter-temporal slice of American history – complete with a prairie witch who can unburden her patients from painful memories, a sentient scarecrow, murder, mayhem, dust, and basketball. Russell’s dust-choked world is perfectly rendered with beautiful prose and well-researched detail, the heavy dose of magical realism seamlessly woven into this historical-fiction tale and bringing unexpected life to a barren world.

She unpacks the “collapse of memory” in fascinating ways, offering the perspectives of the land and its collective inhabitants – each of them ill-informed, or at the very least, ill-at-ease, shaped by forces they cannot fully comprehend.

The Antidote has all the makings of a modern American classic, and I know it will stick with me for a good long while.

★★★★½

My thanks to my public library for providing me with a post-release copy in exchange nothing at all!

Review: The City and Its Uncertain Walls

Leave a comment

Title: The City and Its Uncertain Walls
Author: Haruki Murakami
Translator: Philip Gabriel
Pages: 464
Release: November 19, 2024

Our main character inhabits two parallel worlds—one is the “real world,” and the other is a “dream world” reminiscent of Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi: a nameless city with labyrinthine streets that feels disorienting yet mesmerizing.

The story is told in an understated and straightforward way, with little drama but plenty of pleasant imagery. Some elements felt downright cozy, though they lacked significant dramatic heft. The main character grapples with existential questions about his inner worldview and his sense of self, which are represented through the parallel worlds he experiences. Is the walled town a construct of his mind? A physical manifestation of the complex bond he shared with his first love? Who’s to say?

Murakami abandons the eponymous city for the “real world” early on, and the farther the narrative distances itself from that place, the harder it becomes—for both the main character and the reader—to return to what we once remembered. The plot clumsily attempts to weave these threads and worlds back together, but the resulting knot felt unsatisfying to me.

Many reviews have noted that Murakami has told similar stories more effectively in the past, so surely this is not the ideal book to start with as a Murakami neophyte—but here we are. I suspect I would connect better with his earlier works, as his writing and style resonated with me, but the story itself felt half-baked.

★★★

My thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

Review: Sea of Tranquility

Leave a comment

Title: Sea of Tranquility (April 5, 2022)
Author: Emily St. John Mandel
Pages: 272

It’s easy to get swept away to Emily St. John Mandel’s far flung settings as the story briskly moves from moment to moment, character to character, and timeline to timeline. St. John Mandel’s writing is clean and the plot never lingers long enough for inertia to set in. And while that makes for a quick read, there’s a certain slightness to the story that’s hard to shake. St. John Mandel raises interesting questions and ideas, but doesn’t really explore them in any deep, meaningful way. 

I was lukewarm on Station Eleven, even though I loved the vibe and world St. John Mandel had crafted. I felt similarly about this book. I wanted to be more invested than I was and the major moments did not hit me as hard as I hoped they would.

HBO’s adaptation of Station Eleven is one of the best shows I’ve watched in years, so perhaps I just need to wait for Sea of Tranquility to get the same treatment someday.

★★★¼

My thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.