Happy end of February! As I shoveled books into my brain one after another this month I found myself increasingly anxious about how to rate them "correctly." By rate them, I mean assign them a rating from one to five stars (specifically, on Goodreads, the clunky Web 2.0-ish book social media site I unselfconsciously adore), something I started doing at the same time I started keeping track of my own reading a few years ago. I like to rate books mostly because I love to have strong opinions and share them, and I want to both have a say in a book's all-important average Goodreads rating and an easy way to refer back to my own opinion of the book later on.
The more I read, though, the more the rating process has become deeply fraught for me, mostly because of the difficulty of assigning a rating to a book in the context of other ratings, for other books. What does it mean if I give four stars to both a wonderful, critically acclaimed novel that just never entirely grabbed me and to a kind of overwritten, under-characterized historical fantasy that I couldn't put down? Should I rate books against my standards for the genre and let go of cross-comparisons? Should I rate them on pure personal enjoyability, regardless of any external standards of quality? Or should all three-star books be exactly equally "good" in some impossible objective way?
I don't really know, but wondering about these things did make me want to break down my books this month by rating and see what patterns emerged (as usual, full reviews of each book after the break). I'll start with what I think of as the meaning of each star rating, then break down what I rated and why.
Five stars: Excellent, would recommend without reservation.
I think I try to reserve five stars for books that feel not just good but somehow special, rare in their quality, like this month's The Kingdom of Copper by S. A. Chakraborty, the second book in a brilliant fantasy trilogy. This book is special because of the quality of the writing and worldbuilding, yes, but also because of the nuanced way it deals with morality and motivation, tearing your sympathies between finely-drawn and diametrically opposed characters in a deep, diverse world. Kiese Laymon's memoir Heavy couldn't be more different genre-wise, but it's similar in the way it unflinchingly examines how generational pain and trauma are passed down, and in the way it makes you see sympathy in monstrosity--rare, that an author can do that so deftly and defiantly.
Another book this month that managed to make me feel and understand and believe almost-opposite things, that balanced impossible realities with breathtaking ease: The Great Believers, by Rebecca Makkai, which thrust me so deeply into its world (of AIDs-era Chicago) that I walked around in a grief-stricken haze for a week, unable to separate myself from the book--but that came to life with art and love and joy and human intrigue, even in the midst of its almost unfathomable sadness.
And, finally (four five-star books! What a month!) I debated whether how many stars to assign to another book about grief--Annie Hartnett's Rabbit Cake--and ultimately settled on five for the way it described a strange and broken and ultimately loving family through the eyes of a perfectly-written young narrator. This book didn't feel as once-in-a-lifetime "rare" and "special" as the other three I've listed here, but I decided that if I loved reading a book, if I cared about its characters and even cried with them, if there was nothing about it I could find to critique--that's excellent to me.
Four stars: Very good, imperfect.
I find the line between three and four star ratings by far the hardest to navigate, and I'll often go back a few months later and change a book's rating from one to the other. For four stars, in particular, I sometimes find that it's hard to ignore a book's critical reception, good or bad, when finalizing my rating. This happened this month with Ali Smith's critically-acclaimed Winter, a book I think could have been either three stars or even, maybe, five, but which I settled on four for because I could sense that in its dense and layered story there was space for my understanding to grow--that there was more to this book that the just an odd, thoughtful narrative about a complicated family. I'd like to read Winter in a class, to be forced to parse it for more than I got. Sometimes that desire's enough to bump a book up a star.
Other times, a book is four stars for the opposite reason--because I simply liked it, probably more than it deserved. Once Upon a River by Diane Setterfield was that book for me this month, an historical fairy tale narrative that wrapped me up like a warm personalized story-blanket even though I could see how thin some of its characters were, how boringly black-and-white in their morality. Sometimes a book does just enough for the reader that you are. That also happened with Zan Romanoff's YA novel Grace and the Fever, which might miss for an audience not deeply ensconced in Tumblr/fandom culture, but which I loved for how right it got that strange particular world, how interesting its questions and how important its answers.
And then of course there are the books that are easy to rate four stars, that slot themselves neatly into the "great but slightly flawed" category, like Special Topics in Calamity Physics, a borderline YA novel by Marisha Pessl that is like high school's answer to The Secret History, a whip-smart tome of a book that tricks you into the careful snare of its plot, but whose initial slowness is never fully, flawlessly redeemed by the fact that it all comes together in retrospect.
Three stars: Good but not particularly memorable, or, enjoyable despite deep flaws.
Again, this is a borderline category for me, one that's very full every month and also very mutable: as with four stars, I often go back and change books into or out of this category after a while. One book that slipped down into this category after a few weeks was The Water Cure(Sophie Mackintosh), an intriguing sci-fi/dystopian novel that I liked for its meditations about the vulnerability and strength of womanhood, but that felt a little bit heavy-handed and dull in retrospect.
Other three-star books are those that I think have major strengths let down by some aspect of their execution, as with Sarah Barnard's YA novel Goodbye, Perfect, which captured the difficult juncture of teenagerhood and adult understandings of morality really well but which faltered at its brief, inadequate ending. Similar but even more flawed--because it started with even more potential--was the noir fantasy novel Jade City by Fonda Lee: a unique, compelling setting, really good fantasy outlines, interesting politics... all of which were undermined by the middling writing, which explained too carefully and trusted the reader too little.
Two stars: Not very good, disappointing.
It might seem that a novel like Jade City was "disappointing" and should thus be two stars, but that book was only disappointing in light of how much potential it had to be very good, or great--in the end, it was still a good book that I enjoyed reading! Two-star books, by contrast, are so disappointing that they are no longer good. This month's example was, unfortunately, The Art Forger by B.A. Shapiro, which I truly expected to enjoy--fine art! Boston! forgery and intrigue! historical mysteries!--but which turned out to be a mess of implausibility, lazy plot shortcuts, and universally unlikeable characters. Two stars not one because it was at least a little bit fun in its messiness, like a bad reality show or a Countess Luann single.
One star: Trash!!! Let me rant!!!!
One star is by far the easiest rating for me to give, because the question is simply whether or not I was breathless with anger by the end of the book. Often, that anger is at the masses of people who loved it (I'm more likely to deeply hate a popular book out of spite if I think it's bad), as with Where the Crawdads Sing, by Delia Crawford, an immensely, mindblowingly popular book that I found painful to read, at least borderline racist, full of deeply cringeworthy original poetry, and laugh-out-loud in a bad way in key places. For those of you who read these for the rants, scroll down to my full review of this one. Unluckily for you, although luckily for me, one star ratings are rare: that's because I at least try to read books I'll enjoy, and I usually don't get it this wrong. When the really bad ones sneak up on me, I'm mad about it.
Detailed book reviews below!
February 2019 books, in order:
16. Once Upon a River, Diane Setterfield [****]
A cozy fairy tale of a book, a story about stories, how they begin and how they are told and what happens in their telling. With that comes all the flaws of fairy tales--paper cut-out archetypes that stand in for really complex characters, and predictably black and white morality--but also all the beauty of a satisfying, resonant plot and quiet magic.
17. The Water Cure, Sophie Mackintosh [***]
I liked what this sparse, dystopian book had to say about womanhood, its vulnerabilities and its ferocity--there were moments or passages that resonated so strongly with me that the book felt magical. The rest of the time, though, I found the plot slow and the ideas heavy-handed. I think this book would have been more successful as an even more sparse short story, where its sharp, sparkling places might have made up more of the whole.
18. The Great Believers, Rebecca Makkai [*****]
Rare that a book can make you feel such a profound sense of grief that you carry it around with you in your daily life for a while, and also be so full of art and joy and human intrigue, so clear and precise and lovely in its writing, that you feel an equal sense of happiness, just to be reading it. This book was special.
19. Where the Crawdads Sing, Delia Owens [*]
What whiplash, to go from the exquisitely-drawn, gut-punching world of Makkai's 1990s AIDS-ravaged Chicago to the gelatinous, pseudo-"historical fiction" mess of this book's mid-century North Carolinian swamp. This book is itself a swamp, although not one with the intricate animal life and quiet beauty Owens keeps telling us (and keeps telling us) her swamp has.
This book is instead a swamp of horrifically written Southern "dialect" (exaggerated and inconsistent for the white characters, shockingly exaggerated to a racist extent for the few black characters--who incidentally exist in the plot only to soothe and help the brilliant, damaged, misunderstood white protagonist), sweaty, overbearing romance tropes, sickly-sweet original poetry (constantly being spoken out loud, in verse, by the main character whenever the author thinks we need some help understanding the exact depth of her feelings), an uncomfortable handful of near-sex scenes involving a fourteen or fifteen year old girl (who we are told is near-feral from living completely alone since age 6) and an eighteen year old boy that we are supposed to read as beautiful, a "mystery" that floats half-heartedly on the surface of the novel like pond scum--and so much more! I can't suggest you read it to find out! So many people seem to love this book; so many people are wrong.
20. Goodbye, Perfect, Sara Barnard [***]
This is a thoughtful, complex YA novel about what it means as a teenager to re-examine what you thought you knew: about your friends, about your family, about love and good and bad in the world. I really liked the way it let you see that what looks like clear-cut moral right or wrong from an adult perspective can be more complicated and nuanced for a teenager, that part of growing up is learning to see the power dynamics that exist, at first invisibly, all around you. What faltered for me with this book was its ending, which felt rushed--there wasn't enough space for the consequences of the characters' realizations to play out, and it was disappointing and dissatisfying to read a hurried solution to such a deliberately, thoroughly written problem.
21. Winter, Ali Smith [****]
The second in a planned four-novel cycle by Smith (guess what the other three are called), and also the second I've read. I liked this one slightly more than Autumn, I think because its characters were stranger and its moments of grace harder-won. This is an odd and jagged book, confusing and reluctant to do too much of the work for you. I'd need to think--and talk--about this book a lot before I felt like I really got all there was to get from it. Which is a good thing to think about a book, at least some of the time.
22. The Art Forger, B.A. Shapiro [**]
It's not often that a book with so many elements designed to appeal directly to me falls this flat, this quickly. Unfortunately, this book was just too poorly written to pull off what it was trying to pull off--a historical/modern mystery/art heist novel. In particular, I was bothered by how lazily the author solved plot problems (the protagonist needs original blueprints to a museum? Good thing her friend works there and will email them to her, even though in real life that would definitely get you fired! etc) and how simultaneously implausibly skilled and unbelievably stupid the main character was. To add insult to injury, intrepid readers will remember how important period-accurate writing is to my enjoyment of historical fiction, and the alleged early nineteenth century letters sprinkled throughout this book were... bad. I would recommend anyone interested in the idea of an era-spanning art(s) mystery to skip this entirely and instead read one of my favorite novels of all time, the fantastic Possession by A.S. Byatt.
23. Special Topics in Calamity Physics, Marisha Pessl [****]
I liked this book much more than The Art Forger, but as with that one I came away feeling like I'd just read a lesser version of a favorite book--in this case Donna Tartt's The Secret History. This book was similar to that one--and similarly excellent--in its whip-smart narrator, the way it centered itself fully in an ostensibly cerebral academic world and then tore that world apart with very bodily brutality, and the fun, shocking thrills of its central mystery.
[Warning for mild plot spoilers:] Where Pessl failed, though, was where Tartt succeeds the most: Special Topics introduces us to a strange, elite group of schoolchildren and then, instead of letting their friendships and secrets and sins become the driving force for the plot (as Tartt does so brilliantly), kind of just forgets about them. A weird and unsatisfying flaw in an otherwise very good (if slow-to-get-started) novel.
24. Jade City, Fonda Lee [***]
A fundamentally strong fantasy novel let down by its mediocre writing. My favorite thing about this book was the creativity of the setting--a noir, 1940s version of a fictional Hong Kong run by magic-wielding, mafia-esque clans. The magic structure here was also really good; there are just enough possibilities and just enough limitations on the magic system to make it both interesting and easy to comprehend. An interesting political plot, too! But again and again, I found myself just kind of... bored, by the way the author explained to me that one character was doing something clever, or that another character was scheming, or that something obviously bad would be bad. That kind of writing makes it difficult to feel excited as you read, because none of the discoveries you make ever truly feel earned.
25. Heavy, Kiese Laymon [*****]
I idly picked up this book at the library, read a few pages, and didn't put it down for the next five hours. When that happens despite the fact that what you're reading is full of trauma and pain (as well as, critically, moments of joy and triumph), you know you're reading something special. Never exploitative, never simple, this memoir is a rigorous, unapologetic exploration of untold truths about Laymon's life, family, and country: an onrushing narrative that sweeps you up and puts you down, breathing hard, at the end.
26. The Kingdom of Copper, S.A. Chakraborty [*****]
In contrast to Jade City, this was a fundamentally strong fantasy novel backed up by excellent writing. My favorite thing about this book--the second in a trilogy--is the way it forces you to see its complicated political questions from the point of view of diametrically-opposed characters without ever fully condemning any of them. One answer seems obvious one moment, monstrous the next; and still, throughout, there is a clear moral point of view. None of the book's questions are easily answered, but neither are they unimportant. Add in humor, almost too-detailed worldbuilding, and sweeping, epic scope, and this is just truly stellar fantasy.
27. Grace and the Fever, Zan Romanoff [****]
There was something grown-up about this YA novel, in both the tone of its writing (slower, bleaker, more reserved than most books of this genre) and in its subject matter: it takes what could be a frilly wish-fulfillment plot about meeting your teen idol and turns it into a meta-commentary on fans, fandom, and what it means to fall in love with the version of a person you've built for yourself. [In many ways, it's the book version of this Mitski cover of a One Direction hit--a sophisticated, darkened version that draws the longing and ache out of something young and fast and fun. And also, of course, because the boy band in Grace is a barely-altered copy of 1D.]
I liked the way this book thought about what it means to belong to yourself and to others, the careful, accurate touch it had when it came to teenaged friendship, and the way it answered its own interesting, important questions. I also, though, wanted a little more depth to the secondary characters and side plots--less just a thoughtful essay, more a satisfying story. I wonder, as well, if this book would hold the same appeal for a reader unfamiliar with the ragingly complicated, often borderline insane world of modern-day teen fandom: my instinct is not, but who knows.
28. Rabbit Cake, Annie Hartnett [*****]
I finished off my February reading with this lovely, endearing novel about loss and re-growth, written from the perspective of a precocious, strange 10 year old girl. The fact that I can write the phrase "precocious, strange, 10 year old" and NOT have found that narrator annoying or twee says probably everything that needs to be said about how good this book is. Gentle and curious and odd, painful and sweet. I liked this book a lot.