I’ll keep this summary short since it’s April and all the grad school papers are due in a couple of weeks. During March, I presented at both the BYU English Symposium and the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts. You can read my notes about ICFA over here.
Since I was already in Florida, I also took the chance to slip away by myself to Epcot without kids. I ate way too many snacks at the Flower and Garden Festival and spent my time in line listening to books for class on headphones, but a break is a break!
Results for the various creative writing contests that BYU runs have also been trickling out. My essay “Growing Up L’Engle,” which reflects on the various times I have read A Wrinkle in Time, was the second place winner of the Elsie C. Carroll Informal Essay contest. And my story about a robot nanny, “Insufficient Memory,” won the specialty short story category in the Vera Hinkley Mayhew Student Creative Arts Contest. I’m hoping that I’ll find a place to publish both of these someday.
Over on the podcast, I highly encourage you to check out our exploration of Pride and Prejudice adaptations featuring the wonderful Katherine Cowley, author of The Secret Life of Mary Bennet mystery series. We’re hard at work on some fun episodes that should come out with greater frequency once winter semester ends.
And now, onto the book reviews!
Speculative Fiction
Grandmother’s Rocking Chair by Nephi Anderson – Nephi Anderson seems to hold the record for inventing Mormon literature tropes. His novel Added Upon invented the premortal life narrative on which Saturday’s Warrior was built. This little story seems to me like a precursor to the Tennis Shoes Among the Nephites series, with the protagonist accidentally travelling back to experience the travails of the Mormon persecution. I’m sure he didn’t invent the idea of the ungrateful or careless young person thrust back in time to learn a lesson, (surely someone did this with the Bible long before Latter-day Saints came on the scene, right?) yet I would wager this is the first LDS execution of the concept. Kent Larson also ties this story to Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court as both contain the method of accidental time travel, though Twain’s story is a satire (this is Twain we’re talking about) and Anderson’s story is sincere.
Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer – This book read like a novel-version of what I imagine the television show Lost would be like, having not watched it myself–not in terms of content but in terms of narrative vibe. I was really drawn in by the beginning: the mysteries of who this research team is (they are referred to by their professions only), what exactly is going on with Area X (apparently an area of the Southern US that has been quarantined for supernatural reasons), and what details the narrator is omitting pulled me along for more than half of the book. Near the two-thirds mark, I began to realize that the author actually wasn’t going to resolve any of the questions I had, but just continue adding more vibes to the book. I found the ending to be almost boring, despite the climatic confrontation because I found that I just didn’t know enough to have any idea what the consequences of anything would be. Skimming over the Wikipedia summaries of the rest of the series, I see that (like Lost) it continues to provide more questions than answers.
This book’s relationship to the landscape of the marshland of the Southern United States is in many ways the inverse of Where the Crawdads Sing. Though both protagonists find solace and absorption in observing and cataloging nature, in this book, nature turns out to be actively malicious against humanity rather than merely a place of evolutionary survival. At the end of Crawdads, I felt like I understood the marshland and could even appreciate its beauty. Annihilation works to distance the reader from any understanding of the natural world they thought they had, pushing us to realize how estranged we really are from this supernatural place. I can see that there might be an audience that would enjoy these vibes, but I was definitely not part of it.
The Scholar of Moab by Steven L. Peck – This book is my third Steven Peck novel (fourth, if you count his short story collection), and he continues to surprise with his range of strangeness. The Scholar of Moab is a novel in the form of found documents: journals, letters, scientific publications, ward newsletters, and more. The voice of each artifact is unique and seamless; they really sound like they are written by an uneducated rural man, a European scholar, or a pagan poetess.
The plot revolves around Hyrum Page, a seasonal laborer who through a series of hilarious mishaps accidentally falls into pretending to be a prophet, and Dora Tanner, a self-proclaimed witch and poet who experiences an alien abduction. The connections between the two sound crazy even before you throw in the two-headed cowboy.
I read this book as part of our LDS speculative fiction class, which I am grateful for because I wouldn’t have made the connection to LDS documentary history on my own. Chris Blythe pointed out that you could read this book as a construction of what the Joseph Smith described by No Man Knows My History would have to have been like. In a way, the outlandishness of Hyrum Page’s rise to stardom and his just-as-sudden demise form a sort of inverse testimony of the prophet, showing the impossibility of the con-man-turned-prophet having much staying power.
The satire of the far-right conspiracy culture found in some parts of the church is also spot on. There were some scenes that reminded me strongly of the time my husband and I showed up to a new ward and found them discussing Julie Rowe’s theory of the four eclipses instead of the appointed curriculum. Sometimes, Mormons can get carried away with themselves. This portrayal works for me in a way other portrayals (like Under the Banner of Heaven) don’t because I know Peck is an insider, and because he also provides a few fringe characters in the novel who are more normal church members by which you can know that he’s not painting all church members with the same brush.
Fiction
Strong Poison by Dorothy L. Sayers – I read this as part of the Inklings project that I started last year. Even though Dorothy Sayers isn’t technically an Inkling, I decided to include her because I had read her essay “The Lost Tools of Learning” (an important essay in the resurgence of classical education) and was intrigued by her voice. Plus Lewis used to read her play about the life of Christ every year for Easter, so you can’t get a higher recommendation than that.
I’m not a huge mystery novel consumer, but I enjoy one occasionally. The dialogue-heavy style she’s writing in made it sometimes difficult to tell who was talking, but on the other hand, really conveyed the spirit of a “gentleman detective” who is solving cases for his own amusement. The detour into spiritualism threw me for a loop for a bit, but it eventually can back around. I’m still not sure how I feel about the romance/marriage proposal between Lord Peter Wimsey and the female accused whose case he is investigating. Though that motivation certainly upped the stakes to prove her innocence, why he was interested in her at all could have been made more clear. Anyway, enjoyable enough that I would definitely read other books in this series when I have time, but it’s not going straight to the top of my list.
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong – Honestly, I found this book a bit uneven. There were parts I found powerful and lyrical, and parts that I found mundane, self-absorbed, and naive. Additionally, this book contains a lot more explicit content than even this jaded English major is willing to put up with. It’s been a long while since I actively skipped over chapters in a book I needed to read for a class–and that’s saying a lot given that I read A Clockwork Orange last semester. Obviously, the author felt that those portions were important to his message or he wouldn’t have included them, but I can’t actively recommend this book to anyone.
I’m also a bit annoyed about the trend of creative nonfiction being published as fiction. It’s so clear that this book is about the author’s own experiences, and yet the “novel” label forces me to doubt the details. Which parts are made up or adjusted for narrative convenience? If you’re going to write about your own life, do that. If you’re wanting to make up a fictional narrative that illustrates a point, do that. This wishy-washy-ness in the middle just destroys the advantages of both genres.
Nonfiction
Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout by Cal Newport – Cal Newport’s new book has an excellent combination of narratives about how success is achieved slowly rather than quickly with practical strategies and tips to get yourself off the productivity train and into the space of real achievement. The tips seemed useful but kind of slipped past me as I listened, so I’ll be returning to a physical version to remind myself of those when I’m reevaluating my work process at the end of the semester.
If you’re as big of a Cal Newport lacky as I am, you probably don’t need to read this review as you’ve already picked up the book. But it’s also possible you don’t need to read this book as you’ll have heard a lot of the content in his other books or on the podcast, which is understandable but annoying for me. For anyone who hasn’t followed Newport obsessively, I can highly recommend picking this one up for some practical advice on how to slow down your busy-ness and find time to really produce things that matter.
Gator Country: Deception, Danger, and Alligators in the Everglades by Rebecca Renner – I picked this up to listen to as I traveled to Florida. It’s the story of an undercover sting operation to catch alligator poachers. The writing quality is a bit uneven, especially when the writer waxes on about conservation in seemingly strange moments, but the story is worth the ride. You really feel for the sacrifices made by going into deep cover and even the unfamiliar culture of those who make their living off the swamp. I liked that the author made both sides sympathetic rather than painting the poachers as completely immoral. You could see why they made the choices they did and the ways the conservation culture is often something imposed by outside groups and only necessary because of those same groups who drive the market forces that put nature out of balance in the first place. A fun read to pick up if you’re headed to the Florida area or are interested in police procedurals.
