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Hilary Mantel Getty 1.jpg

The Pajiba February 2023 Book Recommendations Superpost!

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Books | February 28, 2023 |

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Books | February 28, 2023 |


Hilary Mantel Getty 1.jpg

Books time! You know the drill. It’s February, there are plenty of titles to talk about, but here are four that proved to be especially interesting to me this past month.

The Summer Prince by Alaya Dawn Johnson

In the city of Palmares Tres, a king is chosen every year to rule, only to be sacrificed by the time Winter ends to begin the cycle anew. For June Costa, a young artist hoping to make an impact on the city, it’s a tradition to question, if not out loud. The new king is Enki, a vibrant and bold young man who challenges the status quo of Palmares Tres. Together, he and June will make art to fuel to a growing rebellion against the government, but the layers of tension in the city are as complicated as their growing emotions for one another.

Published a decade ago, this YA novel from Alaya Dawn Johnson is a fascinating display of failed ambition. Johnson is a stellar writer of intense ambition, one who can blend ideas and genres while always keeping her focus on progressive themes and challenging characters. Her most recent novel, Trouble the Saints, feels like the zenith of her skills and concepts coming together to form a cohesive whole, one she’s been working towards her entire career. So, in that context, it’s best to view The Summer Prince as a stepping stone. The pieces are all here, and you can’t fault her expansive vision, but the execution is muddled.

Johnson has created a vivid world, a post-apocalyptic city inspired by Brazil that blends Afrofuturism with a matriarchal society where advanced technologies are restricted, much to the chagrin of many residents. Her sense of setting is undeniable, both lush and unvarnished. Yet it was also clear that many of these fascinating ideas weren’t fully formed, such as the tensions of classism and colourism in the city. The power structures often felt overcomplicated too, which isn’t great when you’ve set the bar so high for your world-building. There’s so much to enjoy here, including a messy young protagonist who veers between self-assurance and hopelessness in a way that felt very real to one’s adolescence. If you’re starting out with Johnson’s work, and you totally should, go for one of her later books.

Like a Sister by Kellye Garrett

Desiree Pierce is a disgraced former reality TV star and the daughter of a rap mogul. She’s just been found dead in a park, and her half-sister Lena heard about it via the news. Everyone suspects that Desiree fell off the wagon and died of an overdose, but Lena is suspicious. Some details don’t add up, and she knows that a lot of people would do terrible things to keep Desiree quiet, including their own father, who she hasn’t spoken to in over a decade.

Garrett’s crime thriller benefits from a strong voice, particularly for its protagonist Lena: an ambitious figure voluntarily estranged from the father who could hand her a perfect life on a silver platter should she so desire, a Black woman painfully aware of the loaded expectations placed upon her by herself and others. She ends up being far more alluring than the central mystery, which is intriguing but wraps up disappointingly and in a weirdly hurried manner, as if Garrett had to get the final draft to the publishers on time. There’s a lot of interesting stuff here regarding social media, the specifics of socialite/reality star fame, and the ways Black women are perceived as commodities. It’s just a shame the big hook the story sells itself on can’t see itself through to a satisfying ending.

Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel

I’m trying to confront some of my pop culture blind spots this year, and for some reason, Hilary Mantel is a major one. I own copies of several of her books but simply couldn’t force myself to read them for years, even when others assured me that I would love them. Eventually, the right moment presented itself and I cracked open Beyond Black. And yeah, it’s amazing.

Alison Hart is a pleasantly plump woman who makes her living as a medium, traveling to fairs and town halls to communicate with the spirits. Unlike many of her colleagues, she’s the real deal, and her horrid spirit guide Morris taunts her about her traumatic past and the ghosts that have dominated her life since childhood. Her business partner Colette keeps her in line, typically in-between jibes about her weight and work. Business is booming, but Alison can’t continue the status quo as long as some horrid figures from her youth keep making an appearance.

To describe Beyond Black as a dark comedy feels like an understatement. It’s bleak, caustic, and often hilarious, a tonal tightrope walk that I was gripped by for over 400 pages. This is a ghost story without the typical trappings of the genre but it’s no less unnerving for it. Mantel’s portrayal of the liminal space between life and death, and our perceptions of it, are extremely believable, even to skeptics like myself. it’s been a while since I read two characters as deftly layered, flinty, and tough to categorize as Alison and Colette, a pair of women who are polar opposites but bound by a toxic vein of co-dependency that threatens to sap them dry. One section on the psychic community’s responses to the death of Princess Diana was especially hilarious, if hitting close to the bone. Honestly, I’m annoyed that it took me this long to read this because it really is wonderful. At least I have plenty more Mantel books to check out in the future. I have had a copy of Wolf Hall on my TBR tower for quite some time.

Galilee by Clive Barker

I’m still on a Clive Barker kick, as we all should be, which led me to one of his more underrated novels, Galilee. While there is a supernatural element to this saga, as one would expect from Barker, it’s so subtle that you frequently forget it’s there. The cover describes it as a romance, although it would be more fitting to call it an epic. The Galilee of the title is the prodigal son of the Barbarossa family, an ultra-wealthy dynasty of immortals who are essentially going to rot in their crumbling palace after decades of malaise. Their centuries-long adversaries are the Gearys, a family that is totally not the Kennedys. Tensions grow to new peaks when Galilee meets Rachel, the dissatisfied wife of one of the Geary sons.

As with most Barker books, you stay for the prose. The guy is truly a stellar writer, the kind who is impeccable at crafting sentences that propel you to keep reading for over 600 pages (for a guy best known for his short stories, his novels are always absolute chunks.) This style proves to be a strong fit for this narrative, which spans millennia and delves into intense detail of various fascinating and grotesque figures. It’s a Greek epic mixed with the ‘rags to riches’ American dream. While I prefer my Barker with more flaying and orgies, Galilee kept me gripped and ensured that I would spend too much money buying his other works on eBay!