This book had potential, but it didn’t quite live up to it. I think the narrative would’ve been better if the author had focused more on how the Greene family’s interpretation of their religious belief affected how they operated their business and the effects that had because of the size of the company rather than the other way around as stated in the title. The author spent several different sections, small sections, talking about various religious themes and information that failed to strongly connect to the operation of the business. It also lacked a coherent through line and jumped from somewhat related to topic to somewhat related topic. I think that the effects that Hobby Lobby has had definitely deserve to be studied about this book didn’t quite do the job.
While I tend to enjoy Erin Entrada Kelly’s writing, something about her work doesn’t quite work to make an narrative something that I can strongly recommend, emphasis on the word strong. I enjoyed the premise that Kelly set out this narrative but when I started reading and realized that audiobook was only three hours long, I wondered how Kelly could craft a complete enough narrative to tell the story. Having just finished the narrative at the time of writing this review, unfortunately, my expectations have been met with a less than satisfactory resolution. I enjoyed the narrative, but not exceptionally so and wish that Kelly had expanded on the premise that she created going a little deeper which I think would have served this narrative well.
(I do not rate memoirs.)
Even though this book is technically a follow up to Martin’s first memoir, it can be read separately. I really appreciated how Martin told his family story, a story of hard-working immigrants displaced by the earthquake in the 70s and now a sharecropping family. Martin explains the mechanism of sharecropping and connect it to its more well-known examples in the south and showing how it continues to be used as a way to put the marginalized on a lower level so that the status quo can continue. He weaves together this final issue with the typical concerns of a middle school boy who would rather draw and watch TV in a way that relate to the target audience. I will definitely search out a hardcopy of this book once it publishes and put it on my classroom shelves.
This book had a lot of potential but ended up feeling half baked. I liked the idea of the premise, a sisterhood of the traveling pants but with a book club, but the author way too much into the narrative to be dealt with at each of these issues deserve. For example, the narrative includes a serious parental illness, an impending divorce, the discovery of a secret sibling, coming out, peer pressure bullying, religious trauma, the expectation of perfection, and self harm. These things do not happen to one girl -the narrative is split amongst the four members of the book club – so it ends up that a lot of these things do not get the weight that they deserve. The author’s style is excellent and a lot of the mechanics also work. I just think that she tried to do too much.
Short works like short stories and novellas, typically, are not my favorite length/style of narrative fiction. However, certain authors have an immense amount of skill when writing short fiction, which helps me get over my personal preference for longer works. P. Djèli Clark is one of those authors. This is the second novella that I have read by Clark. Both take history and add a fantastical twist to them that fits incredibly well. This novella takes place around the time of the second rise of the Ku Klux Klan. Clark imagines a scenario in which the hatred that these men thrive on turns them into actual monsters. The main character has a job of trying to hunt down and eliminate as many of these monsters as possible. In this short narrative, Clark builds complex main character with deep connections to the people in her life, and also explores the idea of hate and hurt in a powerful way. I highly recommend this book.
Before I started reading this book, I was a little bit apprehensive since this book does not have a straightforward narrative and is rather a collection of essays and a few poems. In the past, I have read a handful of other collections like this and have simply not been able to get into them because of the not straightforward chronological telling which I tend to prefer. Thankfully, I am happy to say that this book broke that mold in terms of my enjoyment. Brown has a strong narrative voice that engages the readers quickly and keep them engaged throughout the entire collection. She also shows incredible skill in how she chose to arrange all of these different pieces to tell the story. I am very thankful that I requested this ARC and had the opportunity to read it.
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