The Most by Jessica Anthony

 

This 2024 novel is a quickly and easily read fiction piece that might be considered a novella. There is nothing excessive in this 133-page, richly told story. Every informative word seems carefully chosen and assembled with an almost poetic quality. I was drawn by its cover descriptions including: "The Most charges the air like a thunderclap," and "a novel of ruthless beauty." The title refers to a tennis maneuver, the relevance of which is a key part of the story. 

It's set in the mid-century. Virgil and Kathleen Beckett are just out of a New England university and newly married (a commitment perhaps made too soon). There is solid affection between them but each has secrets, each makes mistakes, and neither is emotionally mature enough to resist committing numerous indiscretions in the early years of their marriage, that each keeps hidden from the other. Virgil married for love; Kathleen more for convenience. Therefore she has the upper hand in some ways. But like so many women of that era, she did not get from marriage what she thought she had bargained for. 

As a character, Kathleen could have been drafted from  the societal issues explored in Betty Friedan's 1963 classic The Feminine Mystique: A woman driven slightly mad on occasion by the social and professional limitations of her life. Her disturbance is expressed now and then by just-so-slightly erratic behavior. The author connects the dots of Kathleen's life to explain an episodic behavioral deviance that sometimes embarrasses and exasperates the seemingly conventional husband who otherwise adores and deeply admires her. 

Oddly, in an era of post-war prosperity in the United States, these two university-educated people seem held back from achieving the economic promise of their time. In their mid-30s, they don't have much to show for their comparatively privileged positions in the world. Former college tennis champion Kathleen has a more ambitious, driven character than her laid-back husband, but in the cultural and economic milieu of that era there is little she can do to improve the sometimes depressingly dingy conditions in which she, Virgil, and their two young sons live. 

This is the intriguing part: within this story's framework there is something sinister lurking between the lines. This marriage feels like a sham. Neither Kathleen nor Virgil has completely shaken off the reverberations of their past indiscretions. It feels all along as if the chickens of husband and wife are going to come home to roost in some terrible way that destroys everybody. And yet, at the end, the tables turn. The chickens do come home - all of them, yet the conclusion is not the explosion you expect, but something else entirely. It leaves you hanging a little bit, wanting to know more, and to learn the next chapter for this conventional-appearing, complicated couple.          

The Most is now in the FMPL collection. 

- Marianne W.

Baby Teeth by Zoje Stage

 

Hanna and Suzette are at odds, jealous over each other's relationship to Alex. Hanna decides the only feasible outcome is to eliminate the competition. Their story unfolds in alternating chapters, building to a fiery Walpurgisnacht and its sputtering aftermath. 

Hanna is seven and Suzette and Alex are her parents. 

It's a pretty wildly uneven book and to be honest, I hated it most of the time. Suzette and Alex are so bland and self-absorbed I couldn't tell if they were intentionally satirical or not. Suzette's main characteristics are obsessive cleaning and Crohn's Disease and really, mainly Crohn's Disease. It is a surprise just how much Crohn's Disease can define a character. Alex is Hot Swedish Gym Daddy. Too much of the tension relied on will Suzette be smart enough to record her daughter's bizarre outbursts? And will Alex ever stop explosively and irrationally defending his "lilla gumman"? 

All of this would be slightly more bearable if Hanna were an entertaining, well-written, compelling character. But there's hardly consistency with her voice: She has an adult's intelligence and vocabulary but occasionally uses babytalk and is astoundingly stupid. I thought the book might at least be silly and fun after Hanna punches a toddler at Trader Joe's, but it doesn't get fun for a long time after that. Hanna pretends to be possessed by a witch, makes a heinous collage, and incites a special needs boy to bash his head against a wall and Alex still won't acknowledge all is not right in their sunlit eco-friendly dream home. 

What will be the limit? Maybe I'll leave that to you to discover if you decide to give it a go. I will say, the ending held a surprise for me that I enjoyed but didn't make the overall reading experience much better. 

For a more claustrophobic and horrifying story that has similar themes, I recommend The Push by Audrey Audrain. 

- Michael G. 

Togetha by Keith F. Miller Jr

In an amazing follow-up to his debut novel, "Pritty", Keith F. Miller Jr. gives us a continuation of Leroy and Jay's journeys, along with discovering the fate of Savannah's black neighborhoods. The threat of gentrification, political corruption, and even death, rips and tears at the community as they try to unify against what seems impossible.

The book builds off of "Pritty", utilizing many of the same components and characters, such as staying true to the split perspective between Leroy, Jay and Will. With prose tickling your imagination and making your tummy growl, the scenes invoke a beautiful immersion, even during the most intense. This makes it easy to feel and relate to the characters and their experiences.. especially those having to do with love. A few of them even brought me to tears.

Contrary to "Pritty", this book has a heavier emphasis on community along with the character's individual plots. This is because the book drives home the idea that love exists in many forms, and how these forms play a role in strengthening a community. Within community exists a mix of all of these different types. All of them have the capacity to change us, and the world around us, for the better. Whether it's learning to choose yourself, to shine brighter, or even to let go, we can accomplish anything when we choose love. 

Here is an excerpt from possibly my favorite chapter (18) between both books:

"Somewhere I once read that love isn't a one-word story... [that] there are so many types of love, all sacred in their own right... that love, like energy, is neither lost, nor destroyed, simply transferred or transformed."

I recommend reading "Pritty" first. If you read them, let me know your thoughts! Maybe this book will encourage you to take a look at the way love shows up in your life.

- Leo

The Wolf Man by Philip J. Reed

 

I am so excited about a small Missouri press called DieDie Books! Currently they offer four titles (with one upcoming) that are each a deep-dive into one horror movie by a single author. 

I love that concept. I love to hear or read someone who is passionate about something (especially books and movies!). And these books are very pretty white-and-black volumes with original cover artwork. The one that I was drawn to was The Wolf Man, the movie which strikes me as the sensitive boy's favorite of the Universal Studios monsters. 

The werewolf as a monster is rich with symbolism, but Reed helped me see that the appeal of this movie has a lot to do with Lon Chaney, Jr. as the awkward, doomed main character Larry Talbot. He has zero chemistry with the lead actress Evelyn Ankers and a complex relationship with his estranged father. They are bound by love but find each other impossible to understand. Larry can never match his father's hopes and expectations or integrate into his society. 

Reed absolutely loves the tension between the script and what the actors bring to life (for example, with any other cast Ankers would be playing his love interest), all centered around the tragic, doomed lead actor. Reed sees so much pathos in Lon Chaney, Jr. and this book is actually more of a deeply felt meditation on the man through the lens of The Wolf Man. 

It's so raw and emotional, in fact, I was sometimes taken aback, a little embarrassed. That feeling made so much sense when I got to the afterward and read that Reed died by suicide before finishing the final edits. Those gaps in polish -- a repeated phrase here, pages of obsessively repetitive sentence structure (like that bird that got into the Library the other weekend, bashing itself against the glass, sensing what it needed but unable to reach it), were evidence of a man becoming undone. And so this book is a portrait of existential despair through the prism of Lon Chaney, Jr, through the reflection of The Wolf Man. 

It's heavy, amazing, intense. 

-Michael G. 

Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva

    After the events of the Civil Rights Movement, racism went through a shift from being accepted as overt and very "in your face", to being more accepted as subtle and covert. An "invisible" racism that is covered by many tactics that save face to give the offender ways to appear non-racial, or "colorblind". Originally published in 2003, "Racism Without Racists" explores this racism that exists in modern day America. It does this through analyzing interviews conducted with both an older generation of white respondents, and a younger generation of white college students. Each chapter covers a different strategy done in response to the questions. There is even a chapter with black respondents as well to explore the comparison in responses.

    What I find most interesting about this book is that many of the questions are ones still discussed today (4/2025 as of this writing). They range from what people think of affirmative action and interracial marriage, to whether they believe systematic discrimination still exists. There is even a segment asking whether they think self-segregation and reverse racism are real phenomenon. Their responses are ones we hear in our everyday lives, ones that might not seem racist from the jump, but diving a little deeper, reveals implicit racial biases that might exist. These implicit biases perpetuate systemic racism without the person even realizing it. 

    As a black person reading this, I found that most of this felt rather intuitive, yet still engaging, and sometimes even entertaining. I definitely recommend this book for anyone interested in exploring racial topics, specifically in the range of how people *talk* about them and the effect this type of speech has. This is especially useful for white people, as it helps you better navigate these conversations, giving you the ability to identify when something said is racist and why. So if you ever find yourself talking with someone who says something like "I just don't agree with affirmative action because it takes away from the other hard working applicants," you'll better understand how and why this take is problematic.

- Leo

Down to the Bone: A Leukemia Story by Catherine Pioli

 

I started this beautifully self-illustrated book thinking that if I had to be treated for cancer - and I have been, which is one reason I was drawn to the book - I wouldn't mind doing so in Paris, as if somehow the seductive ambiance of that city would make the illness and its poisonous treatments easier to bear and the clinical aspects all so much more interesting in that location and language. I shortly gave up that idea, as the author's experience (while featuring some of the same medicines and treatments prescribed to me) was altogether much more grueling than my own. That was not due to the French healthcare system, or the location, but because of the type of cancer she had. 

Catherine Pioli's active, idyllic childhood in Greece gave her a belief that she would always be blessed with good health. But after developing a debilitating, painful and puzzling constellation of symptoms at age 32 she had a series of medical consultations that went nowhere definitive. Feeling worse week by week, she endured torturous tests some of which required weeks as a hospital inpatient before the diagnosis of leukemia was made. The treatment for it was even more grueling than the miserable-sounding tests. 

As a young adult establishing herself as a professional illustrator in Paris with regular deadlines to meet, all of this was a huge, very inconvenient, anxiety-causing disruption. A personal life full of love from family, a devoted partner, and friends help her get through it, but we watch her life spiral downward while the beloved people in her life experience happy events in their own lives. Remarkably, she used her talent and skill to document her experience, fears and emotions as they unfolded despite treatment side effects including malnutrition, exhaustion and progressive loss of weight and stamina. The result is a record composed of exquisitely detailed drawings and explanations of the medical necessity of each test and treatment, with the love of others and the aforementioned Paris ambiance woven into her bittersweet tale. 

If you have read Jon Batiste's wife Suleika Jaouad's memoir of her own experience of leukemia, (Between Two Kingdoms) this is a similar story except for the respective authors' personal details. I loved Jaouad's book and found Catherine Pioli's graphic account of the same illness equally captivating and worth my reading time. Both writers tell their stories so compellingly. Pioli's format and comparatively more circumscribed telling make for a quicker reading experience and engage the reader in a completely different but equally unforgettable way. Moreover, it's an informative lesson in some of the ways of cancer - and medicine. 

One doesn't have to have experienced cancer to be drawn into the story of this artist whose life rapidly turned upside down and forced her down a different path than she expected in her thirties. This is an extremely moving and powerful account, the outcome of which you'll have to read the book to learn. 

-Marianne W.       

The Emerald City of Oz by L. Frank Baum

 

Last night, right before the tornado sirens went off, Leo and I were at the circulation desk joking about him being whisked off to Oz. 

"But would you come back?" I asked him, because that's the thing about The Wizard of Oz that always troubled me. Why, when Oz is so wonderful, would Dorothy choose to return to dusty old sepia-toned Kansas? 

Because of Aunt Em and Uncle Henry. But in The Emerald City of Oz, which Baum intended to be his final Oz book (it wasn't), their farm is in foreclosure and Aunt Em and Uncle Henry are about to be homeless. Things are looking dire. 

Thankfully, Dorothy's generosity, honesty, and courage has made her friends in high places, and the ruler of Oz relocates the trio to Oz. I loved this, and enjoyed Henry and Em's reactions to the weird and silly Oz (especially the mutual animosity between Aunt Em and the Yellow Hen Billina). Dorothy takes them on a tour of Oz, encountering many strange creatures, my favorite adventure being the visit to the edible village of Bunbury that ends in absolute disaster when Toto devours several citizens and Billina pecks the raisin eye out of another. Dorothy shows sauce but leaves meekly when threatened with "the ovens." 

Meanwhile, various frightening monster tribes amass outside of Oz with bloodthirsty plans to pillage and enslave. The Whimsies with their huge fake heads sound creepy, but somehow their illustration by John R. Neill is even scarier. His illustrations haunt the pages, often difficult to make out, crowded with maniacal figures that evoke the thrills and strangeness of Oz. 

It was funny, sweet, and even a little exciting. If you need a break from this reality, I recommend this escape to the utopia of Oz. 

Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi

In the fantasy world of Orïsha exists a magic like no others, a magic granted by the gods. With the ability to heal, create fire, dreamwalk, or even raise the dead, those blessed with such magic are called "diviners". All others are called "kosidán".

Despite the diviners' powerful abilities, their magic has been stripped away by the king. He has a deep hatred for them, having slaughtered all of the adult diviners since their magic doesn't appear until adulthood. With only the children left, many are made slaves, or simply live harsh lives within the kingdom. They are the oppressed. They are the chained. They are the powerless.. or so we thought. 

 

The story follows diviner Zelie and her kosidán brother, Tzain, as they venture across the land on a quest to bring magic back. Accompanying them is the princess of Orïsha herself, Amari. The story swaps perspectives between them and Amari's brother, Inan as he chases them, all while struggling with secrets of his own.

Zelie's words speak on the book better than anything I could every say: 

  

“You crushed us to build your monarchy on the backs of our blood and bone. Your mistake wasn't keeping us alive. it was thinking we'd never fight back.”


- Leo H

Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix

 

Grady Hendrix has a new book out and it is, as I would expect, great. If there is a contemporary author I can count on for a good time, it's him.

Set in the early seventies, it takes place in an old Southern manse that has been converted into a discreet Home for unwed mothers. Our main character is renamed "Fern" upon admittance to strict Miss Wellwood's Home. Since having a child out of wedlock is considered shameful and their families don't want them to be considered "loose," "bad," "neurotic," or in a word, wayward, the young women are forbidden from providing personal information that would give away their identities. Still, they connect over astrological signs, birth stories, and complaints about the bland food. One of the true horrors is reading about the seventies cuisine:

"Salads were always on the table[...]"

 -- so far, so good, but it continues: 

"[...] hot dog salad, tuna mushroom salad, cooked cabbage with a can of Campbell's cheddar cheese soup poured on top." 

That last one is a crime against humanity. 

Aside from indigestion, Witchcraft is comparatively light on scares. Fern and her new friends visit the library bookmobile, where the kindly librarian introduces them to How to be a Groovy Witch. From this old paperback they are introduced to concepts of witchcraft, which allow them a way to fight against the constraints of Wellwood's Home but also entwine them with powerful forces beyond their comprehension. 

The power of libraries! 

-Michael G. 

Nightwatching by Tracy Sierra

 

A woman is awake in the middle of the night. It is just her and her children in their home. She hears a thud. She knows every creak of every board and that sound came from where a tall person would bump their head coming up the stairs if they don't know the house well. They aren't alone. 

Nightwatching is the stuff of nightmares, and the first 150 pages are incredibly taut with suspense. Sierra alternates between short chapters of present tense and flashback, and I never felt that the flashback sequences detracted from the plot. Chapter by chapter, she is building a story not just of a home invasion, but what it is like to be a woman not believed. 

Then the narrative really sinks into that theme, to a degree that slows down the plot and my interest wavered. It became repetitive. The final third of the book picks up in action, delivering a climax the reader wants. 

It is a very neatly constructed thriller, worth it for the first 150 pages alone. I read it in just a couple of sittings over the course of two days. 

- Michael G. 

Harvest Home by Thomas Tryon

 

A painter, his wife, and their teenage daughter move out to the country for a new start, landing in the idyllic New England village of Cornwall Coombe. After a summer restoring their 300-year home and getting to know their neighbors, it's time for the harvest festival! But what it entails is more than square dancing and a husking bee, and much more serious...

In folk horror, you usually have a naive outsider, like Ned Constantine and his family in Harvest Home, entering a rural setting and encountering the superstitions of the people that live in that isolated place. It's usually a beautiful setting, with a strong sense of community and tradition. What seem like remnants of a bygone era, like folk songs, dances, and symbols, are seen as eccentric. And there's a comforting draw to all of this, at first. Isn't it nice, isn't it quaint, isn't it good to be so connected to nature? Yes, the nearest hospital is pretty far, but Widow Fortune seems to have an herbal remedy for anything that ails ya (including asthma). It seems like a good place to bring up your children. Fresh air! Horseback riding! Polite youngsters who value hard work! Hallucinogenic mead!? Secret rituals in the woods!?!

But if you don't fully respect the old ways, look out! Dread builds as conflict increases between modernity and the surviving pagan practices. What you thought was dead and gone is actually alive and well, and it is not going anywhere. 

-Michael G. 

Binocular Vision by Edith Pearlman

 

My mom and I read the Best American Short Stories edition from 2006 together this year. While they were all excellent, one called "Self-Reliance" stood out. It was by an author neither of us had read before: Edith Pearlman. In this exquisitely nuanced story, a woman faces death head on. It is the gorgeous kind of story my mother felt compelled to share among our family like a particularly virulent cold. 

It was so good we had to read more, so the rest of the year we've spent reading Pearlman's short story collection Binocular Vision, indulging ourselves with one or two stories a week like literary bon bons. Each story is unique, holding within it some nugget of surprise. Another surprise: There's only one available copy in the MLC and it lives right here in Ferguson. 

Pearlman is an observer and fabricator of human interiors. Her focus is contained: Individuals living mostly quiet, regular lives. Sure, there's an attempted kidnapping, but generally nothing very splashy occurs outside of a little incest, shoplifting seniors, and extramarital affairs (both consummated and not). How do people live? What choices make a life, and importantly, how do we relate to other people? How can you explain the fire that billows up from a spark between two strangers? These are the questions she keeps asking. 

There is frequently a tension between the comfort of self-reliance with its imagined security, and the complicated, unexpected messiness of bonding. "How satisfying domestic life was," thinks a retired bachelor, "When you could shut the door on it at the end of the evening and cross the hall and then shut a second door, your own." 

A nanny with a past agrees: "What she wanted [...] was a life alone, with a family at fingertip distance." Not necessarily her family, but a family. Pearlman depicts plenty of loving biological families but also the beauty of "chosen family." The people we're drawn to don't always make sense: the aforementioned bachelor and a fierce teen immigrant; a bureaucrat and an artist; an innkeeper and a diplomat's child. 

Regardless of how they bond, Pearlman's characters are united by their need for connection.

-Michael G.

Bluebeard's Castle by Anna Biller

 

All senses are alive in Anna Biller's retelling of the French folktale Bluebeard. You can hear the soundtrack, visualize the variously form-fitting and filmy gowns, smell the cognac, feel the purring body of her white Persian cat--Oh, and thrill to la passion!

Biller is a filmmaker, and she effortlessly translates her cinematic language into beautiful prose. Hitchcock and the leading ladies of the forties and fifties lend style and glamor and the giallo genre adds a splash of color and sex. Biller loves describing the way the characters dress (their "costumes") and she's gifted at it. See below for an image from her feature film The Love Witch. 

Judith is a successful Gothic Romance novelist who is swept off her feet (figuratively and literally) by a handsome stranger. After a weekend of passion they are swiftly married and honeymoon in Paris before buying a crumbling castle in the country. Her new husband, Gavin, is passionate and adoring but...not always. Judith is enraptured with him but increasingly afraid of his brooding secrecy and explosive temper. If this sounds like Wuthering Heights or Jane Eyre, that is intentional. As Biller writes on her blog: 

"Although I’m once again working in a defunct genre and style (my most recent stylistic reference is Rebecca, written in 1938), for some reason the text doesn’t read as stylistically outdated the way my films do, even though I was equally inspired by Gothic fiction written in the 1790s as in the 1930s. I think this is because we all still enjoy language and stories from many different time periods, whereas most people who watch movies are over-saturated with the style of the current time."

And while Bluebeard's Castle is nearly breathless with romance and desire, it also punctures that with sly, dark humor, as in this line of the first chapter:

"She remembered the day they met, and the way he had looked at her, and how it had filled her with a mad ecstasy, which in retrospect had been a nervous breakdown." 

Or this similarly structured sentence from much later:

"But aside from the demon in her head, and her frequent nightmares, and her excessive drinking, and her insomnia, she was happy and productive."

There is this tension throughout: How much will Biller adhere Judith's story with the ones she loves to read, watch, and tell? Is the sexy/scary Gavin a flawed but ultimately romantic hero? Or is he actually just abusive and dangerous? And how much ambiguity can Judith take? She vacillates often throughout the novel, driving everyone around her batty, but it's this uncertainty, the tension between desire and fear, that make this a fascinating page turner and ultimately, a timely and harrowing examination of what it means to be a woman in love with a dangerous man. 

And it's worth mentioning: It's an absolutely gorgeous book! The cover is a great homage to the Gothic pulp novels and the front and back flaps include stunning photographs.  

Samantha Robinson as the titular Love Witch (2016), which Biller wrote, produced, and directed, as well as designed the production and costumes. 

- Michael G.