The Devil and Webster by Jean Hanff Korelitz

Webster College’s first female president Naomi Roth finds herself accused of racism when a popular African American professor is denied tenure. The truth is that the professor was denied tenure because he was found guilty of plagiarism, but due to his legal right to confidentiality, Naomi is unable to make that reason public. Naomi confronts the tension between her own activist past and sympathy for the students protesting the decision, her own daughter joining the protests, and the responsibilities that come with her position.

I liked the idea behind this book, and the unique perspective it used. Particularly on social media channels, it’s easy to jump on a bandwagon and become very passionate about a cause without necessarily taking the time to consider the other perspective. So it was interesting to read the perspective of someone who could understand both sides, and was unfortunately constrained herself from revealing the truth. Korelitz does a good job of showing how both sides can be culpable in double talk. For example, Naomi overhears the leader of the student protests complaining that the school administration refuses to talk to the protesters, but Naomi had made clear to her staff that she wanted an open door policy for any protester who wished to speak to her. She wonders if her staff had disobeyed her, and we as readers can’t help but wonder if the student leader is lying about his attempts to open up channels of communication. Then a potential hate crime occurs and the situation gets even more charged.

Unfortunately, despite all the interesting potential for the story, it never quite grabbed me. The pacing was slow, the writing dense, and the narration a bit too introspective for my taste. The book touches on some important and emotionally charged subjects that are relevant to people interested in social justice or involved in academia, but the execution wasn’t quite as gripping as I’d hoped.

The Forever Summer by Jamie Brenner

I’m a huge sucker for beach reads, and this book seemed right up my alley. High powered attorney Marin Bishop is contacted by her long-lost half-sister Rachel, who invites Marin to join her in traveling to Cape Cod to meet their mutual long-lost grandmother Amelia.

There are soap opera twists (both were fathered by the same sperm bank donor), romance, family drama, and encounters with a cast of quirky, loveable characters. The setup reminded me a bit of Elin Hilderbrand, whose work I loved, and I opened this book eager to escape into its pages.

Unfortunately, Brenner lacks Hilderbrand’s magic, and I found myself bored by the story. The characters weren’t quite compelling enough to make me care, and while there was some development and things happened to the characters, I wasn’t really interested in finding out more.

I often enjoy escapist beach reads, and love the ones with all the soapy family type drama, but this one fell flat for me.

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Thank you to Hachette Book Group Canada for advanced reading copies of these books in exchange for honest reviews.

Some plays, like Huff & Stitch and Punch Up are so visceral that just reading them feels a bit like seeing them performed on stage. Others, like The Making of St. Jerome and I Am For You, have such compelling narratives that reading it feels like slipping into the rich tapestry of a novel.

The Making of St. Jerome by Marie Beath Badian

Sadly still all too timely and relevant, this play was inspired by the 2004 shooting of a Filipino Canadian teenager by a police officer in Toronto. The story is told from the perspective of the victim’s older brother Jason de Jesus, who is dealing with grief and guilt around the circumstances leading up to his brother Jerome’s death.

“It was just supposed to be a fight, Jay. Just a fight,” Jerome’s friend Dean tells Jason about the incident. After some white teenagers tell a Filipino teenager to “go back where you came from and eat your rice,” the teen’s friends decide to retaliate. Plainclothes police officers got involved, and twenty-seven seconds later, Jerome has three bullet holes in his back. The police officer claims self-defence.

“Say Jer really did have a rock,” Jason tells the audience. “Say all that shit really happened. …Now picture this. Kids. Just kids. Don’t think a bunch of thugs, don’t think gangs, think kids.” A chorus demands he tell the truth, and he continues:

The cops show up. They don’t see just kids. They see — Jane and Finch Kids. Clarkson Kids. Tuxedo Court Kids. Bendale Kids. Crescent Town Kids. Galloway Kids. …To them it’s a situation. To them it’s an incident. To them it’s an altercation. They show up–not with pepper spray or batons or tasers, even. But with guns. …And suddenly here I am being a spokesperson instead of a brother. [pp. 62-63]

The emotional heft of St. Jerome isn’t just in the systemic issues it brings to light, but rather in the intimate glimpse into the relationship between the brothers. Their relationship is fairly typical, with the usual sibling rivalry and Jerome admiring his older brother as a child, but with Jerome’s death, the tensions feel more fraught for Jason, and he can’t help remembering the arguments they’ve had, and his jealousy of Jerome’s relationship with their parents. At its core, St. Jerome is about the love between brothers, and is a moving, poignant tale.

I Am For You by Mieko Ouchi

When student teacher Caddell Morris encounters two girls fighting on his first day, he responds by giving them a legitimate excuse to fight — as Mercutio and Tybalt in their school’s production of Romeo and Juliet.

I Am For You is such a fun play for Shakespeare nerds and theatre buffs. It presents a classic Shakespeare tale in a new light, focusing on Mercutio and Tybalt rather than on the eponymous couple, and reframing Romeo and Juliet as an action-packed story of violence and tragedy rather than the usual romance. It also takes us behind the scenes on how fight scenes are choreographed and rehearsed, which was pretty cool for me to learn about.

We never really quite learn exactly what Lainie and Mariam were fighting about in the first scene, but Ouchi does a great job in presenting aspects of their personality that could have led to the tensions. Lainie is familiar with fighting and has been to the principal’s office so often that she’s in danger of getting expelled. In contrast, Mariam’s combat knowledge is very structured; she takes fencing classes at a nearby college and is the youngest student in that class. Their rehearsals for Romeo and Juliet include both sword fighting and hand to hand combat, which gives each girl the opportunity to gain the upper hand.

I love how the structure of stage fighting helped both girls learn about how they approach conflict beyond the play. For example, while learning to fence, Lainie learns that aggressive movements with the foil actually makes you more vulnerable to getting hit, whereas a light touch gives you the control you need to win the fight. While learning hand to hand combat, Mariam learns to engage with her partner with a believable level of aggression, to “sell” the fight. And also while learning hand to hand combat, both girls learn that when throwing or pulling hair on stage, it’s actually the “victim” who keeps control and directs the action. Ouchi weaves these acting lessons in with real life character development for both girls, and it was just fun to read.

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Thank you to Playwrights Canada Press for copies of these books in exchange for an honest review.

When Lily Takemitsu goes missing from her Toronto home on a summer morning, her daughter Rita searches for her. Rita’s investigation leads to uncovering her family’s past at an internment camp in California during World War II, and the novel switches from Rita’s present-day search to Lily’s life at the camp.

I really thought I’d enjoy this novel more than I did. I’m a sucker for mother-daughter stories, I find stories of dementia and aging to be heart breaking, and the history of Japanese internment camps in America is a subject I think deserves much more airtime than it gets. It’s a dark time in American history and a grave injustice to Americans of Japanese heritage, and I think there is still much more of these stories that need to be told.

Unfortunately, I struggled through this novel, and finally decided to give up on finishing it. The beginning is an interesting enough hook, and the scenes featuring Lily’s life at the camp are the best parts of the novel. The writing was just a bit too wordy and the pacing just a bit too sluggish for me. Rita’s part of the story pales in comparison to Lily’s, and the shifts in time lacked dynamism. There wasn’t much that connected both narratives throughout, and it felt like two separate stories and lacked the urgency of a young woman uncovering the truth about her mother’s life.

After the Bloom explores an important part of history, but I’m afraid I couldn’t get into it.

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Thank you to Dundurn Press for an advance reading copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.