Tag Archives: Book Review

Review | Those Opulent Days, by Jacquie Pham

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The murder mystery in Those Opulent Days serves as a jumping-off point for a deep dive exploration and expose of the various complexities around racial and class disparities during 1928 French-colonial Vietnam.

As someone unfamiliar with Vietnamese history, I was fascinated by this glimpse into the country’s history. The way Vietnamese characters (referred to as “Annanites” in this novel) automatically provide more deference to French nationals, and the way in which wealthy Vietnamese characters set themselves apart from their poorer counterparts by adopting aspects of French culture, felt raw and distressingly true. They reminded me of how colonization by Spain and then the United States of America also resulted in similar ripple effects in the Philippines, where I grew up. Almost a century since independence, and we still talk about “colonial mentality,” and how we must fight against some of these beliefs that we have internalized.

The murder mystery centres on a quartet of friends from wealthy families: Duy, Phong, Minh, and Edmond. One of them ends up dead during a weekend at Duy’s family’s vacation home, and it isn’t till much later in the book that we learn who the victim was, and who may have wanted him dead. There isn’t much of an investigation, nor much suspense over the reveal. While the incident serves as a focal point for the events of the story (most of the novel’s events happen within a week of the death), the murder itself isn’t actually the focus of the story.

Rather, the story is about the lives of these four young men, and how the social inequities during the period play out in their families. I love how Pham explores the subtleties in their relationship through minor details, like how Duy’s family’s opium business makes them powerful in one way, but Minh’s family’s rubber business actually makes him the wealthiest of the group. More significantly, Edmond being French and white immediately accords him and his family prestige that even Minh’s wealthy and powerful family can’t achieve.

We learn how Phong is the smartest of the group, and how his father maintains his deceased first wife’s primacy by sending the children of all his subsequent wives to work in Minh’s factories and fields. We also learn how Edmond’s mother is so racist that she rubs her hand raw when a Vietnamese man accidentally brushes against it, never mind that he’s literally royalty. Pham sprinkles all these details throughout that truly make this world come to life. Whomever is killed, and whomever the murderer turns out to be, it’s clear that the villain in this novel is French colonization, and the way that Vietnamese people are second-class citizens on their own land.

Possibly because of this theme, the chapters I found most powerful are those from the perspectives of Vietnamese servants in Minh’s household: Hai, a kind-hearted maid whose romance with Minh threatens the elevated place in society that Minh’s mother has fought so hard to attain, and Tattler, an ambitious housemaid who hates the upper class until she realizes she actually really wishes to be one of them. Both are doomed by the circumstances of their birth and the society they must learn to navigate, and amongst all the glitzy glamour — the opulence, so to speak — the four main characters inhabit, Hai and Tattler’s chapters provide us a grittier counterpoint. Their stories show us that, however much we sympathize with Duy, Minh, Phong, and Edmond for their struggles within social structures, the four men are also somewhat complicit in keeping those structures going.

Hurt people hurt people, and this novel explores the many ways that power imbalances can lead to people lashing out to those who are less powerful. There’s a powerful moment near the end where characters are forced to confront the harsh limits of their own power, and yet there’s another, equally powerful, moment where power structures are subverted when a character takes control of their own destiny. Overall, this is a fascinating, multi-layered, and textured historical novel, one where a murder mystery is a powerful metaphor for all the complex and simmering tensions amongst a people longing to regain control over their own homeland.

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Thank you to Publishers Group Canada for an advance reading copy in exchange for an honest review.

Review | The Widow’s Guide to Dead Bastards, by Jessica Waite

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How do you grieve someone when you’ve just learned of all the many ways that they’ve done you wrong? Jessica Waite’s memoir, The Widow’s Guide to Dead Bastards, begins with an arresting image: the author confronted with nine photos of vulvas, arranged in a three-by-three grid “like the Brady Bunch family” (page 1). It’s a tiny subset of her recently-deceased husband Sean’s porn collection, and his secret stash of digital images is the least of his transgressions.

As Jessica processes his loss, and tries to help her young son, Dash, heal, she continues to unearth more of Sean’s secrets: he regularly pays for sex while on vacation, he’s had a long-time affair with a colleague, and his debts put Jessica’s financial security in jeopardy. This memoir may have started with a pointed, darkly humorous observation about Sean’s secrets, but most of the book takes us on Jessica’s raw and rather emotional journey in the aftermath of Sean’s death.

There’s anger: in a moment of petty revenge that Jessica deliberately conceals from friends until it’s too late for them to stop her, Jessica sets out to ruin Sean’s affair partner’s Christmas. Jessica’s barrage of texts and emails are straight-up harassment, and her threats involve not just the affair partner’s holiday cheer, but also her career. So it’s hard to cheer for Jessica in that moment, yet the act alone proves to be enough catharsis without having to escalate, so all’s well that ends well?

Beyond the anger is also a lot of fear. Jessica takes us through her anxieties about getting tested for STDs, and about waiting for all the legal stuff around Sean’s death benefits to come through. Worse is the lingering fear of what else remains unknown; if Sean had succeeded in keeping all this from her till now, what other secrets had he been keeping that could end up ruining the life she’s building?

Jessica deliberately leaves vague her own personal beliefs about the afterlife, or lack thereof, but the memoir also takes us on her deeply spiritual journey in exploring those questions for herself. This, too, rings true. There’s nothing like losing someone to make us wonder where they may be now, and if we’ll ever see them again, and while Jessica’s exploration does stay within particular paths of spirituality, her curiosity and yearning are also very real.

There’s a wonderful metaphor from someone Jessica goes to for counsel: when the day of Sean’s death began, Jessica was at the 12:00 point of an analogue clock, steady, secure, and with an entire clock’s worth of stability beneath her. Sean’s death plunges her all the way down to the 6:00 point in a moment, and suddenly, she’s scrambling to figure out where she can find her footing again.

Jessica’s response rings so true for anyone who’s gone through grief: after a ‘decent’ period of mourning (the length of which differs by person), her loved ones expect her to be back to the woman she was at the 12:00 point. Yet even if she does manage to climb back up there, she’s no longer the same woman. Grief has forever changed her, and it’s tough to quantify how, much less explain it to others. It’s a powerful and heartbreaking message, yet one that reminds me of my own experiences of grief, and makes me feel less alone.

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Thank you to Simon and Schuster Canada for an advance reading copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Review | The Off Season, by Amber Cowie

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The Off Season had an interesting hook: documentary filmmaker Jane Duvall moves into a remote hotel during the off season with her new contractor husband, Dom, and his teenage daughter, Sienna. Dom is tasked with doing renovations at the hotel to prepare it for the next tourist season, and Jane is coming off a work-related scandal (the details of which we don’t learn till much, much later than really necessary) and hoping the atmospheric hotel will give her material for her next film. Except odd things start happening at the hotel, and the more Jane digs into its history, the more she learns of mysterious deaths and disappearances linked to the place, most notably Dom’s ex-wife and hotel owner Peter’s son.

So far, so compelling. I love locked room mysteries and thrillers rooted in family secrets, and a remote hotel during the off-season is such a wonderfully atmospheric setting for such a tale. Unfortunately, this book didn’t fully work for me. So much of the success of this kind of story lies in the setting and the main character, and neither really gripped my interest.

I didn’t really understand why Jane was so fascinated by the Venaventura Hotel; apart from her being stuck there for a few months. She was really drawn into the history of the hotel, but from an outsider’s perspective, I didn’t really find the hotel super mysterious beyond Jane’s assertions that it was.

I also didn’t really understand why she was so into Dom at all. There were a couple of steamy scenes, but mostly he seemed like a bit of a jerk, and his secrecy about his wife’s death was such a giant red flag that I wondered why on earth Jane even married him in the first place. His daughter Sienna is a total brat, and honestly, I just felt Jane should leave and both Dom and Sienna should go into family therapy to deal with unresolved feelings over Dom’s ex-wife.

A lot of the issue comes from the fact that Jane has only known Dom for a few short weeks (I think?). So when Dom starts acting shady, and Sienna starts doing cruel things, and Jane literally thinks she’s in danger from one or the other, or both of them, I don’t understand why she still keeps wanting to make it work. I may have understood more if the goings-on at the hotel made her want to escape, and the story turns into a race against time to leave while she still can. But instead, she keeps flip-flopping between wanting to run away and wanting to make things work with Dom and Sienna, and that just gets really frustrating to read after a while.

In terms of thrills, there’s a lot going on: mysterious mean notes scrawled on mirrors, potshots taken at Jane, a trip wire designed to cause serious injury, and a lot of stuff that is unclear if they’re signs of danger or mere coincidences (for example, Jane’s phone falling into a sink full of water so she can no longer use it). There are also elements to enhance the atmosphere of danger, such as the bridge becoming damaged and a storm coming in. And of course, all the mysterious deaths and disappearances.

But to me, these are all elements of a thriller that don’t quite have a compelling enough emotional core to make me care. I see the danger, and I want Jane and the stray cats she took in to be safe. (Good news: the cats remain alive and unharmed till the end.) But since I don’t really understand why Jane cares so much about Dom, Sienna, and their new family in the first place, then whenever something new and dangerous happens, I just wanted her to break up with Dom and take herself and the cats away.

All to say, this book didn’t work for me. But at least the cats survive, and also to the author’s credit, I didn’t guess the big reveals.

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Thank you to Simon and Schuster Canada for an e-galley of this book in exchange for an honest review.