Book of the Day Roundup: January 30-February 3, 2023

Yellow Butterfly

A Story from Ukraine

Book Cover
Oleksandr Shatokhin
Red Comet Press
Hardcover $21.99 (72pp)
978-1-63655-064-0
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon

Stark images in black and white lead this sympathetic wordless picture book about a girl who’s enduring the war in Ukraine. Her days are harsh and limited; she feels trapped, and danger exists everywhere. But her fear and despair are interrupted by a happy sight: a luminous butterfly flits by. She follows it beyond the scary places and refuse; she is reminded that a possibility-filled world still exists beyond these dark circumstances. The war will end; she’ll spread her own wings again soon.

MICHELLE ANNE SCHINGLER (December 27, 2022)

Theodore Savage

Book Cover
Cicely Hamilton
Radium Age
Softcover $19.95 (276pp)
978-0-262-54522-8
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon

First published in 1922, Cicely Hamilton’s science fiction novel Theodore Savage follows English society’s descent into savagery after a war wipes out its civilization.

Theodore Savage is a model of a modern middle-class bureaucrat. He envisions a conventional future, with a wife, children, and fine dining. When a small, upstart country threatens war, many men dismiss the possibility. But science and war cannot coexist; one must obliterate the other. And so it does: civilization comes to an abrupt end, ushering in a world of barbarism and cutthroat competition for the sparse resources that remain. Fate throws Theodore a woman who becomes his wife, and the two of them are permitted to join a community that perpetuates willful ignorance of science. Theodore lives to be the last survivor of the generation that lived before The Ruin; he is both revered and feared.

The writing is brilliant, nuanced, and deep. No aspect of the hellish aftermath of scientific warfare is unexplored. The decay of etiquette and of edifices is covered; so is the speedy collapse of the law and the slow acceptance of a desperate existence. Theodore himself undergoes a rapid transformation from a typical office worker to a brute who thinks nothing of cudgeling his wife. The limited self-awareness of his pre-Ruin years deepens as he adjusts to the idea that civilization as he knew it is gone for good. As a father, he marvels at his children, whose belief in the utter evil of scientific achievement is unquestioned. His story lays bare the peripheral nature of women’s places in society: herein, their lives are without agency and often purposeless.

Written in the Interwar Period, Theodore Savage is a terrifying and prescient science fiction novel that’s unflinching in its portrayal of the fragile scaffolding that supports “civilized” society.

RANDI HACKER (December 27, 2022)

Noticing

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Kobi Yamada
Elise Hurst, illustrator
Compendium
Hardcover $17.95 (48pp)
978-1-970147-89-6
Buy: Amazon

Wispy watercolors and black sketchlike lines—hallmarks of the works of author/illustrator team Kobi Yamada and Elise Hurst—burst from the page in this beautiful reminder to find the exceptional in the everyday. A young girl encounters an old woman painting in the woods; rather than a painter, the old woman describes herself as “more of a noticer.” A transformative friendship is born as the woman invites the girl to see the world—and herself—in a new light.

DANIELLE BALLANTYNE (December 27, 2022)

Shoot the Horses First

Histories

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Leah Angstman
Kernpunkt Press
Hardcover $29.99 (238pp)
979-898652330-9
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon

In the sixteen sumptuous historical stories of Leah Angstman’s Shoot the Horses First, outsiders and pioneers face disabilities and prejudice with poise.

An orphan shipped from Brooklyn to Illinois hopes to meet the right adoptive family; a Civil War veteran recalls the joy of a snowball fight during a harsh winter. Playing at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, Frederick Douglass’s grandson dreams of being the first Black violinist to undertake a transcontinental tour. Women long to escape domesticity or prostitution to pursue careers.

The flash entries crystallize moments of realization, often about health: a man and a girl fail to outrun an outbreak of yellow fever; a doctor attempts a blood transfusion from a dog to a man. Such threads and reversals connect disparate narratives: in one, a boy is scorned for doing laundry and sewing; in another, a maid is mistaken for a boy when she sweeps a chimney.

Vintage horse motifs appear between the entries, whose dedication to period accuracy leads to keen cultural details. In the standout story “A Lifetime of Fishes,” a white woman injured in a boating accident is taken in by Native Americans; she begins to learn their language and customs. A glossary defines the Wampanoag terms included.

The book’s longer pieces shine; their out-of-the-ordinary romances are given space to develop. In the novella Casting Grand Titans, a botany professor in 1850s Iowa learns that her salary is 6% of a male colleague’s. She strives for intellectual freedom, reporting a new-to-science species of moss, while working towards literal liberation for runaway slaves. In the tender “The Light Ages,” a medical student determines to validate a part-paralyzed girl by recording her compositions on a phonograph for all to hear.

Set in the past among lives complicated by ill health and discrimination, the stories of Shoot the Horses First feature epiphanies and triumphs.

REBECCA FOSTER (December 27, 2022)

The Brooklyn North Murder

Book Cover
Erica Obey
Walrus Publishing
Softcover $17.95 (298pp)
978-1-940442-45-7
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop), Amazon

In Erica Obey’s clever cozy mystery novel The Brooklyn North Murder, a librarian teams up with her AI invention to solve a murder in a sleepy college town.

Mary Watson is a reference librarian in the rural Hudson Valley, where she uses her computer smarts to generate an AI bot, Doyle. She programs Doyle to write detective novels by analyzing the plots of classic crime stories. When an investor who’s taken an interest in Mary’s tech skills vanishes from a public event, she and Doyle make the ideal sleuths to determine what happened to him. In the process, Mary risks being implicated in massive data breaches, financial fraud, and a murder cover-up—unless she and Doyle can outwit the actual culprit.

Mary is a memorable heroine, and Doyle complements her well. Modeled on a 1930s sleuth, Philo Vance, Doyle is a stylish dandy who engages in entertaining banter with his creator. The image of Mary appearing to argue with her phone in public places never gets old. What’s more, the pair share a palpable affection for one another that is explained in a flashback to Mary’s unhappy childhood. And a campus security officer is a worthy source of support: he, too, engages with Doyle, in addition to introducing elements of danger and romance to Mary’s tale.

After the murder occurs at the book’s midpoint, however, the mystery stumbles, and the “who” in whodunit volleys between two credible suspects. And although the book’s use of detective plots is original and imaginative, the more obscure stories it references will spark recognition in only the most devout mystery fans.

The Brooklyn North Murder introduces an outstanding pair of amateur sleuths in a librarian and her classic mystery-versed AI.

PAULA MARTINAC (December 27, 2022)

Barbara Hodge

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