Bonnie G. > Recent Status Updates

Shadow Families is the second story about Filipinas living with engineer husbands in Bahrain, educated women, mostly raising children who are nothing like them and building community. When a temptress shows up and rocks lives the quiet is interrupted. When the community finally dissolves the women find themselves as outsiders more like that outsider temptress than they could have imagined. .

I wonder if readers who have not grown up in proximity to social-climbing Jews in the late 20th century will sink into this. Barbara is my mother. This is spot on, cathartic, thought-provoking, tragic, and hilarious. The shifter device is used in a lot of books with trans characters, and obviously, that makes sense, but I am not sure Rosenberg commits enough to make it work here. Stilll great.

Legends of the White Lady- It is hard to be a woman, and lonely, perhaps particularly for a woman who has ot trade on her beauty, but hard and lonely no matter what. The universality of this story, which focuses on women who could not be less generic, is quite a feat.

Funny and wise. I am really enjoying this apologia from the middle-class social climbing Jewish mother of a tramsmasculine child. The summation of Luxury Communism, a two line throwaway, was worth reading this all on its own.

A chest-squeezing tear-jerker. It does a lot well, but Brodie does way too much foreshadowing. I have guessed every major plot point way ahead of the official reveal. I wish some of the flashing signs had been obscured. Still, I like Noah and AJ and Julia Whelan could read me Trump tweets and I might find them moving (in a good way, not in the way they actually move me -- toward homicidal rage and crushing despair.)

The Miracle Worker - a layered story of women in an oil community in the UAE, guest workers, both the laborer and the educated class, and a woman with the money to ensure that the people around her preserved her illusions. Each of these women had given up home and family for the lives they had, and none really had what they wanted or had the wherewithal to risk what they did have for more.

I am going to need a shopvac, because the pieces of my broken heart are now too small to be licked up with anything else. Also, is it weird that IMHO Julia Whelan's guy voice is the sexiest guy voice in history?

It is weird, Dunham is so honest, but she is also a completely unreliable narrator. I have no doubt she is telling me here truth, but here perceptions are wholly compromised by her neediness, her impulsivity, her compulsivity, and her strange childlike view of the world. Getting her her head is fascinating, but I am aware things are not as they appear.

Entertaining, moving, and thought-provoking. Dunham's need to be loved is heartbreaking, but also, she was in her early 20's, and as I recall, at that age I was obsessed with what others thought of me too. She does not trash a lot of people, and the ones she does speak of at all negatively are mostly people you know were horrible (Scott Rudin) or at least suspected were difficult (Adam Driver, Jemima Kirke).

I was sad to learn that Emily Henry was not releasing a book, as she has done every spring. As much as I would love an EmHen fix, this is a worthy substitute. I skipped plans and wandered around for 3 hours listening to this today. Julia Whelan reading makes this even more EmHen adjacent, but mostly it is the total immersion. I am nearly certain I know the secret already, but I don't care. Bliss.

The Kontrabida - Filipino stories are thin on the ground. But also apart from the fresh voice, this first story is exceptional. A man returns to his home in Manila to support his mother in the final days of his cruel and destructive father's life. He learns a lot about himself in this time, but more surprising is what he learns about his mother.

Another book that has been unfairly languishing on my physical shelf.

This is really good. Lena is a LOT, I imagine she taxes many people's emotional resources, but she is honest and unfiltered and smart and she is a very very good writer. This is fascinating.

Sheer fun with real emotional heft. A woman finding herself and her voice after a divorce and years of doing what she was supposed to do. Straub is such a good writer. She makes me realize I actually like women's fiction. It is just that most of it is written to affirm the reader's sense of the world rather than to challenge it, and what a bore that is. I tore through this last night, barely leaving my reading chair.

Light as air, and fun. I have never been a fangirl, but the culture is fascinating, and Straub is, as always, a great chronicler. The band at the center of this is essentially NSYNCH, and I know they still have a middle-aged fanbase. This feels true and respectful of something easy to mock. And the building romance is already sweet, even though the participants have not yet met.

Scotland Yard suuuuuuuucks!

Fundamentally, this is a true crime story, but it is much more than that. This is a mirror reflecting back the consequences of the erosion of truth and the cult of consumption. In the age of the internet, "reality" becomes whatever each person wishes for it to be, and everyone just goes with the flow. The way Raden Keefe had approached this is surprising and surprisingly effective.

It keeps getting twistier, and even better, the deeper you go. It is like if Donald Trump, Sr, were Indian-British and then created less directed evil spawn, and they found other British mini-Dons. Unholy nesting dolls. Chucky suddenly seems like Ragedy Andy. Radden Keefe is so damn good.

Radden Keefe is one of my favorite writers, every book and article is genius, but this story is beyond. It is a juicy and fascinating story that also manages to illustrate much of what is wrong this world.

Boyd is going deep with this one. Chicago must have broken his heart.

A very different kind of crime thriller, and what feels like a very real look at what it looks like to teach in public schools in places where kids are not allowed to be kids, and often not allowed to reach official adulthood.

Another crime thriller after loving Long Bright River. In ways this is a very different book, but there is more similarity than I expected between this story of cops and others drying to live with little money and lots of drugs on the hard to navigate South Side of Chicago and that story of cops and others trying to live with little money and lots of drugs in the hard to navigate Kensington neighborhood in Philly.

What a fun escape with Finlay and Vero. Reading the new Elle Cosimano book is one of my rites of spring, and she definitely has not disappointed me this year.

Loving this so far. Finlay and Vero are back, and it is finally time to find out what happened too the money Vero is wrongly accused of stealing before she is carted off to prison. And also, Hawt Cawp Nick is rising every higher in the book boyfriend sweepstakes.

Divination clicks right into the ways we destroy our children out of a desire to protect, out of love, and fear that they will endure the pain we have endured,

My Father's Business Parts 1-7 clicks into another way we destroy our children, through biology and its demands. It also takes us back to the first story, Notes to My Biographer, in a way that hurts because Haslett buffs out none of the dents and scratches.

This is so good. A heartbreaking story about sisters whose very different adult lives are defined by drugs, poverty, cruelty, and neglect. And the reveal on the backstory for Mickey's ex/baby daddy is absolutely masterful. I was struck dumb, and generally neither my mind nor my mouth can be persuaded to shut up.

Reunion brings us a deterioration of body rather than of mind (or I guess of mind and body at some point.) The early death of a young and promising man is a horrible thing, but this was a more clearly defined tragedy than those in the other stories.. A beautifully crafted story that surprised me less than the others, but still moved me.

Fun for this Detroiter who also remembers shopping trips to Northland and Somerset, dressing up to see shows at the Fisher Theater and birthday dinners at Joe Muir. But also white flight, the annihilation of the promise of school desegregation, the wildfire escalation of violent crime, the unbridgable 8 Mile Road. The writing is okay enough, there are no major insights, but it is quite a pleasant read.

So I thought this could not get more eviscerating than Devotion, but War's End -- holy crap! I have seen depression nearly as bad as what is depicted here, but I never got fully inside of it to understand how it makes the depressed person's cruelties seem to them like kindness. A rotting body beside a rotting mind, both suffocating all around them. My heart hurts, and I cried, which I very rarely do.

A gentle story of one Black family in the 20th century, but also, necessarily, the story of what Black people had to do to end-run a system set up to hold them back. Davis uses her family's story well to illustrate the reality. Also, this is a reminiscence of a moment in Detroit in which the author and I grew up, and it is fascinating for me to read about what happened on the other side of 8 Mile.

Devotion-This is perhaps the most gutting story yet. The ways we hurt people we love out of jealousy and a longing to fill a gnawing emptiness rang so true. The way the reveal unfurls is brilliant. There was an opportunity for a blazing dramatic scene that would be a blast to write. The authorial choice to make the devastation so still, quiet and contained is bold and so true to these characters. Gorgeous! 5 stars

The bad guy here is 100% Elon Musk, and I am here for it. Holy shit, this is good!