Book reviews: The best recent releases
Recent Book Reviews: Top New Releases
Discover a novel about an artist who uses blood as paint, explore four new books by local authors, and delve into a tale that offers a sharp commentary on our times.
You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty
By Akwaeke Emezi (Faber & Faber)
Sometimes, you can judge a book by its cover. You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi is a perfect example. The bright bubblegum pink cover and vibrant spine, adorned with flamingos, palm trees, and hummingbirds, hint at a romantic and tantalizing world.
The novel opens with a fiery sex scene after the protagonist, Feyi, propositions a stranger at a party in New York. Feyi, an aspiring artist, has been grappling with grief after her husband died in a car crash five years earlier. Despite her ambition, she hasn’t achieved major career success and knows her trauma is holding her back.
When Feyi meets Nasir, their friendship seems like the perfect balm. But when she meets Alim, Nasir’s father, and feels an instant, overwhelming attraction, the novel heats up. Is Feyi ready to be vulnerable again? Can she betray Nasir, who has treated her with kindness? Feyi believes only Alim can help her learn to live and love again, even if this taboo love might bring nothing but pain.
Although Emezi’s language can sometimes verge on cliché, the novel is vibrant and fun. The dialogue between Feyi and her best friend is sublime, and the descriptions of the island where Alim lives are lush and rich. What makes this book unique is its depiction of Feyi, a dark-skinned, sex-positive Black woman in a romance novel, a genre typically dominated by straight white protagonists. This is a charming and sexy novel about learning to live each day with passion and without fear.
The Measure
By Nikki Erlick (HarperCollins)
We live as though death is far off in the distant future. But when faced with a shorter time frame—a devastating diagnosis or a genetic marker indicating future illness—it ripples through our families and friends, altering the days we have left. Nikki Erlick’s debut novel explores this idea through a strange, unexplained event: the entire world wakes to find a box labeled with their name. Inside, a string. Over time, it becomes clear that the length of the string equals the length of your life.
Peopled with an ensemble cast of “short-stringers” who attend a support group every Sunday evening, The Measure explores how these strings change their lives. Some characters choose to open their boxes, while others leave their destiny to fate. But life is not the same as before: the arrival of the boxes impacts everyone in more ways than you might imagine.
There’s never a thorough investigation of where these boxes came from. Is it aliens? A malfeasant God? Erlick is more interested in characters than explanations. There’s plenty of drama: Maura and her girlfriend Nina’s strings are wildly different lengths, and they navigate what this means for their relationship; Hank, a doctor at a local hospital, struggles to comprehend not only his own mortality but the impact of the strings on the lives he’s saved in the emergency room; and Ben has been abandoned by his girlfriend and left to face the reality of his shortened life alone.
Despite the global appearance of the strings, all the characters live in America, giving the novel a distinct style and voice. The Measure would be an ideal choice for book club readers to debate what they would do if a box arrived one day with their string inside.
Four New Books from Local Authors
- Adopted by Jo Willis and Brigitta Baker (Massey University Press): This book explores the ramifications and impacts of the closed adoption practice from the 1950s to the 1970s, which saw thousands of children adopted without transparency. An important and brave book that will resonate with many readers.
- Naming the Beasts by Elizabeth Morton (Otago University Press): Shortlisted for the Kathleen Grattan Poetry Award in 2021, Morton’s collection moves between the wild and the urban, with beasts becoming the narrator. These biting and insightful poems delve into the ecological and look to find beauty in a broken world.
- The Wrong Woman by J.P. Pomare (Hachette): Reid swore he’d never return to Manson, but when he’s offered a job investigating a suspicious car crash, he does, and nothing is as it seems. Award-winning Pomare doesn’t disappoint with his fifth novel, another brilliant literary thriller.
- Na Viro by Gina Cole (Huia): When her sister’s spaceship is sucked into a cosmic whirlpool, Tia is forced to confront her fears and reconnect with her estranged mother to join the rescue crew. Set more than 200 years in the future, this is Pasifika futurism at its best.
For more book reviews, visit Woman Magazine.
