Book Reviews: Three books I loved last year

These three books are ones that I read in 2024, and all were in my top 10 for the year. I recommend each of them enthusiastically!

There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak: 9/10

 "This is the story of one lost poem, two great rivers and three remarkable lives—all connected by a single drop of water."

Engrossing, beautiful, and deeply upsetting in parts, this book is one of those stories that stays and stays in the mind and heart. Shafak's depth of understanding and profound empathy is given wing by her meticulous research and her brilliant writing talent. Detailed and fascinating, and also harrowing, descriptions of the ancient, modern and continuous worlds give this book a weight that belies the (in theory) whimsical connection of droplets of water.

Water - specifically, the water of two great rivers, the Tigris and the Thames - is the motif, symbolic heart, and binding thread of the story. However, it is the ancient city of Nineveh (historical and modern) and its famed library, as well as the resurfacing and translation of the Epic of Gilgamesh, that is the narrative engine that drives it forward.

The book tells the stories of genius scholar and translator of Mesopotamian texts, slum-born Londoner Arthur Smith (based on the real 19th century Assyriologist, George Smith, who was the first translator of Gilgamesh); Zaleekhah, a 21st century hydrologist living on a houseboat on the Thames in 2018; and most challengingly, Narin, a Yazidi girl who was caught up in the great persecution of the Yazidi by Islamic State in 2014 and onwards.

The way Shafak weaves connections between the three stories is delicate, satisfying and, in its way, magical, especially if you think deeply about the miracle that is water and the way it is central to life and to both the past and the future. The Narin passages (especially the later ones) will break your heart (or if they don't then they should) but even with her, Shafak does not leave the character (or the reader) in unbroken darkness.

The story begins with the first drop of rain to fall on the head of the famed Mesopotamian king, Ashurbanipal, in the great city of Nineveh as a flood is on its way, and it ends with that very same drop of water, thousands of years later, falling from the eye of Zaleekhah into the Thames as she begins to finally confront her lifelong pain. On the way, the water flows and moves, hypnotically, building a singsong, almost mythic quality into a story that is mostly grounded in very real, and often very traumatic, events. I think what Shafak has accomplished in this book is both incredible and important, and I will remain very glad that I decided to pick it up.

James by Percival Everett: 9/10

Everett's retelling of the American classic Huckleberry Finn from the viewpoint of James ("Jim"), the enslaved man that Huck runs away with and eventually befriends, is one of the most stunning books I have read in years. I found it impossible to stop reading once I started. The book is at once immensely stressful (the brutality of slavery hanging over ever single word, even seemingly innocuous interactions) and also surprisingly funny in some places - I don't know how Everett manages to get plausible hijinks into a story that is essentially a long poem of trauma and resistance, but he does, and the book is immensely stronger for it.

There are so many elements of the storytelling that I could identify as incredible, but I think for me the sense of a shaken kaleidoscope, hearing events and interactions from James's view, was the most powerful. The book captures so well the exhaustion and stress of having to perform servility at all times for the "cowardly powerful", or risk brutal and deadly consequences. I like that it pulled no punches whatsoever in its take on white people's racism and their moral culpability for the institution and horror of slavery. This applied to both southern slave-owners, but also Northerners who might have been ostensibly anti-slavery but also regarded Black people as very much below them (and when push came to shove, were just as willing to enact violence - the leader of the minstrel group being a case in point).

I also found the portrayal of Huck, and his developing relationship with James, to be a huge strength of the book. Huck is racist, of course - he's a white child growing up in the south in an environment full of enslaved Black people - but he is not violent or evil, and he has a curiosity and openness to the world that James is able to build on in helping him transform his ideas. I loved the notion that a child like Huck was redeemable, and that a genuine relationship was possible even in those extremely difficult circumstances.

Two content notes I would give potential readers of this book: it contains many, many uses of the most egregious slur for Black people (which is situationally and historically appropriate, but is something some readers don't cope well with), and it has several instances of extreme physical violence (beatings / lashings) and one instance of sexual violence (rape). If you find these themes too distressing, you might want to reconsider this book, or curate your reading of it. It would definitely be possible to skip the violent scenes and still get the heart of the book, but I don't think avoiding the language is a real possibility given its frequency. 

Butter by Asako Yuzuki: 9.5/10

This book is based on the real-life case of the “Konkatsu Killer”, in which a con woman and talented home cook, Kanae Kijima, was convicted of poisoning three of her male lovers. Yuzuki uses this as her jumping-off point, fictionalising Kijima into a woman called Manako Kajii, but this novel is much, much more than a straightforward salacious retelling of the real case. The plot follows journalist Rika Machida as she sets out to write a series of articles on Kajii's case, which takes her on a journey of twists and turns that are never less than compelling.

I was blown away by this novel, for many reasons, including:

1. The descriptions of food, which were NEXT LEVEL. I was frequently starving reading the descriptions of the dishes that Rika makes at Kajii's instructions, and I even tried the butter rice with soy thing myself (spoiler alert - it is extreeeeemely good.)

2. The wonderful sense of the Japanese mise en scene, especially the intimate descriptions of Tokyo neighbourhoods (last time we went to Japan we stayed for a week in Kagurazaka, the very area that Rika's workplace is located, and I was delighted to feel enveloped in the rich sense of a familiar place).

3. The character work. Rika, her mother, her best friend Reiko, the older journalist who supports and helps Rika, the younger writers snapping at her heels, Kajii's mother and sister, even Rika's lacklustre boyfriend and Reiko's feckless husband, all spring off the page vividly. And, of course, Kajii herself - what an absolutely compelling character she is. The voluptuous slipperiness of her is masterfully achieved, to the point where even after reading to the end, there's no way to be sure when she is lying and knows she is, when she is lying but is genuinely self-deluded, and when (if at all) she is telling the truth. I really loved Rika and Reiko, and hate-loved Kajii.

4. The engagement with spiky ideas. Rika, and Kajii, and Reiko too, all come to grips with the Japanese equivalent of the Barbie Monologue Problem for contemporary women - as a woman, how can you be all the things you are expected to be, how can you meet impossible beauty and behaviour standards, and still be a whole person? I really, really liked the way the book took on these ideas, even if it didn't provide any earth-shattering solutions.

Overall, a stunning book. I can't recommend it highly enough.