A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping by Sangu Mandanna (audio)

Posted on March 30, 2026 by pagesofjulia

Loving everything I’ve read by Sangu Mandanna, but **especially** The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches, I was delighted to hear about this new one on audio. Thanks, Liz!

This is quite in the spirit of that other title, with themes of family, love, belonging, finding one’s own tribe, and owning one’s own strengths, weaknesses, and specialties. When we meet her, Sera Swan is a teenaged witch in training. More or less abandoned by her parents, she lives with her much beloved great aunt Jasmine at the Batty Hole Inn, which they run together. They have recently been joined by a witch in fox’s clothing (she is trapped in a fox’s body after a spell gone wrong) named Clemmie. When Jasmine dies in the garden, Clemmie gives Sera the spell to resurrect her, which Sera quickly does. She is probably the most powerful witch in all of Britain – despite being a girl, and still young, and most upsettingly to those in charge, a half-Icelandic, half-Indian, nonwhite person (the British Guild of Sorcery being as stodgy and, yes, racist as we might expect it to be). Jasmine is indeed brought back to life, along with (accidentally) her long-dead pet rooster, Roo-Roo, a mere rooster skeleton but avidly underfoot. But this great powerful spell has cost Sera virtually all of her magical power. This is devastating, because Sera loves her magic. Because the resurrection spell was not strictly legal, Sera has been exiled from the Guild to boot. (None of this is especially spoiler-y as it all takes place in the first few pages.)

Fast forward, and an adult Sera remains at Jasmine’s side, managing the Batty Hole Inn with much frustration, creative cursing, and precious little magic. She still mourns what she has lost, and thinks constantly about how to regain her power. But she is lucky to have Aunt Jasmine, for one – and Roo-Roo – and a motley crew of other residents: there is Nicholas, an awkward young man who thinks himself a knight, complete with shining armor and a very real sword; Matilda, a grumpy older woman who loves to garden (badly) and has become close to Jasmine; Sera’s cousin Theo, another young witch whose immediate family has abdicated; and still Clemmie, still a grumpy, meddling fox-witch. One of Sera’s spells from back before she lost her powers still protects the inn from those who wish harm, but reveals it especially to those in need of its particular kind of succor, which is how Sera has found herself surrounded by such loveable, messy eccentrics. And then a new addition to Batty Hole arrives. Luke has long been at odd angles to the Guild, but finds meaningful work in academic research if he keeps his head down; but his younger sister Posie is not so under-the-radar. At nine years old, she is a powerful witch and also autistic, which means she is not inclined to follow rules, including the all-important one about not letting mainstream society find out about magic. Luke is running out of options to keep his dear sister safe; they are quite on the run when they arrive at Batty Hole. The refugees only mean to stay a short while, but the two magical children, Theo and Posie, do well together, and Luke and Sera (onetime misfit magical children themselves) may have assistance to offer each other in turn. The newcomers fit neatly into the inn’s batty little family. Sera might even get her magic back – but at what cost?

Sera had always been good at fortitude. Fortitude was her friend. She had fortituded her way through undependable parents, megalomaniac mentors, scheming foxes, the death of a loved one, the resurrection of said loved one, the loss of her magic, and quite a large number of fiascos big and small since then. Unfortunately, she and fortitude seemed to have now parted ways, because Sera, glaring fearsomely at an empty glass teapot, was at her wits’ end.

So. There is a lovely built family of oddballs, finding ways to relate to each other on nontraditional terms. There is the trick of finding where we each fit in, and caring for children – and adults – who are different, but not less than. There are many kinds of love, including familial and romantic (and just a little sex), and at every stage of life. There is awe and magic, and there are bad guys and one battle in particular. There are absolutely laugh-out-loud lines, and Nicholas’s loveable but quite silly jousting. It’s extremely sweet, but I brought a sweet tooth to this cozy fantasy tale about community and gumption. Samara MacLaren’s narration was fun and expressive (and great points for so many accents) – perfect. I am 100% all in for Sangu Mandanna.

Rating: 8 scones.

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So Many Beginnings: A Little Women Remix by Bethany C. Morrow

Posted on March 27, 2026 by pagesofjulia

I like these remixes, and I remember Little Women with a warm fondness. Louisa May Alcott’s novel championed strong, outspoken women and questioned classism; and it offered a cozy picture of a certain type of society: in my memory, one that only included white people. Here, Bethany C. Morrow recasts the story in a different frame. Four sisters, bridging girlhood and adulthood, with their adored mother, navigate many changes in a world that is also fast-changing. Their beloved father is away at war or supporting postwar efforts. The novel opens in 1863, and the March family are among the residents of the newly established Roanoke Island Freedpeople Colony. They have their own house, with multiple rooms. Meg teaches the colony’s children to read and write, although she must do so in tents, because the white missionary teachers claim the buildings. Jo and a group of young men work building more houses for the constant influx of new residents. Bethlehem is a whiz of a seamstress, making new clothes for the colony’s people from what the former enslavers left behind. Amethyst wishes to study, to dance, to live all of life; but at 14, she is subject to her family’s wish for her to stay a child a little longer. She helps Beth where she can. Mammy takes transcription for the (white) officers who run the colony.

True to the original, Meg is a nurturer who yearns for her own family; her wish for a husband drives the earliest plot action. Jo is a great thinker and, within the household, speechmaker; it takes her family to encourage her to begin writing down her thoughts, which here center on the value of the freedpeople’s colony. She is driven to argue in favor of such projects, to fundraise, to seek the independence of her community which is so far too dependent and beholden on white folks who, though Northern and not enslavers, still hold the power and purse strings, and consider Black folks inferior. Beth is still sickly, kindhearted, and supportive, and Amy is still a firebrand in her own ways. There is still a Lorie – Jo’s Lorie – who is devoted to her but also challenges her with his different opinions about the best way forward for Black southerners.

These characters debate, for example, the advantages of the freedpeople’s colony versus moving north or beyond, including to Liberia. They question the nature of freedom, and what to do with the limited progress they’ve seen so far: to be no longer enslaved is certainly good, but doesn’t make them want to fall at the feet of white abolitionists in gratitude, because it is only right. And to be free from enslavement doesn’t mean they don’t feel a boot on their neck in many ways. Such debates within the structure of a novel don’t always work for me – they can feel forced or unnatural within dialog. But that’s not the case here. For whatever it’s worth, I find this device true to Alcott’s original, and in both versions, I think it feels true to the characters themselves. One thing I believe we love about the Marches is that they are actively engaging with their world and with one another, in both stories, discussing what they see around them and how they want to be in the world. I think it works, and I think it feels to-the-minute relevant in 2026.

I loved seeing these March sisters head in different directions than Alcott’s did. It’s hard not to tell you here where they go and what they find there – please go read this book.

Rating: 7 skates.

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Wolfsong by TJ Klune (audio)

Posted on March 20, 2026 by pagesofjulia

I took great pleasure in this great big Klune novel, first in a series (squeal!). At 19 hours, and over 500 pages in print, this is a nice deep dive: make sure you have the time, and it will be well rewarded.

We meet Ox when he is 12 years old, and his father, a violent drunk, is leaving. The father is not seen again, but he looms throughout the story, quoted as telling Ox that he’s stupid, that he will get shit all his life, that men don’t cry. Ox does go through some shit, but also finds so much love and surrogate family. The father is proven wholly wrong in the other respects, repeatedly and throughout, but Ox will be the last to believe that he is not stupid, that he is special, strong, capable, loved, and that his tears are okay.

Ox does have a lovely mother, and over time, forms bonds with his father’s former boss, now his own: Gordo, who runs an auto shop. The other employees at Gordo’s treat Ox as their own, too. And then, on his sixteenth birthday, he meets a ten-year-old boy named Joe, and will never be the same. Joe and his family are charismatic, powerful, beautiful people; they take Ox as one of their own, although it takes a little while to figure out what-all that means.

What follows is the building of family ties that are both literal, in this fantasy world, and figuratively, rather a fantasy of what we regular people might dream possible: indelibly strong connections and complete commitments. But also, drama and violence and betrayals, death and loss and grief; and also such love and passion, and just one or two extremely hot and fairly detailed sex scenes, quite late in the book. There were lines of absolutely exquisite humor, even among some of the worst and most painful parts. I wanted to include some of those here, but they were either too spicy or too spoiler-y, so please just believe me when I say Klune can make me laugh and cry at the very same time. For this reader, at least, he just excels at making me feel so much, so deeply. I would follow these characters anywhere.

This story is set in Green Creek, Oregon, a small, working-class town where the gritty real-world sort of bad things happen, but magic is also possible. A young boy who was told that he was big and dumb and slow can grow up to find and do surprising things. A young boy who has been horribly traumatized can remake himself, surrounded by love. I think I’ll stop here, because I want this beautiful book’s many, deep, complex twists and surprises to find you – if you choose – as they found me, unawares. I’m really excited about the rest of this series.

Kirt Graves narrates this audiobook beautifully. I’m sad that I’m not listening to him right now.

Rating: 9 slices of cucumber.

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Mrs. Shim Is a Killer by Kang Jiyoung, trans. by Paige Morris

Posted on March 6, 2026 by pagesofjulia

In this bloody but cheerful novel, a middle-aged widow and mother of two becomes a contract killer to support her family, reinventing herself along the way.

Kang Jiyoung’s Mrs. Shim Is a Killer is a kaleidoscopic novel of murder-for-hire, crisscrossing loyalties, self-determination, and dark humor. In Paige Morris’s translation from the Korean, Kang’s matter-of-fact prose reveals a sly, absurdist wit. This playfully murderous thriller is not soon forgotten.

In the first chapter, readers meet Mrs. Shim. A 51-year-old widow, she supports a family of three; her son is of university age, her daughter just younger. Since the death of her husband five years ago, she has struggled to provide for her family by working in a butcher’s shop, relying on her knife skills to eke out a living while dutifully preparing kimchi, soybean soup, and other staples at home. When she loses her job, she is desperate for other work–not easy for an ajumma, or middle-aged woman, to find. At the Smile Private Detective Agency, however, she meets a boss impressed by her use of a knife. “I’d like you to become a killer,” the man says matter-of-factly, and Mrs. Shim finds she is in no position to turn down the gold bar he offers. Reluctant at first but driven by her need to provide for her children, she becomes Smile’s best killer yet, causing surprised rumors to circulate about the knife-wielding ajumma.

Mrs. Shim Is a Killer shifts perspective to follow one character and then another, from a long list of players in Mrs. Shim’s story. Aside from the title character, chapter titles refer to them by epithet: The Boss, The Shaman, The Confidant, The Daughter. Intrigue unfolds in this series of puzzle pieces, which provides varying angles on events where killers and amateurs off killers, bosses, and more. Because not all of these character spotlights take place in the same timeline, old secrets also come to light, and present-day rivals may reveal more nuanced relationships in the past. In final standoff scenes, characters are set against one another in unexpected arrangements and, through it all, readers root for Mrs. Shim, a reluctant but determined assassin.

Kang (The Shop for Killers) plays off expectations about mothers, lovers, and cultural norms to her reader’s constant surprise. With a complexly twisting plot, disarming characters, and a deceptive sense of humor, Mrs. Shim Is a Killer breaks genre boundaries in a surprisingly hopeful package. Bloody but cheerful, this unusual tale is entertaining and strangely cozy.

This review originally ran in the February 26, 2026 issue of Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade. To subscribe, click here.

Rating: 7 fishcakes.

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The Left and the Lucky by Willy Vlautin

Posted on February 16, 2026 by pagesofjulia

In a gritty world bordering on hopelessness, a man and a boy form a friendship that may just save them both.

Willy Vlautin (The Horse; The Night Always Comes; Don’t Skip Out on Me) applies his characteristic compassion and spare tone to an unlikely friendship in The Left and the Lucky, a novel of hard times and scant hope. A boy whose life has been ruled by abuse and neglect and a man whose hard work has been rewarded by betrayal and loss find each other in working-class Portland, Ore., and forge a hard-won bond to their mutual benefit.

Russell is eight years old and small for his age. He lives with his grandmother, who has dementia; his mother, who works nights; and his teenaged brother, who is angry and troubled. As the latter spins further afield and poses an increasingly serious physical threat, Russell dreams of building a boat or an airplane to take him away to an unpopulated island near Hawai’i: he can think of no nearer salvation.

Eddie lives next door. He runs a small house-painting business, working six or more days a week, and his main employee is a scarcely functioning alcoholic whose paychecks Eddie handles for him with scrupulous honesty. It will take the bulk of the novel for Vlautin to reveal the rest of Eddie’s painful past, gradually filling in the reasons for his generosity. Russell turns up on Eddie’s rounds of the neighborhood: out too late, hiding from something. The man offers the boy food, a ride home. Russell begins waiting in Eddie’s backyard each night after work; he cleans paintbrushes after the workday. Eddie gives him odd jobs and shelter from violence. Each is lacking something in a life lived on the margins, but together they begin to build a slight, meaningful solution. They restore an old Pontiac and care for an old dog. Each finds in the other someone who needs them to survive.

In his eighth novel, Vlautin continues to focus upon an American underclass marked by desperation and poverty, people often forgotten or abandoned. With a gruff tenderness, a quiet lyricism, and moments of humor, he highlights not only the built family that Russell and Eddie assemble, but also motley characters from their neighborhood: Eddie’s employees, an aging aunt, a waitress with goals, Russell’s seething brother. The Left and the Lucky is often grim, but Eddie’s dogged decency uplifts even in this grayscale world of limited options; his unwillingness to give up on Russell offers a slim but profound thread of hope unto the story’s end. Vlautin’s character sketches and the careful value he places on perseverance are not soon forgotten.

This review originally ran in the February 13, 2026 issue of Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade. To subscribe, click here.

Rating: 7 brushes.

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Virgil Wander by Leif Enger (audio)

Posted on February 13, 2026 by pagesofjulia

I don’t even know what to do with this book which is in the running for the best of the year! I am overcome. I feel like I’ve found another Brian Doyle: this story is set in a small community, filled with mostly good people, but some maybe not. There is whimsy and not literal magic, but certainly the kind we can find in everyday life, and mysterious forces in nature and human nature… there is a sense of everythingness that I associate with Doyle and with Amy Leach. So many things happen, and they’re all disconnected and they’re all unlikely, but that’s life, too.

Virgil Wander is a middle-aged man in the small town of Greenstone, Minnesota, somewhere north of Duluth on Lake Superior. He owns and lives above an antique movie theatre where he spools up reels of old film for his few neighbor-customers, operating at a loss. We meet him shortly after he’s accidentally launched his old Pontiac over a small cliff and into the freezing lake; a fellow Greenstonian pulls him out, and he’s recovering from a TBI, physically off-balance, linguistically working without adjectives, and struggling to sort through his memories. He thinks of the past version of himself as “the previous tenant,” as in, he feels like he’s living in someone else’s apartment, wearing someone else’s clothes, and surmising what that other guy would have done. In a word, the new Virgil is less fearful of giving offense, still mild-mannered, but more likely to speak his mind (mostly sans adjectives).

This book is about many of Greenstone’s motley citizens, but always centered on Virgil, our narrator. Early on, Virgil meets Rune: an old man, new to town, avid flyer of wildly ornate and lovely kites that he makes himself. Rune wants to hear everyone’s stories about Alec Sansome, a former minor-league baseball pitcher and Greenstone resident who disappeared one day in a small plane over Superior, leaving behind a notably beautiful wife Nadine and a young son, Bjorn. In perhaps my favorite of Virgil Wander‘s many bittersweet tragic threads, Rune has only recently discovered that he had a son, Alec – but Alec has been missing for a cool decade now. The old man desperately wanted a child all his life, and in one fell swoop gained and lost one. Now he hangs around Greenstone, delighting the locals with his kites, investigating the lost Alec, and attempting to build family with Nadine (amenable) and Bjorn (as a teenager, less so). There is also the Pea family with their streaks of bad luck and big fish; the mayor and her hope to turn Greenstone’s luck around with the annual fair; the sisters who run a small cafe; and a returned prodigal son who is either the town’s best hope or worst enemy. There are terrible losses and griefs, but also love and new beginnings, fishing and kite flying, reinventions and reinvigorations. Greenstone is an odd place of hard luck, whose history involves deaths and disappearances as well as that one time it rained frogs (yes), and there is more to come. It’s a completely fascinating place and story.

Here are a few of my favorite lines – I’ve decided against offering them any context. Enger is a thrilling writer of single sentences as well as larger plot.

He peered around as though not wishing to be seen accepting birthday wishes from a cheerful moron up to his chin in the freezing sea.

There is nothing wrong with being kissed on the cheek by a sweet round woman in a cafe after you have nearly died.

She had a marvelous eye roll, refined through long discipline, precise as acupuncture.

I’d lived years without a woman to tell me small things. Her work went well and she wanted to say so, and I was the man who was listening. That fact swung open and light came in.

There is no better sound than whom you adore when they are sleepy and pleased.

And all of this read for us by MacLeod Andrews in a delightful sort of humble Minnesotan accent (and Rune’s Norwegian one, which amplifies the reader’s sense of him as a twinkling elf of good cheer). I do not know how this book could be improved upon, except to have more of it. I am devoted to Enger – and sadly halfway through his works. Do yourself a favor and spend some time with Virgil.

Rating: 10 pots of boiling milk.

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I Cheerfully Refuse by Leif Enger (audio)

Posted on January 19, 2026 by pagesofjulia

Liz was right. This was beautiful and worth it, even though I was a little bit leery of the dystopia. A gorgeous book, and gorgeously read for us by David Aaron Baker. Glorious.

The novel is set in a world very like our own, maybe just a little further down the road to ruin. The narrator, Rainy, lives in town of Icebridge, which I think is on the American side of the border with Canada, on the Great Lakes. Political, economic and environmental collapse have advanced beyond our current situation. Rainy lives in a leaning but charming three-story house with his wife Lark, who is a golden person and one of the town’s most beloved. She runs a bookshop, possesses a great and contagious love of art and literature, and holds wisdom and appealing beliefs. At the story’s beginning, they take in a lodger, Kellan, who eventually admits to being on the run from the ‘astronauts’ he was pledged to as indentured worker. (‘Astronauts’ are not literal, but simply the astronomically privileged and wealthy in an increasingly divided world.) Rainy likes Kellan; but it is true that, as predicted, he brings devastation upon the household. In its wake, Rainy is forced to take to Lake Superior, that great inland ocean, in an ancient sailboat imperfectly restored by hand. He has it in mind that he might find what he is looking for if he can reach the Slate Islands, where he and Lark once sailed, fifteen years ago, on Rainy’s only sailing venture ever until this point. His voyage – really, his quest – will be circuitous, at the mercy of weather patterns and storms, and beset by people who mean him harm. There will also be friendlies along the way. He will pick up a most fascinating passenger, a nine-year-old girl named Sol.

This story is compared to the Orpheus myth, but I don’t see how we can miss Odysseus in it, too, or any quest you choose. It has large, nearly all-encompassing scope, and beautiful ideas about how we make the world around us and what friendship looks like. It considers literature and art and music, and offers hope where it seems unlikely. It is lovely at the sentence level. The lake “was a blackboard to the send of sight, and any story might be written on its surface.” “There’s something in romance if it puts you on a boat with the one you adore in a harbor no storm can penetrate with an affable ghost anchored nearby.” Its events are often horrifying, but I’m left with the weird sense that I’d still be satisfied to follow Rainy anywhere within his world.

This is one of those I’d happily take a high-level lit course in. Solid rec, Liz. Thank you.

Rating: 9 steaming mugs of coffee.

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Haven by Ani Katz

Posted on January 5, 2026 by pagesofjulia

In a masterpiece of tension, set within a lavish island community for the corporate select, a disappeared infant calls into question everything one mother thought she knew.

Ani Katz’s Haven is a chilling story about an apparent utopia that is anything but. As Caroline boards a ferry with husband Adam and infant son Gabriel for an exclusive getaway on a lovely island enclave, she is, first of all, relieved. After a trying period of his unemployment, Adam’s job with corporate giant Corridor gives him the means to join an elite group of friends and coworkers in a spaceship (Caroline’s description) of a house on the outskirts of Haven, a longtime home of the rich.

Caroline has never quite understood what it is that Corridor does–something with “infrastructure”–but she’s grateful that Adam is employed and seemingly less depressed. Now she hopes to relax, get to know Adam’s friends a little better, perhaps strengthen her bond with Gabriel, maybe even get some artistic inspiration back. Ever since becoming a mother, her photography has suffered. She attempted a project about motherhood, but “was getting bored with her baby as a subject.” Even on the island, seeking subjects, she worries: “What if she never made an interesting photograph again?” But in Katz’s tautly plotted psychological thriller, it turns out that photography may be the least of Caroline’s concerns.

Caroline’s roommates for the summer, Adam’s Corridor colleagues, indulge in eating and drinking to excess and unfamiliar, unnamed drugs, but they also coo over Gabriel and give Caroline the occasional break for a proper shower. She is trying to lean into the novel, luxury experience. The island’s wider inhabitants, however, strike her as being just a little off. Tinkly laughter, choreographed dance, and uncanny children degrade into shadowy threats: angry islanders, old rituals and sacrifice, and corporate surveillance. Then comes the nightmarish morning when Caroline wakes up and Gabriel is gone. As she searches for her son and the truth of what happens in Haven, she will come to question even the rules, and the people, she thinks she knows best.

If Haven ever begins to feel like it might trend toward the formulaic, be assured that Katz (A Good Man) is about to twist her tricky narrative again, always catching Caroline, and readers, unawares. This masterpiece of tension turns absolutely terrifying by its finish. Technology, hubris, deception, and mistrust combine in an unsettling corporate dystopia that asks what ends would justify which means. Riveting, thought-provoking, and ever surprising, Haven is not for the easily unnerved.

This review originally ran in the December 23, 2025 issue of Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade. To subscribe, click here.

Rating: 6 hats.

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Warning Signs by Tracy Sierra

Posted on December 22, 2025 by pagesofjulia

A young boy faces a variety of dangers when he enters deep snow and high mountains with his father in this enthralling novel of horror, suspense, and psychological intrigue.

Tracy Sierra (Nightwatching) conjures a terrifying narrative with Warning Signs, in which a 12-year-old boy grapples with hazards on several levels. This novel of horror and abuse is both enthralling and thought-provoking, liable to keep the reader up all night for a single-sitting read or to inspire nightmares–all worthwhile for the masterful handling of serious topics.

Chapter one introduces Zach, aged 11, his younger sister, Bonnie, and their mother, Grace. They are skiing uphill into the mountains of the American West, toward a hut where they will meet with other friends. Grace, an expert outdoorswoman, educates her young children in assessing avalanche risks, in survival, and how to manage fear. Chapter two jumps forward a year. Zach is 12, headed into the same mountains with his father, Bram. Bonnie has stayed home with a nanny; Grace is gone, for reasons not immediately explained. Where Grace was kind and patient, Bram is visibly short-tempered and exasperated. Zach fears him. They are to meet a group of men and boys at a backcountry ski hut for a fathers-and-sons ski trip, organized by Bram for the purpose of securing investments from the wealthier men he envies and courts. Zach has a role to play, but has always failed his father so far, never the rough-and-tumble, thick-skinned son Bram desires. Ironically, Zach’s skiing and outdoor survival skills (thanks to his mother) far surpass Bram’s, an imbalance that will matter in the coming days.

Over the long weekend, Warning Signs ratchets up the tension until it seems it can carry no more–and then ramps it up again. Zach is aware of at least three distinct threats: the perils of the natural world, including a very real risk of avalanche; his father’s irascible self-interest and capacity for cruelty; and a mysterious creature stalking the dark and treacherously cold high-altitude woods. Bram’s gathered group of men and boys presents a dangerous combination of skill and ignorance, hubris and machismo; Zach possesses good training and instincts, but as their youngest member, will be overlooked and ignored in an irony of Greek-tragedy proportions. Through it all, Zach (in close third-person perspective) continues to mull the absence of the dearly beloved Grace, and approach the horrifying truth about her loss.

With its triple-punch of terrors natural, human, and unknown, Sierra’s sophomore novel is truly and profoundly frightening. Beyond the fine art of the horror or thriller novel, Warning Signs also considers domestic abuse and control, class and ambition, and how we try to care for those we love. Discomfiting, chilling, and unforgettable.

This review originally ran in the December 2, 2025 issue of Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade. To subscribe, click here.

Rating: 8 lost mittens.

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When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill (audio)

Posted on December 15, 2025 by pagesofjulia

I don’t recall where I got this title from, but I loved this book, and am grateful to whatever review or list sent it my way. Also to my lovely partner who gifted it to me for the long drive from Texas to West Virginia.

When Women Were Dragons: Being the Truthful Accounting of the Life of Alex Green–Physicist, Professor, Activist. Still Human. A memoir, of sorts is a living, breathing tale, ever expanding, filled with metaphor that reshapes itself with the reader’s interpretation. It opens with a strange letter from a Nebraska housewife in 1898 to her mother, shortly before the woman spontaneously dragoned. Next we have an excerpt from the opening statement given by Dr. Henry Gantz to the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1957. Then we get into the first-person narration of Alex Green, who will tell most of this story, with brief insertions mostly from Dr. Gantz’s work – bit of an epistolary format. (The audiobook is narrated by Kimberly Farr, as Alex Green, and Mark Bramhall, as Dr. Gantz, which I thought was a great choice.) “I was four years old when I first met a dragon. I didn’t tell my mother. I didn’t think she’d understand.”

I think this must be right around 1950. Alex grows up in small-town Wisconsin, in a pretty 1950s world: there are many things we just don’t talk about, including cancer, menstruation and most aspects of girlhood and womanhood, what to expect on one’s wedding night, diversity in sexual orientation and gender expression, our feelings, and dragons. When Alex is a little girl, her mother goes away for some time – months – and no one explains or even acknowledges the change; likewise when her mother returns, gaunt, weak, different (she doesn’t even smell right). The reader understands better than little-girl Alex when her mother’s chest is glimpsed, missing breasts, two scars like smiles. This world is recognizably our own except for the dragons. Women in this world can dragon (that’s a verb), or become dragons, at which point they sometimes eat their husbands (this seems to happen frequently with very unlikeable, not to say abusive, husbands) before flying away. Dragoning is a poorly understood phenomenon because, as with much that is female or feminine, society judges it too shameful to examine, and science mostly averts its gaze. Dr. Gantz is a rare exception: he believes in the scientific mandate to learn, whatever truths are revealed. Biology should never be shameful. His research articles and responses to an oppressive world are useful seasonings to this story, and he is himself a delightful character, alongside the heroic librarian Mrs. Gyzinska.

And oh, Alex’s auntie Marla, a wonderful woman who comes and cares for her while her mother is away in cancer treatment, a big powerful woman who flies airplanes during the war and works as a car mechanic and wears men’s clothes and takes very little shit, and who we lose to the Mass Dragoning of 1955. When Marla dragons, she leaves behind an infant daughter, Alex’s cousin Beatrice, who from here on is raised as Alex’s sister. Such is the gaslighting of Alex’s family and world that she learns to really believe – almost – that she has no aunt, that Beatrice has always been her sister. (Echoes of 1984. We have always been at war with Eastasia.) And boy, the time Alex has raising her younger sister, Beatrice, a delightful dragon of a child if there ever was one.

Despite all I’ve just thrown at you, I’ve barely scraped the surface of this remarkable novel. It contains many stories and many layers, much that is very recognizable from our ‘real’ world, and lots of potential metaphors to ponder. I wondered at different times if dragoning were a metaphor for menstruation; for puberty; for “un-american activities” (certainly, HUAC seems to conflate them); for simply being independent, self-determining, and female (except that those who dragon are overwhelmingly but not universally girls and women). This story tackles the way we handle difference, and especially gender, sexuality, and gender expression. It contains such maddening (if entirely realistic) renderings of sexism that it was sometimes hard to listen to. It contains transcendent moments of personal discovery, joyful academic inquiry, love and coming-of-age, and some lovely iterations of family and built family, which I always appreciate. “Sometimes,” confides Alex at an advanced age, “the expansive nature of family takes my breath away.” There is such good fun; I especially liked the line “If that dragon was hoping for sympathy, she was crying in front of the wrong teenager,” which I got to share with my favorite dragon-loving teenager. It considers the looping of time and relationships. It’s got science and wonder, a bit like A Tale for the Time Being, but I liked this better. I’m a bit over the moon about it, and am giving it a perfect score. Also, I loved the audio format, with the one caveat that I wish I could pull more quotations that I loved.

Do give it a go, and let me know what you think.

Rating: 10 military-issued boots.

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