Metz, Lauren. The Prom Book. San Francisco: Zest Books, 2013.

After only looking at the cover, I understood this book was a marketing ploy to get cheap bucks coming into the publisher. It offers nothing of substance and even less than that if you are anything but an upper-middle class white girl from the suburbs.

Maybe that’s harsh but I was hoping for something different in 2013. The book is like a special issue of Seventeen that I would have read in the 90s. The budget breakdown includes spray tan and waxing. Makeup tips and last minute toning workouts (these don’t work, girls) lead into hosting pre- and post prom parties. The content is skim and what gives the book actual volume are the pages for Notes, Appointments, Photos, and Favorite Memories.

If you have a prom girl in your life, get her subscription to Seventeen. The pages here are just as glossy and the tips just as shallow.

Please note I received a free advanced reading copy of this book through LibraryThing in exchange for a review.

McBride, James. The Good Lord Bird. New York: Riverhead Books, 2013.

When abolitionist John Brown passes through the Kansas Territory in 1856, he leaves with Henry Shackleford. Henry’s master is killed by Brown, leaving the young boy no choice to but travel with Brown and his band of Free Staters. At first glance, Old Man Brown assumes Henry is a girl and Henry, eager to stay alive, quietly announces himself as Henrietta; Brown nicknames her Onion.

Onion recounts for the reader her years living with Old Man Brown and the battles he and his men fought, ending with Harper’s Ferry. Part history, part fiction, The Good Lord Bird sheds new light on the years leading up to the Civil War. Good intentions are examined against reality in Onion’s innocent, but ever-watching eyes.

I was eager to read The Good Lord Bird because I enjoyed McBride’s The Color of Water (1995) and Miracle at St. Anna (2002). However, this novel didn’t meet my expectations. McBride is probably the best writer to tell this story, but it was exhausting and often felt repetitive. Part of this is because of my own limited interest in Civil War history. However, there was little character development of either Old Man Brown or Onion throughout the 400+ pages. The narrative progressed but the people didn’t.

A true American history buff, through, will find this a captivating read.

Please note I received a free advanced reading copy of this book through LibraryThing in exchange for a review.

Glave, Thomas. (2013). Among the bloodpeople: Politics and flesh. New York: Akashic Books.

This is my first introduction to Glave, a gay Jamaican who fully embodies his country and sexuality. This collection of essays follows years of  public praises for his writing and a handful of awards from the biggest and the best (O. Henry award). In his introduction, Yusef Komunyakaa states that, like Glave’s earlier books, “these essays pulsate with the same charged lyrical, moral authority. No one easily wriggles off the hook.” I assumed he meant Glave’s adversaries; turns out he means the readers of Bloodpeople.

Glave mostly writes about homosexuality and Jamaica. I didn’t know how hated homosexuals are in Jamaica. I didn’t know they were disemboweled with machetes. And I didn’t consider one could be poetic about fear and anger and isolation. But the touchingly phrased sentences don’t soften the impact of reading about murder and political corruption. Instead, it eats at you because it makes you attentive to every word, feel the pauses as Glaves takes a breath and speaks with the pulse of his heartbeat. It takes a few moments to find Glave’s rhythm and read with it, pulling the poetry from the prose. If you do, however, you’ll be forever changed.

That might be a bit dramatic for a poet’s anthology of non-fiction essays, but to date I haven’t finished Bloodpeople. I’ve found I need some time between readings. Glave’s doesn’t shout but whispers in your ear and sometimes you can know too many secrets.

Please note I received a free advanced reading copy of this book through LibraryThing in exchange for a review.