Yes, I Liked: James & A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself
YWR #153
I understand that many of you view a long weekend (in the US) as a chance to, like, Do Things, such as camping or traveling or attending a rodeo or eating ribs. And while those are all well and good endeavors, and I support you wholeheartedly in your pursuit of Activity, I like to do two things on a holiday weekend:
(Is this wildly different from other weekends, you ask? YES IT IS. Other weekends I also do laundry!)
Anyway, it has been quite a while since I’ve had a “Yes, I Liked!” submission (half a year to be exact), and this week I have TWO for your reading pleasure. Both literary fiction. Both exceedingly well written. Both … actually, that’s about where the similarities end. Let’s get into it.
Sometimes I like a fictional retelling of a story, as seen from another character, and sometimes I think it’s corny. But I really loved Percival Everett’s The Trees so I figured I’d give James a whirl.
Power summary: A reimagining of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn told from the perspective of the enslaved James (AKA Jim.)
Confession, I likely don’t remember enough of Huckleberry Finn to have grasped all the sly mastery in James, but what I can say is this: both the “story reimagining” element and the other initial element - that all the enslaved characters speak in a patois (what Jim calls his “slave filter”) to pacify white people - have the potential to be clunky and gimmicky in the hands of a lesser writer.
Fortunately, we are in the hands of Percival Everett, so instead what we get is an incisive, horrifying, witty, and painful portrayal of Jim, a reluctant hero, and Huck as his brash, brave and clueless sidekick. There are still picaresque adventures, but in this telling they are deadly serious, with mortal consequences, bringing each enslaved person to the forefront versus relegation to the sidelines. Plus, in Jim, who risks his and others’ lives for books and writing, we get to experience Percival Everett’s wordplay and craft. His beautiful phrasing makes the plot that much more terrible. Definitely a top read of the year for me.
Sorry, but this is a story about slavery so I’m not sure what you were expecting. BIG REMINDER: Lamb ratings are not about quality, but about emotional devastation. Find out more here.
I read A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself in one sitting, as an uneasy reverie, and it was worth it.
Power summary: A couple chooses to end a pregnancy. The couple later has a child. What does it mean to choose to be parents, to choose to end a pregnancy, to live with the personal and political consequences?
That summary makes this sound heavy as hell and in some ways it is, but in some ways it’s really tender and soft, wry and contemporarily comic, unsentimental but also deeply heartfelt and very graceful. Although it’s fiction, in many ways it feels like we’re reading the author’s journal of becoming a father, being a partner, of loving. Of living with consequences. Of reconciling others’ opinions of your parenting with your own.
I struggle a bit to provide a “review” because for me, above all, this book was a sketch, a feeling. Although I’m not a parent, Davies so powerfully invokes the anguish, the ambivialence, the helplessness, the tedium, the magical thinking, and the profundity of parent-love and of fatherhood specifically. It read as quite special in the moment.
Hope is a Muscle
In the face of seemingly insurmountable political turmoil, I’m hearing a lot of defeatism. And you know what - we can’t always win everything but we also cannot give up and do nothing but doom-scroll and tell everyone who will listen how bad things are so that we will feel better when the worst outcome comes to pass and we knew it, we didn’t dare to hope for something better. I’m not here for that.
SO. All we can do is be the people we wish were coming to save things, with every day we have available to us. One of my favorite “it’s bad. We can fix things!” social media follows is Emily Amick (an attorney, former counsel to Chuck Schumer), who gives you the straight scoop and does not permit inaction.
I also just pre-ordered her book, Democracy in Action, which would be a great one action for you to take today!
As always, all links go to Bookshop.org, which I like to think is a better way to buy books. But you can also go to your own indie bookstore’s website. Or go to the library! All good ways to get your books. I support you no matter what.