Two Very Different Books You Can Read In One Day

At first I thought these two books didn't have anything in common with each other, apart from both being short. BUT they were both published on July 11, 2017! Imagine that. I might not recommend pairing these books together in a one day reading spree, even though you could definitely read both in that time, but they are both incredibly refreshing reads for different reasons.

Found Audio by N.J. Campbell
Publisher: Two Dollar Radio. July 2017.
Genre: ??????
Source: Publisher
Pages: 162



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Oh my goodness, this was such a fun read. I really can't help but love stories within stories. So basically, a mysterious man approaches an audio analyst with some tapes. He gives her a huge amount of money to transcribe them and learn what she can from them. She is explicitly told not to share this transcript with anybody. But, of course, she does and then she vanishes. All of this happens within the introduction, I swear I'm not spoiling anything. The vast majority of the book is the transcription, which follows an unnamed journalist telling his story of a bizarre and wildly implausible global hunt for a place called the City of Dreams - and it's great.

The set up was exactly what I wanted. Mysterious with people and locations that may or may not exist. People vanishing. And the manuscript itself contains all these wonderful little details about what's going on audibly apart from the monologue. I'm going to be honest, at first I didn't know if I was going to be able to get on board with the reading a monologue thing (even though every once in a while some other unnamed voices interrupt, which is so intriguing and unsettling). The writing made me a little nervous to begin with, but this dreamy, speculative story was exactly what I wanted. Found Audio is written like the fever dream of an incredibly adventurous travel writer. Once the book got to the second tape (of three) is when it really started to pick up for me. It takes a little while for the narrative to get to the point, which is to be expected considering it's a man telling a story and humans aren't always succinct (especially in this slightly psychedelic adventure context). By tape two, the City of Dreams is introduced and that's when it starts to get really crazy. I truly felt enraptured by the nameless main character's narrative. It's difficult not to get engrossed and just go along for the ride when the story is so confidently itself. By the end of it, I was deep in my own head about this search and what it could all mean. Little things I encounter in real life still make me think about this gem of a story, like the story has placed little mirages of itself into my reality, which is the most fun post-reading experience a person can have.

Goodbye, Vitamin by Rachel Khong
Publisher: Henry Holt. July 2017.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Source: Friend
Pages: 196



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Goodbye, Vitamin is such a sweet book, I truly don't even know where to begin. It is a thing that I love: a quirky, contemporary, stream-of-consciousness first person narrative, which generally are a little less than hopeful. So this is truly refreshing. Hopeful isn't really the word I mean, because this book is only realistic and completely grounded. I feel like the word hopeful implies an intentionally "feel good" book, which this isn't. My friend, Annie, put it well: it's kind. This is a book written in diary entries from the perspective of an untethered thirty-year-old woman, Ruth, who just went through a break up and had to move home to take care of her father with Alzheimer's. She is forced into navigating her relationship with her rapidly changing father, as well as navigating her father and her mother's relationship, which she is forced to come to terms with. It is a fun read, often funny, and very honest. Parts might make you cry, but it is never manipulative despite having ample opportunity to be considering the subject manner.


The little snippets of days that we see beautifully illustrate the daily struggles of caring for somebody in declining mental faculties, as well as the small things that make a day bright. In tandem with Ruth's diary entries, every once in a while we get to see a journal that her father used to keep filled with things Ruth would say and do as a child. These definitely got me the most, because even when taking care of her father was getting tough, the snippets of his journal so viscerally overflowed with love for his daughter. On a very personal note, I can't remember what specifically, but something in these journals made me think of how my grandpa would sing "You Are My Sunshine" to me and how loved I feel even now just reminiscing on those moments. Grandpa, you have all of your mental faculties, but I don't know if you remember that because you haven't sang to me in a while (rude). But thank you for emailing me your personal responses to all of my blog posts (I save them all), and I look forward to hearing your thoughts about this one. I love you! If you want to borrow this book, I don't have a copy - sorry!



Update: My grandpa did email me after reading this blog post. Some context: he was a musician in an orchestra. He said "The reason I sang that is in all my music I never had to learn lyrics. So you (and your mom) got to hear the only song I knew.." Then he told me to come over and give him a haircut. RUDE.

Some Possible Solutions by Helen Phillips: Review + Giveaway

Some Possible Solutions by Helen Phillips
Publisher: Henry Holt. March 31, 2016.
Pages: 224
Genre: Literary Fiction
Source: Publisher



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What if your perfect hermaphrodite match existed on another planet? What if you could suddenly see through everybody's skin to their organs? What if you knew the exact date of your death? What if your city was filled with doppelgangers of you?

Forced to navigate these bizarre scenarios, the characters search for solutions to the problem of how to survive in an irrational, infinitely strange world. In dystopias that are exaggerated versions of the world in which we live, these characters strive for intimacy and struggle to resolve their fraught relationships with each other, with themselves, and with their place in the natural world. We meet a wealthy woman who purchases a high-tech sex toy in the shape of a man, a rowdy, moody crew of college students who resolve the energy crisis, and orphaned twin sisters who work as futuristic strippers--and we see that no one is quite who they appear. -Goodreads

I'm a huge Helen Phillips fan. I'm still obsessed with her debut novel The Beautiful Bureaucrat and constantly find myself recommending it. So you can imagine how excited I was to hear that she had a new collection of short stories coming out. You can count on Phillips for at least a little bit of weirdness in each story she tells, often veering into science fiction territory, and she didn't disappoint in that respect.

Almost all of the stories are sort of dystopian. Characters live in worlds that are slightly different from ours, but worlds that are still believable. Still startling close. Characters yearn for how things used to be and struggle against their new realities. They're mournful and strange, but small bright spots of hope slip in through the cracks of these stories. Almost all of them are heavily relationship or childrearing focused. This isn't really a problem, but I'm both coldhearted and picky. So after a while, the stories started to blend together a little bit and felt borderline one note.

Some Possible Solutions holds some very powerful, strange stories that are going to stay with me forever.  "The Knowers" is the first story and possibly my favorite: people can opt to learn the exact date of their death. We see how that affects a relationship and it's incredible. The writing is tight and gripping, and the ending moved me to tears. "Life Care Center" is autobiographical and heartbreaking. "The Joined" is a fantastic alien tale of finding a planet where each of us Earthlings have a perfect match, and we learn what joining with that match means. "Children" is another great alien story of sorts, where a parent doesn't quite understand her twin children. One of the child-themed stories I actually really liked. And, the powerful final "Contamination Generation" about a man's attempt to make his daughter's life magical in a grim near-future.

He knows better than anyone how they are always talking to each other in a language we don't understand, always putting jam on their hot dogs. They've never belonged to us, not even for a second. - Children

At the same time, there are a lot of stories that I straight up did not understand. And I'm kind of used to not understanding a number of contemporary short stories in a collection. This just got kind of frustrating because I'd read three stories in a row and at the end of each think "Well, there goes another one -- right over my head." Specifically, some that left me confused: "Game", "The Worst", "How I Began to Bleed Again After Six Alarming Months Without." There are definitely more, but I'm giving myself some credit in that I "sort of" got them and was just mildly confused at the end.

Ok, I just went and counted the stories and I wasn't confident about understanding quite literally half of them. I hope for a better ratio when reading, and I don't know if it's the stories or if it's me. A lot of them were missing that dark cleverness that I really appreciated in The Beautiful Bureaucrat and perhaps unfairly expected to find in this collection. Overall it was a fascinating read -- being in Phillips' head always is -- but it did not completely live up to my expectations. 




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The Beautiful Bureaucrat by Helen Phillips

The Beautiful Bureaucrat by Helen Phillips
Publisher: Henry Holt & Company. August 2015
Pages: 192
Genre: Literary fiction, Science fiction
Source: Publisher
First Line: The person who interviewed her had no face.


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In a windowless building in a remote part of town, the newly employed Josephine inputs an endless string of numbers into something known only as "The Database." After a long period of joblessness, she's not inclined to question her fortune, but as the days inch by and the files stack up, Josephine feels increasingly anxious in her surroundings. The office's scarred pinkish walls take on a living quality. The drone of keyboards echoes eerily down the long halls. When one evening her husband Joseph disappears and then returns, offering no explanation as to his whereabouts, her creeping unease shifts decidedly to dread.  - Goodreads

Once I started reading this book, there was no way for me to stop. My reading experience was essentially this: an inability to move from my bed, an inability to stop reading hilarious lines to whoever was so lucky to be near me at the time, and, once I was alone, a lot of me giggling and/or gasping to myself. It was a great time.

From how I've described this so far, it sounds like I was reading a comedic novel. But this was easily one of the creepiest books I've ever read. The surreal take on a bureaucratic office includes a man with no face, grimy hand prints all over a claustrophobic office wall, doppelgangers, and strange strings of words leaking into the main character's mind. The thing is, Phillips' writing is just so clever. Every dose of creepy is coupled with a bit of "spot on." I couldn't help but laugh at Josephine's darkly comic thoughts about work, life, and relationships throughout.

"Josephine had yet to receive any instructions about what name or title she ought to use for her boss; her failure to ask now meant that she never would."

If you like a strange, thrilling read that feels like a puzzle and plays with language, this is the book for you. I was horrified, I was uncomfortable, and I was delighted. You may not have ANY idea what's going on most of the time as the tension continues to mount, but the pay off at the end is clean and well thought out.
Helen Phillips, be my best friend.


SOME QUOTES:
                       
"As they walked, The Person with Bad Breath consumed three mints dispensed from a small tin drawn from an inner pocket. The bad breath became less offensive to Josephine when she saw that an attempt was being made to remedy it."

"Only he had stood on street corners beside her and their piled detritus. Only their two minds in the entire universe contained this same specific set of images: a particular pattern of shadow on the ceiling above a bed, a particular loop of highway ramp circled just as a song about a circle began to play on the radio. Tens of thousands of conversations and jokes. Without him she was just a lonely brain hurtling through space, laughing quietly to itself."


HOW OUTLANDISH WAS IT?

8/10 - A solid "what the fuck is happening" throughout.