Four short book reviews

Egads. I am so, so far behind on book reviews. The longer I delay, the less I feel like reviewing the books so I must begin today.

The Dark Deep by Molly Knox Ostertag (Graphix, an imprint of Scholastic, 2024)

Two things were the encouragement I needed to read this LONG (470 page) graphic novel. One, it is considered a horror novel and I need something from the horror category to complete a reading challenge. Secondly, The Dark Deep won a Printz honor this year, an award given out to outstanding YA lit. I rarely read YA these days since I retired as a teen librarian but I remain committed to reading the Printz books each year.

The story about two transgender teens starts out as what one might think of as a typical coming-of-age story but soon morphs into something more ... a monster which lives underground and feeds off of one of the teens. In the end acceptance is required to conquer the monster, which can easily be viewed as self-acceptance.

Though the novel is long, the illustrations tend to carry the story forward so it reads really fast. It's page count  does qualify it for the Big Book Summer Challenge, a third bonus for selecting it.

My rating: 4 stars.

Road Home by Rex Ogle (Norton Young Readers, 2024)

Road Home is the conclusion of the Free Lunch Trilogy, a memoir series. In the first two books, Free Lunch and Punching Bag, and a related book, Abuela, Don't Forget Me, the author introduces himself and tells his story of parental abuse and neglect as he was growing up. In this book, the conclusion of the series, Rex tells how he was kicked out of his Father's home after he graduated from high school because the father was angry his son was gay. After leaving home he heads in the only direction he can think of, toward another gay man. It ends up this man is also abusive to Rex. Eventually Rex chooses homelessness over that abuse. 

Rex's story is both horrifying and tragic. It was really, really hard to listen to the audiobook. It was like my heart couldn't take it thinking of so much trauma happening to one person. And to think that a parent would purposely eject a son from his home for being gay!? Terrible!

The afterward made the book bearable because we learn that Rex does indeed land on his feet and how he has to work at coping with the PTSD from his childhood. This is an important book to have in a library which services teens, though I imagine it is also a book which will be targeted by book-banners, sadly.

Road Home also won a Printz Honor in 2025. My rating: 4 stars.

Now In November by Josephine Winslow Johnson (Simon and Schuster, 1934)

In the afterword to the edition I read, Nancy Hoffman said that Now in November deserved to share the shelf with another book written about the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck. Hoffman thought perhaps this didn't happen because of the gender of the writers. Both books won the Pulitzer Prize. Now in November in 1935 and The Grapes of Wrath in 1940. Both stories cover the abject poverty and the hard work of the people who are just trying to scrape by in light of the deepening drought and new farming practices which led to the dust bowl. But I disagree with Hoffman, I don't think the two stories are equal.

Now in November was published in 1934, in the midst of the Great Depression. While the poverty and drought dominated the storyline, the dust didn't. Black Sunday, the most notorious of dust storms hadn't happened yet, but there would have been increasing dust events which drove many farmers from their homes by 1934. The story is told from Marget Haldmarne's point of view. She is the middle daughter of family who move to the farm when she is ten. The story, Now in November, follows the family for one year and chronicles the tragedies they experience in that one year, which involves death and the almost complete breakdown of the family. There is nothing cheery or winsome about the book. Marget ends her narration in November with nothing to look forward to in her future.

Readers of Now in November in 1934 commented on Johnson's lyrical prose and compared her writing to that of Willa Cather. I agree it was beautifully written as evidenced by how many phrases and sentences I underlined as I read the e-book but the story lacked the heft of its companion, The Grapes of Wrath.

My rating: 4 stars.

A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean (University of Chicago Press, originally published in 1976 in a collection of stories by the author)

This summer our family took a trip to Western Montana, to visit Glacier National Park specifically. We had heard how beautiful the vistas in park, but it is nearly impossible to miss all the beautiful scenery in that vast state as you drive through it. My husband and I had separated from the rest of the family for our return trip. During our driving around we were finishing up the audiobook of Catch-22, laughing and groaning in equal measure. As we were left our last stop in Seeley Lake, before pointing our vehicle west and home, we finished that classic. A River Runs Through It, which happens to be set in Montana, was the next audiobook in our queue. Our timing couldn't have been better. As Norman is talking about fishing the Blackfoot River with his brother and his dad, we were driving past that very river. What gorgeous scenery and what lovely, memorable writing.

A River Runs Through It is considered to be autofiction, based on the author's memories of his childhood and the family fascination with fly-fishing in the mid-1930s. One would think a book about fishing would bore a non-fisherman like myself. But no. It was so well drafted I could picture every single act and all the scenery nearby. The book starts with a very memorable first line, "In our family, there is no clear line between religion and fly-fishing." Norman's father is a Presbyterian pastor who instills the love of the sport into his boys, but it is Paul, the younger brother, who is especially good at it. In a lot of ways, the story is about Paul and his troubled relationship with the world. But when Paul is fishing, oh boy, those troubles melt away. 

A River Runs Through It is a paean to a brother, Paul, lost to those troubles back not long after their last fishing trip together and to the family ties made stronger due to their love of fly-fishing.

As we neared home from our weeks long trip to Montana we ran out of story. We never went back and finished the rest of the short stories in the book. I'll be curious to do so some day and hope I enjoy them as much as I did this one.

My rating: 5 stars. 

-Anne