Nami Mun and Walter Mosley
These are reviews of two novels I listened to as audiobooks last month.
16. Miles from Nowhere by Nami Mun, 2009
This is a first novel by Korean-American author Nami Mun about a young girl named Joon who's run away from home and is on her own in New York City. It's told as a series of episodes, starting when she's thirteen and going through her teenage years, and it's not always clear how much time has passed in between or how she got from one situation to another. (I think listening to it as an audiobook also made that harder to deal with and I'd recommend reading it as a book.) There's a lot of painful stuff in this - violence, racism, prostitution, drug addiction, an unwanted pregnancy - but there's something really compelling about the narrative voice that makes it hard to put down (or in my case, stop listening). I would recommend this book mainly for the poetic language and the fascinating characterization of Joon. Just don't go into it thinking it'll be a fun or easy read.
17. The Wave by Walter Mosley, 2006
This is a short sci-fi novel by an author whose best known for his crime fiction (Devil in a Blue Dress and other Easy Rawlins mysteries have been reviewed a lot here at the comm.) It starts out with the narrator, a recently divorced and recently laid off black man living in California in the present day, receiving a series of phone calls from a man who claims to be his father, even though his father died nine years ago. He goes to investigate and weird stuff happens.
In general I liked this book okay, especially the first half or so when it's more about characters and relationships. The prose is enjoyable and in the middle it had one of my narrative kinks in the main character getting captured and experimented on by a shadowy government conspiracy. (*cough*) On the other hand I was a bit frustrated by the narrator refusing so long to believe that there was something paranormal going on, and then once he really got into it I found the (highlight for vague spoilers) stuff about a strange prehistoric life form taking over the DNA and reconstituting the bodies of dead people, and the narrator's psychic connection to that collective life form was not really interesting to me. If you like your paranormal thrillers though you might want to check it out.
16. Miles from Nowhere by Nami Mun, 2009
This is a first novel by Korean-American author Nami Mun about a young girl named Joon who's run away from home and is on her own in New York City. It's told as a series of episodes, starting when she's thirteen and going through her teenage years, and it's not always clear how much time has passed in between or how she got from one situation to another. (I think listening to it as an audiobook also made that harder to deal with and I'd recommend reading it as a book.) There's a lot of painful stuff in this - violence, racism, prostitution, drug addiction, an unwanted pregnancy - but there's something really compelling about the narrative voice that makes it hard to put down (or in my case, stop listening). I would recommend this book mainly for the poetic language and the fascinating characterization of Joon. Just don't go into it thinking it'll be a fun or easy read.
17. The Wave by Walter Mosley, 2006
This is a short sci-fi novel by an author whose best known for his crime fiction (Devil in a Blue Dress and other Easy Rawlins mysteries have been reviewed a lot here at the comm.) It starts out with the narrator, a recently divorced and recently laid off black man living in California in the present day, receiving a series of phone calls from a man who claims to be his father, even though his father died nine years ago. He goes to investigate and weird stuff happens.
In general I liked this book okay, especially the first half or so when it's more about characters and relationships. The prose is enjoyable and in the middle it had one of my narrative kinks in the main character getting captured and experimented on by a shadowy government conspiracy. (*cough*) On the other hand I was a bit frustrated by the narrator refusing so long to believe that there was something paranormal going on, and then once he really got into it I found the (highlight for vague spoilers) stuff about a strange prehistoric life form taking over the DNA and reconstituting the bodies of dead people, and the narrator's psychic connection to that collective life form was not really interesting to me. If you like your paranormal thrillers though you might want to check it out.