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What I Read in September
You can tell we’re getting into spookytimes based on my September reads. ’Tis the season for R.I.P. (Readers Imbibing Peril) and finishing up challenge prompts. September was a good reading month with a total of 7 books completed — 2 novels, 2 poetry collections, 1 memoir, 1 nonfiction and 1 short story collection. Three of these were audiobooks.
Dear Senthuran: A Black Spirit Memoir by Akwaeke Emezi (Riverhead, 2021)
Akwaeke Emezi gets a lot of Booktube love, it seems, so I thought I’d give this a try. I’m somewhat conflicted about this one.
What I liked: the memoir-in-letters format, their raw honesty about being trans, the concept of bending the world to achieve one’s goals, and their candor about the writing process. Regarding the latter, I haven’t read Emezi’s other books (and am on the fence about doing so) but while it’s not necessary before reading Dear Senthuran, I could see where that would be helpful. The writing is powerful and resonant and there are some gorgeous passages.
What I struggled with: the repetition (somewhat expected with this format, I suppose), the un-chronological nature (I kept thinking, wait, did this happen before or after this or that?) and Emezi’s frequent references to themselves as being a god. The latter point, I know, sounds odd in the context of our Western culture, and I appreciated this as part of Emezi’s and their beliefs, but perhaps it was (again) the repetition of this concept that made me weary. Listened on audio. 3 out of 5 stars.
When No One is Watching by Alyssa Cole (William Morrow Paperbacks, 2020).
This is marketed as a psychological thriller, but the majority of the novel didn’t feel that way, in my opinion. Sydney Green is a Black woman in her thirties who has lived in Brooklyn all her life (except for a few years in Seattle with her divorced husband). Everyone knows and cares about each other in her neighborhood which is rapidly gentrifying. One of the newcomers is Theo, an unemployed white man in a dysfunctional relationship. When Theo volunteers to help Sydney with a historical tour she’s planning, the two become enmeshed in the many strange occurrences (and coincidences?) happening in their community.
