I was not good at the zeitgeist of the 1990s. This whole thing of like, ironic detachment, and not being enthusiastic about things, and the point of television shows being that they’re all horrible people and that’s why it’s funny? That thing was not my metier. I rejoice daily that either the culture has gotten more earnest and gentle, or the internet has made it easier for me to self-select earnest and gentle people to hang out with. Despite the general deceitfulness and awfulness of the political moment, it is a relief to me that we are making a shift, or have made a shift, to valuing gentleness and niceness.

Which brings me to the awfully gentle, awfully nice Professor Chandra Follows His Bliss.

I picked this book up from the library’s New Books shelf in the hopes that it would be as gentle and nice as it sounded. It’s about an economics professor who doesn’t get the Nobel Prize when he expected to, and then gets hit by a bike and has a heart attack. “You gotta follow your bliss, man,” his doctor says; but Professor Chandra doesn’t know how to do that. In lieu of better ideas, he goes to America, to see his youngest daughter, Jasmine. Bliss-following ensues (kinda).

Actually what follows is a book-length journey to the recognition that you don’t always have to tell people your low opinion of the lives they lead. At times I got anxious that the book was going to insist on finding ridiculous some things that are pretty important to me — but I was wrong about that, because it isn’t that kind of book. It also isn’t the kind of book that gives a pass to its protagonist’s failures of empathy on the basis that he is a bit of a bumbler where emotions are concerned. His emotional bumbling has done harm; it was worse harm than he was initially willing to admit (because it always is); and it won’t get fixed by pretending it never happened.

Though the author’s bio indicates that he’s heavily involved with meditation and the practice of Zen, Professor Chandra Follows His Bliss never felt remotely preachy about either of these things. A series of amusing events leads Professor Chandra to a workshop on personal development, and Balasubramanyam doesn’t pretend that some of its practices don’t feel silly. He knows they do! But silly and productive aren’t opposites, and Professor Chandra leaves behind the practices that don’t work for him, and takes forward the practices that do.

I need a new paragraph to talk about how much I love this. We talk a lot about ideological polarization in this political moment, but I also worry about the kind of polarization where everything has to be all or nothing. You believe in a thing (in which case you believe in all the elements of the thing, and you must passionately defend it) or you don’t (in which case you find all the elements of the thing suspect, and you must passionately oppose it). It was wonderfully refreshing to read a book in which the author, clearly, loves Zen monasteries, but also recognizes that not every practice is good for every person. It’s okay, in other words, to be a cafeteria Catholic.

If the world is wearing you out, give yourself the gift of reading Professor Chandra Follows His Bliss. It’s not often I read a book that just makes me feel fucking pleasant, but this book was one, and I really needed it.

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“I don’t know what justice is,” I tell him. “But I am trying to get what I can right.”

The above paragraph is a perfect summation of why I loved Thorn, and of why I love Intisar Khanani so much as an author. In Thorn, as in all her books, she writes about characters who may be in bad situations but who are trying their best. Characters who are trying their best are balm to my frazzled soul in these difficult times, so I am pushing Intisar Khanani’s books on people like they are ebags dot com packing cubes. Consider them pushed upon you. Go get you some.¹

Thorn is a retelling of the fairy tale “The Goose Girl.” It’s a good fairy tale, full of details with that specifically fairy tale brand of weirdness. In this one, a princess is sent to marry a prince in a faraway land; on the way to her wedding, her chambermaid changes clothes with her and ultimately marries the prince in her stead. The true princess has to serve as the goose girl and comfort herself by talking to the head of her horse Falada, whom the chambermaid has had killed in fear that Falada would tell the truth about her. (Go with it; it’s a fairy tale.) Matters proceed from there.

Thorn does a typically (for Intisar Khanani) sincere and sweet retelling of this story, providing a backstory for the fairy tale weirdness that absolutely works. The maidservant, Valka, has made a deal with a wicked witch to switch bodies with the princess Alyrra, so that the witch can gain access to prince Kestrin. If Alyrra tries to tell what happened to her, the witch’s spell will choke her to death. She takes on the nickname Thorn and bides her time to see if she can save the prince from the witch’s curse.

In the hands of an author whose faith in people is less genuine, Thorn could have been a mess. Huge swathes of the plot depend on people appreciating Thorn for not being a jerk in a world where jerkiness runs rampant. If her goodness had felt forced, or their gratitude untruthful, the book would have fallen apart. But I am particularly in need of books where people are kind because they are trying to be good, even when the circumstances around them may not be conducive to goodness. In Thorn, the characters try to be good because they want to see goodness in the world, but they can only control themselves and their own actions. Which is, you know, pretty hashtag-relatable right now.

Who here still hasn’t read Intisar Khanani? How can I convince you to give her a go?

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Okay, despite having shared that article about how people should stop hating so much on YA love triangles, I am slightly over YA love triangles, not because there aren’t authors who can write them well, but because YA authors who can’t write them well insist on writing them anyway. So to read a book like Tell the Wind and Fire, which is about a girl and two physically identical dudes, and which specifically and deliberately steers away from love triangling, made a refreshing change.

Lucie Manette has won her way over to the Light side of her city through a combination of luck and judicious manipulation of her own public image. Now she has a wealthy and influential Light boyfriend and things seem to be going her way (as long as she doesn’t think too much about those she left “buried” in the Dark side of the city). But everything changes when her boyfriend Ethan avoids arrest only by the intervention of a Dark doppelganger called Carwyn–someone Lucie never knew existed. If you have read A Tale of Two Cities you can basically predict how this all turns out.¹

Because I do not like Dickens,² I wasn’t expecting much from Tell the Wind and Fire. I was delighted to find that it is a kind of book I particularly love, which is the kind where the protagonist is trying to be a good person in a world where the only choices available to them are bad. Toss in themes of public perception, its power and lability, and its contrast with true reality, and you’ve got Gin Jenny catnip.

Thus! If you are on the hunt for a dark-but-fun page-turner about good people who are trying their best, or just a YA novel where a girl can have two boys in her life without falling into an abyss of indecision about which one to kiss, may I point you toward Tell the Wind and Fire?

Where are y’all on love triangles these days? In, out, in but need a break, out but you’ll make exceptions?

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I know, I know, I know what you are thinking. You’re thinking: But, murder? But, selling a child to an adult man? I perfectly understand your concerns. Nevertheless, and trust me, The Book of Memory is all about good people trying their best. I was interested in this premise before I began reading, but the book surprised and moved me with where it took the story of Memory’s past and present. This is a story about things not being what they look like, and that is a type of story I absolutely cherish.

To begin with, of course, there’s Memory herself. As an albino child in her home township of Mufakose, she is accustomed to drawing the confused (at best) and hostile (at worst) glances of those who see her. She’s a freak, an oddity, an exception in her own family, perhaps a witch or evildoer, simply because of the color (lack of color) of her skin and hair. Under Lloyd’s care, she’s seen as a servant, a ward, a charity case. At the same time, although Memory herself is rarely seen for who she really is, it doesn’t make her any better at seeing the world around her clearly. Like the judges on her case, like the people of her township, like us as readers even, Memory’s vision is clouded by what she expects the world to look like.

The Book of Memory is Petina Gappah’s first novel, and it bears some of the marks of a first novel. Certain plot threads are underdeveloped, such as Memory’s doomed relationship with an artist called Zenzo, and it’s possible too much is made early on of the murdery-mystery bits of the book, considering that Lloyd’s death isn’t really the point of the book. But Gappah’s writing is wry and readable, and I fell in love with even the most minor of her characters.

Some bits I liked:

His career has risen with our country’s collapse. . . . His painting speaks truths that the government wants to hide, it is said. He is the artist exiled from his homeland because his work shows a reality before which the government flinches. None of it is true, but who cares for truth when there is a troubled homeland and tortured artists to flee from it?

It will not be possible for me to escape the past. But if I go back there, it will only be to find ways to make rich my present. To accept that there are no villains in my life, just broken people, trying to heal, stumbling in darkness and breaking each other, to find a way to forgive my father and mother, to forgive Lloyd, to find a path to my own forgiveness.

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