…Habash trades in whales for altogether more mesmerizing imagery like cannibalistic octopi and an absolutely terrifying “frogman” right out of a Lynchian universe. These latter images contribute to a book that is a vivid, visceral experience, filled with all the sweat, blood, and excretions of a postadolescent dream state.
When they are not deciphering multilingual codes, interviewing suspects, competing with Inspector Scummington, and stumbling over corpses, they are surviving catastrophe aboard an “elegant cigar” shaped airship, braving rough passages in rowboats, steamships and schooners, and dodging bullets, tumbling animals, and an infamous killer known as the Noh Straddler as they ride the Trans-Siberian Railway.
The girls mimicked his voice when he spoke, squeaking at him in high-pitched, nasal tones. They flicked things at him: not only chalk, but bits of spit-sodden paper, corn kernels, bobby pins, and flaky, greenish balls made of snot. Once, after he’d handed back a set of exercises, Roda Kudondo sauntered up to his desk and shoved her notebook in his face, mumbling in a slurred mishmash she intended as an imitation of his Texas drawl. The class exploded in laughter, and Aaron, not understanding, ordered her back to her seat.
For Sarah, the past, present and future bond into a formidable wall of fear and dread. Her present physical security can’t dispel her inner exile.
My mother’s house was built into the side of the volcano, where it was green and too thick to take anything but the machete-cut paths. We were field-workers. That is, until the men in uniform came.
The “peace” to which Helen constantly refers is a condition of isolation, complacency, and self-satisfaction. And it takes the violent “disruption” of her brother’s suicide for her to recognize her own solipsism.
This layered, textured novel throws into stark relief the interconnections between experience and memory, and the enduring nature of trauma.
Spanning more than a century, Rebellion weaves the stories of four women (and those of several minor characters) who reject societal and familial expectations for what a woman—a wife, a mother, a daughter, a friend—must be and do.
Not until the last page of Diego Zúñiga’s novel Camanchaca does a camanchaca itself appear.
Rocketing into speculative fiction territory, Behind the Mask, a strikingly entertaining anthology of short stories . . .