Last year I went to Washington, DC for the first time as an adult, and I loved it. I’m not a huge fan of most cities, but I AM a huge fan of American history so I had a great time. When my mother-in-law loaned me this book, I was excited to read a mystery that took place in one of my favorite cities, written by the daughter of a president (actually I just read on Wikipedia that these were ghostwritten). What a disappointment this […]
A well-intentioned mess
(2.5 stars) This was a tough book to read and will be a tough review to write. Love is the Drug is a very ambitious book that plots contemporary social issues and a story of developing one’s identity and independence against the background of a bioterrorist pandemic. Ultimately, I think Johnson just had too many ideas here and as a result several threads were underdeveloped and/or incoherent. Emily Bird, who goes by Bird, is from an affluent black family in Washington DC. Her parents are […]
The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears
This is the second of my (at least!) ten African authors in this year’s Cannonball. I picked this up based mostly on the title and the fact that I hadn’t read anything by an Ethiopian author yet. But this book is not about Ethiopia, really–it’s about being an Ethiopian in America or, more specifically, one hapless immigrant’s experience. The story is told in first person by the main character, Sepha Stephanos, who fled Ethiopia after the revolution seventeen years previously. He met up with an […]