Off The Shelf

As every one of my seminar professors and all of my book group co-members (two groups with a non-zero overlap!) can attest, I can be a bit of a disappointment in a discussion. Don’t get me wrong, I read the book, show up mostly on time, come with notes, listen attentively, and speak up. I ask questions of the group, build on what others have said, and occasionally see unusual connections and have original insights.

Okay, “disappointment” might be a strong word. I’m probably not a C-, more like a B+. Taking Bloom’s Taxonomy (revised 2001), I crush Remember, Understand, and Apply. It’s the Analyze, Evaluate and Create part that’s the problem.

That’s where “Say More” comes in. After writing the post for Everything Is Illuminated in my usual fashion, I could hear echoes of “Say More!” from encouraging former professors and baffled book group members, as well as actual Off The Shelf blog readers (you do exist!) and, I suppose most importantly, my own inner critic.

“Say more about why these connections are interesting or relevant.”

“Say more about what the book’s moments mean to you.”

“Say more about what actually happens in the book.”

None of that sounds like any fun to write, but I’m going to dip my toe in just a bit and give it a try. So here goes…

…in a roundabout way…

My cousin and I hired a service to investigate our family origins in Japan. Japanese family records (koseki) are held locally in the town/city hall of their honseki, or ancestral home, and are in no way searchable on Ancestry.com. Also, neither of us reads Japanese, much to the dishonor of said ancestors.

We had a Zoom call with Sean at Japan Genealogy Connect and have followed up with emails and document sharing platforms and now we know the correct spelling of our last name and that our grandfather had five siblings, not just the two we knew about. Next steps: find the koseki for our grandmother’s side and see if we can locate even more cousins!

At no point in this process did we have to share a car with an interpreter who speaks in fluent thesaurus, a blind driver, and a drooling, biting, amorous, farting dog. Everything Is Illuminated is set in 1791 and 1942 and 1997, and in none of those dates would an online genealogy search or a Zoom call have been an option. Instead the self-inserted author (JSF) flies to Ukraine with a photograph, some fraying documents, and no clue how to find either his own “honseki” or the person in the photograph, who he believes saved his grandfather in 1941.

So, after:

• one 35-minute call,
• a few weeks’ wait, and
• a quick search for my OneNote login,

I got:

• 16 pages of family history going back six generations,
• a handy reading guide, and
• an easy-to-read graphic family tree (and you know how much I like a graphic organizer)

On the other hand, after days of:

• driving around for hours with the aforementioned impossible entourage
• being denied food because he was a vegetarian
• getting charged extra because he was an American
• having the dog eat most of his irreplaceable family documents

JSF ended up:

• meeting one deeply damaged survivor who remembered his grandfather
• learning the terrible story of the town, and
• developing a personal and also collaborative relationship with the interpreter, Alex.

And though ultimately he came away with little more insight into his family history and many more questions, loose ends, and failures, he did write this prize-winning novel.

Characteristically, I got the Remember/Understand experience; JSF had the Evaluate/Create version.

---

For one last stab at a higher Bloom’s Taxonomy grade, let’s talk for a minute about voice.

In my original post, I compared Everything Is Illuminated to Junie B. Jones. For those of you who don’t know, my beef with Junie B. Jones is that the books are unapologetically and completely written in her voice (*gasp* who would do such a thing?), and her voice breaks all the rules (except where it incorrectly doesn’t). I wouldn’t let my kids read them because I thought they would confuse emerging language learners with phrases like “I runned” and “more beautifuller.”

I had a similar knee-jerk response to Alex’s deliberately unconventional voice. Not that I thought readers of Everything Is Illuminated were likely to start saying things like “disseminate so much currency” when they mean “spend so much money” or “flaccid-to-utter” for “easy-to-say.” Even so, it took me a long while (and some help from the audiobook narrator) to get to a place where I could begin to appreciate what the voice was trying to do.

Turns out it wasn’t trying to confuse or annoy me into giving up on the book in the first few pages. It wasn’t trying to make me think that JSF is a xenophobe and wants to make non-English speakers look stupid. It wasn’t even trying to perversely grow my vocabulary (even though it did).

The voice (as well as the descriptions, characters, structure, plot — yup, the whole book) seemed determined to make me uncomfortable. As a lifelong avoider of cringe media, I might not be the best person to say anything original about the role of discomfort in these modern times.

I can, however, tell you that the graphic descriptions of the physically excruciating car trips, the synonym speed bumps in Alex’s letters, the comically difficult lives and terrible choices across multiple time periods, and the uncertainty and loose threads left for the reader to navigate, all resulted in a huge sense of relief in me when even one tiny thing would go right or one little question would get answered.

Is this why people like The Office or Parks and Rec? Are there subtle depths of the human experience for me to plumb out there if I can just wade through the thorns? Or have I completely missed the point?

Let me know.

There. I’ve Said More! Now where are my confetti cannons? You don’t think I did all this for an internal sense of accomplishment?

My Take (changing the title of this section here because, turns out, I rarely “review” the book):

Generally (as I have said before), I read these books, and at some point the book reveals a connection or an organizing principle to me (you know — how the marble revealed the sculpture to Michelangelo). This fun house of a novel, however, kept my brain on its toes and refused to settle into any one thing.

Here is the abbreviated timeline of my grasping for some lifeline to stay afloat and make sense of this wild ride:

• Junie B. Jones — For what reads at first as idiotic sounding language and characters. I wouldn’t let the kids read those books, so what am I doing here? Honestly, I struggled with the voice of Everything is Illuminated until I listened to the audiobook narrator’s interpretation. Made me appreciate it on a human level instead of just thinking it a bad caricature. Do I need to go back and re-read Little Miss Jones to check for secret layers of hidden genius? Apparently.
• Monk of Mokha/The Sentence — Here we go with another author-as-character — and so soon! This one, though, digs a whole new deep end for the genre. How is it possible to write yourself in with such humor, grace, and clarity while never coming across as artificial, smug, or grasping? I certainly don’t know.
• A Real Pain — For the “heritage tourism.” Obviously Jesse Eisenberg would play JSF in the movie. Wait, there already is a movie and he was played by Elijah Wood? Good call, casting director Avy Kaufman! Guess I know what I’m watching next.
• All Fours — For the complete insanity and brilliance. I dare you to read these two books side by side and not question your understanding of how books are supposed to work. Ha, just noticed that I also compared part of The Sentence to All Fours. So glad I didn’t have to write a post for that book — I can barely talk about it coherently. Please don’t ask me if I recommend it. That is an unanswerable question!
• Everybody’s Fine, or Stanno tutti bene — Warning! Everybody is NOT Fine and Everything is NOT Illuminated. You should have to sign a waiver before volunteering for this kind of emotional whiplash.

Of course, all this bullet-pointing is just me avoiding the quicksand of the book. You see through me though, right?
Smoke and mirrors.
Sound and fury.
Bullet points and parentheses.

Given the choice of a graphic organizer or in-depth, thoughtful, earnest discussion of multiple threads of generational trauma, historical atrocities, continuing horrors, and existential shit-shows, I think you know where I’ll end up. As Alexander/Alex/Sasha/Alexi/Shapka writes to JSF, “humorous is the only truthful way to tell a sad story.”

This book is a masterclass in crafting a place, observing and imagining people, and bringing readers along on your personal adventure. It’s also a high school student’s nightmare. So many essay questions: What is love? What is truth? What’s with all the cleaving in two? Why couldn’t they have cracked a window just a little when the dog stunk up the car?

All that said, it’s been a little bit of a month and I would maybe have preferred to be reading a lighthearted romp or a bodice ripper (When A Scot Ties The Knot, E?). But the shelf dictates.

(Finished reading June 29, 2026)

Payoff (pages I read per stars I gave): 276/4 = 69

My Take (changing the title of this section here because, turns out, I rarely “review” the book):

The husband and I have read many books out loud to each other, mostly on road trips. For example:

• The Princess Bride by William Goldman (driving across country to Penn, 1990)
• Skinwalkers by Tony Hillerman (vacation to the Southwestern states, 1995?)
• In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick (driving around New England, 2021)
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (sitting on the couch of our cute Latona apartment, 1994?)

So a couple years ago when we were headed off for a romantic getaway, I bought us this book based entirely on vibes. It’s a dual-author book of back and forth letters. Thought it might help us remember how to be lovey-dovey. Unfortunately, it takes a little while before this book gets any kind of lovey, and it wasn’t a very long drive.

So I’m the reader and the husband is the driver (carsick-prone), but these days listening to me read quickly makes him sleepy. I feel like this was less of an issue in the 90s. We hadn’t yet been married for a couple decades and he wasn’t as sick of listening to me yammer!

All that to say, we didn’t get very far with our reading on that trip. Fast forward to this book coming up to be read for this Shelf blog, and the husband gallantly agreed to renew our joint reading effort. Taking on a character, we alternated reading chapters/letters to each other. I was Blue from the Garden (“a single vast consciousness embedded in all organic matter”) and he was Red from the Agency (“a post-singularity technotopia”). We finished it at home, safe and cozy in a way that would have made our kids’ eyes roll.

Thus, you might be thinking I have all kinds of deep thoughts on the nature of love, my lovely spouse, our decades-long relationship, and all kinds of other nonsense. But Nope, only the nonsense. This book is a story about star-crossed lovers, like Romeo/Juliet, Tony/Maria, and, most importantly recently, Shane and Ilya (hence the nonsense). This calls for a table:

ThisIsHowYouLoseTheTimeWar	HeatedRivalry
Red and Blue are spies on rival sides of the Time War	Shane and Ilya are hockey players on rival teams of the “MLH”
Red/Blue occasionally cross paths (murder and mayhem) while writing letters and cleverly hiding them in seeds, shooting stars, smoke, poison, etc.	Shane/Ilya occasionally cross paths (sex and hockey) while texting and “cleverly” hiding behind the code names Jane and Lily
Red/Blue travel across multiple times and alternate histories. Despite a complex metaverse numbering system, the location and time jumps are hard to follow but do serve to convey the slow burn of their love	Shane/Ilya travel on multiple hockey road trips and over years of summers off. Despite the title cards, the location and time jumps are hard to follow but do serve to convey the slow burn of their love
R/B live in abject terror of being discovered and killed by their own sides	S/I live in abject terror of being discovered and reviled by their loyal fans and teammates
They get discovered, but then run off together	They run off together, but then get discovered

I could go on (loving despite barely knowing the other, the personal and professional risk-taking, the whole same-sex thing), but I don’t want you to think I have spent any time analyzing Heated Rivalry! (Adorably, the husband was game to watch the hockey boy show with me — a fact he would probably prefer I not mention, but mostly because he thinks Scott and Kip are the cuter couple and doesn’t want to have to fight you.)

(Finished reading the book May 20, 2026)

Payoff (pages I read per stars I gave): 198/4 = 49.5

Review:

Usually about halfway through reading a “shelf” book, I figure out what I’m going to write about. Comes to me in a flash, a bolt, an inspiration. Often just a general notion, but until now there has always been a something. With this book I got nothing. Some little glimmers perhaps, but nothing useful or blog-worthy. Instead, here were the train cars of my thoughts as I chugged along:

• “Giving insane All Fours vibes.”
• “Only a quarter of the way through, and this story is resolving. What more could happen?”
• “Oh, that was only the Backstory!”
• “I am not this book’s target audience.”
• “I get that reference!”
• “Oh no, this is set in 2020!?!”
• “What did Minneapolis do to get all the crap it’s been through these last several years?”
• “Neatly wrapped up.”

If I was making a conspiracy theorist’s bulletin board of index cards and string connecting all the books I’ve been reading — seriously considering trying to build one! — this book would be doing a lot of work for me. Tookie mentions many fancy-pants books that I have/will read, including Sula and The Known World — maybe even Proust, if I can hack it — coming up in this blog. That’s the ego-inflating part. Less self-aggrandizing are all the hoi polloi books it reminds me of. It’s set at least partly in 2020 like the aptly named romcom Romantic Comedy — a book I enjoyed but could hardly reflect a more different pandemic experience. Erdrich self-inserts with gentle self-awareness (“She kept sending out emails that were supposed to buck up our spirits but did the opposite.”) that feels so much less cringey than Dave Eggers’ attempt in Monk of Mokha — the book I didn’t want to talk about in my last post. And of course the bookstore setting connects to Storybook Ending, the breakout novel of Seattle Times columnist Moira MacDonald. I wanted to love that book, but could not get past the first few chapters despite the bookstore allure and hometown pandering. Too many sad sack characters and a plot built entirely on a middle-school-level note-passing mishap.

That’s all fine and well, but you might ask, “My Dear Blogger, are you going to write anything insightful or interesting about THIS book?” To that I say: No, I don’t think so. Going back to my fourth boxcar thought of “I am not this book’s target audience,” I’m definitely not feeling on solid ground about weighing in here. Did this book speak to me personally? No. Was it trying to? Probably not. Is it feeling self-satisfied that a lot of this went over my head and under my radar? It should.

Topics I’m not touching with a ten-foot pole:

• Absolutely anything about Indigenous peoples: experience, history, practices, beliefs, etc.
• What Minneapolis has gone through this decade
• Ghosts
• Louise Erdrich as a person

Fair game:

• Other books
• Literary devices
• A general agreement about how much 2020 sucked
• Louise as a character (“Age had broadened her face and nose, plumped up her cheeks, grayed her hair, and given her an air of general tolerance.”)

Also, my last post was so long I didn’t want you to think that every post of mine was going to be a tome! (Finished reading the book May 15, 2026)

Payoff (pages I read per stars I gave): 374/3 = 124 2/3

(check out my latest update to the graphic organizer page that tries to put these into context)

Review:

And now for the Title Fight: My absolute favorite kids’ book of all time, ever — enough superlatives? — Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak (obviously) versus one of my least favorite (shallow, immature, obvious), but somehow beloved and prolific authors, Dave Eggers. Slam dunk for me, you’d think, right? Let’s get into it…

And so I first read Eggers’ A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius back in the day (for a former, now-defunct, book group) but didn’t finish (my old bookmark tells me I got to page 175) because I found it all of the things I put in parentheses above. I could see what he was trying to do, but it just screamed 24-year-old Guy! to me and I wasn’t having it. I was maybe 35 at the time and already too world-weary for all that goofy, self-important angst. Thus set in stone both my opinion of Dave Eggers and of memoirs in general (meh, but also wait until you have more distance, people, please — I’m looking at you, Educated!).

And add to that my history with WTWTA: a book I have read and enjoyed my entire life. The first book I could and can recite entirely from memory. A book whose every moment and image is inextricably intertwined with my childhood dreams and inner monologues. The book I trot out and inflict on any small child who will sit still long enough.

And so The Wild Things is a novelization of the beloved children’s story. Eggers wrote an average of 7.8 pages for every page that Sendak wrote. This is roughly 75,000 words to 338 (222:1). (Of those 338 words, 35 are “and,” which begins 40% of the sentences and keeps things clipping along.) The question remains, were all those extra words and pages worth the paper? Honestly, I’m not sure. Now, I have my own childhood dreams and inner monologues (desire for freedom, fantasy, and unconditional love) all mixed up with Dave Eggers’ childhood dreams and inner monologues (exploration of trauma, abandonment, and fear of failure) and it’s making me feel all mixy-uppy. He may have a rich, deep, and imaginative take on the wild things’ interpersonal struggles, but why, with my highly subjective and possibly outdated opinions of him, would I want Dave Eggers’ CD&IM all mixed up with mine?

And to be begrudgingly fair, it’s a well-done book. Well-crafted, quickly paced, mostly not annoying, brave. Not sure how I would have felt if it wasn’t written by Eggers and/or not about WTWTA, but pretty sure I wouldn’t have picked it up in the first place. I’ll need to come back to this after another few years of reading/reciting WTWTA and see how much of Eggers’ version has stuck in my craw. (Finished reading the book April 24, 2026)

Adaptations nobody needs:

• Madeline by Chuck Palahniuk
• Bread and Jam for Francis by Wally Lamb

Payoff (pages I read per stars I gave): 

TWT: 288/3 = 96

For reference: WTWTA (37/5 = 7.4) is my all-time high; compared to 530/2 = 265 (all-time low) for HWofSG

(check out my latest update to the graphic organizer page that tries to put this into context)

Misc Ratings (Out of 5):

• Good names for and drama amongst the Wild Things: 4
• Pain it caused me to say anything nice about Eggers, a probably perfectly reasonable human: 5

P.S. My most precious copy (of the 4 or so I own) of Where the Wild Things Are is a 25th Anniversary Hardback Edition (1989) inscribed:

“Christmas 1990 For Keiko — Because finally she’s grown-up enough…. All my Love Dad”

Lovely, nostalgic, and wry (I was 21 at the time!), it’s one of the only things I have in my dad’s handwriting that he wrote just for me.

Also well-loved is my copy of a book called Elephant by Byron Barton (First Edition Hardback, 1971). It’s a petite, 29-page — adorably defaced by me — pictures-only story of a girl who loves elephants and, like Max, has a fantasy adventure in the night but is home in time for a show of love and understanding from her parents. This was inscribed:

“To Keiko ~ June 1972 so you can read to yourself. Love from Mommy”

Lovely, maternal, and wry (I was 3 but already reading!), this also is one of the very few things I have from my mom in her handwriting.

It’s a good thing I understand my parents’ sense of humor — it’s also mine, and regularly inflicted on my own children — or I might be a little put out about the views they had of me.

Review:

What a breath of fresh air to be reading a woman writer again! I’ve heard that in blind wine taste tests, most people can’t tell expensive wine from cheap. Hmmm, wait — that’s not a good metaphor here. Let’s try this one: Remember that Supreme Court justice quote about pornography, “I know it when I see it”? Okay seriously, what am I trying to say here?

These last two books I’ve read for this blog have had a lot in common (just like the two before that). Set during WWII, with deep dives into a niche interest (radio shows/diving), missing and/or dead fathers, something akin to romance but not exactly, more than 400 pages. But oh, what a difference a gender — and an unabridged copy — makes! I’m not a wine (or a pornography) connoisseur but I certainly felt and appreciated the differences between these two books and authors, even though I couldn’t necessarily tell you exactly what it was that made the biggest impact.

I enjoyed so much about this book (here comes the part of my review where I list): Great characters with a lot of depth and capacity for change, complex storylines with heartfelt dilemmas and not-completely obvious paths taken, super readable and fast-paced (had its slower spots but I still flew through them), the (brand-new just now) three H’s (humor, heartbreak, history hope hootenannies? — it’s a work in progress). That said, its list of supporting characters does sound like something from an SNL Stefon skit: an aging tart, a mute bosun, a goat-owning gangster, and a badger in a Borsalino.

I just read the top review of this book on Goodreads and that reviewer, and most of the next several, hated it! Many of them were comparing this book unfavorably to her last book, Goon Squad. I can see how that might be something of a letdown. Maybe we like or dislike books based on how they compare to the last thing we read. Should that be a required disclosure whenever reviewing anything? “This stack of saltines was four and a half stars, compared to the fermented shark bladder I ate yesterday.” I know it’s more complicated than that, but still, some context wouldn’t hurt.

The picture above is a sculpture that I serendipitously came across (at Matzke Sculpture Park on Camano Island) right around the time I was considering pitching this book to my book group. It’s by Deb McCunn who sculpted it after reading Manhattan Beach. She titled the piece Andrea the Diver after Andrea Motley Crabtree, the first female diver in the US Army and the inspiration for the book. She sculpts women as rabbits doing cool things as a counter-narrative to the Playboy bunny. Check out her work here: https://www.matzkefineart.com/artists-2/deb-mccunn-clay/

(Finished reading the book April 19, 2026)

Payoff (pages I read per stars I gave): 

438/4 = 108 (this metric clearly favors short books, but then again so do I)

Misc Ratings (Out of 5):

• Relief at reading a book by a female writer: 5
• Wondering now if that relief blinded me a little: 3
• Looking forward to the next book on my shelf by a guy writer I already don’t like much: 1

Bechdel Test: Pass!!!

Review:

Dear John Dunning, I am so sorry! You wrote what is probably a lovely book and I totally screwed up the reading of it.

Several years ago I read and loved both Booked to Die and The Bookman’s Wake. I love your fast-paced, plot-forward, suspenseful, unspooling narrative. You managed to make the (I can only imagine, dull and dusty) inner workings of the rare book world into — what else? — a real page-turner.

So I was very much looking forward to Two O’ Clock, Eastern Wartime with its intrigue and deep dive into your second love — old-time radio shows. But I’m embarrassed to say, I went and made an audiobook rookie error.

I own your book, of course, and started reading it, but I also checked out the audiobook, as I am wont to do so I can continue with a book while I do the dishes and walk the dog, etc. What I didn’t realize is that I had checked out — gasp — an abridged copy! I didn’t think about it too hard as the book clipped along at a rapid pace, but I did notice that I wasn’t really getting caught up in the story as I had with your earlier books. The characters weren’t as deep, the story not as fleshed out, the inner workings not as riveting — and none of it was your fault! It wasn’t until I was mostly done with the audiobook (only 40 minutes, but two long chapters left?) that I realized my grave mistake. By that time, so much of the book had flown by, along with my interest, that I just couldn’t see myself going back and rereading any of it.

Please forgive me, Mr. Dunning! After I’m done with all this shelf-reading nonsense, I will go back and read another one of your books the way it was meant to be read. With eyeballs.

(Finished reading the book April 6, 2026)

Payoff (pages I read per stars I gave): 

This doesn’t seem fair to do

Misc Ratings (Out of 5):

• Regret: 5
• Embarrassment: 4
• Plans to reread: 0

Bechdel Test: Fail – at least not in the version I read heard.

Review:

I’m just figuring out that writing about books I have enjoyed reading is much more difficult than complaining about the ones I didn’t like at all. When I’m complaining, I’m much less worried about conveying nuance and am instead just trying to be entertaining. But with this book I want to do it justice and possibly even make you want to read it. Here goes…

Reading Universal Harvester wasn’t so much of a roller coaster ride where you can see what’s coming, as it was one of those amusement park drop towers where you never know what’s going to happen next. There’s such a pervasive sense of dread and concern for the characters with no sense of how anything was going to get resolved — and, full disclosure, many things don’t. Full of suspense, ambiguity — and some might say plot holes — Universal Harvester is all about place (Iowa) and vibes and parents. Weirdly not unlike The Brothers K (intense religious devotion and all!) but thankfully so much shorter.

It’s dark, often literally, and sinister and slow, and also the opposite: insightful and loving, a tiny bit hopeful, and full of surprising details that kept my brain on alert. Reminds me of that Velazquez painting — the one from that book group book I never finished — where you’ve been looking at it wondering if this was the behind-the-scenes for every royal portrait, and then you’re like, wait, there’s a whole extra shadowy person talking to the nun in the corner and also a little person kicking the poor dog?

So there you go. I’ve said only good things about this book and given away nothing. Your takeaway: if you like unpredictable rides with clever details, you should read this book. Wait, you need actual information in order to make an informed decision? Okay, so it starts off about this guy Jeremy who works in a video store — remember those? (Sorry, Scarecrow Video) — and people start returning videos saying there are weird bits edited into them. Jeremy and a friend start looking into what might be going on, and get caught up in a probably — but kinda hard to tell exactly — disturbing situation that opens up a whole backstory can-of-worms.

Bears repeating: many of the plot points don’t get very satisfyingly (or at all) cleared up, but the author and I warned you of that early on, so it’s your own fault if you feel betrayed. Still, the writing and overall craft made reading Universal Harvester worthwhile and engaging for me. And what I’ve recently and begrudgingly learned from the author of Audition: apparently not every novel is a puzzle to be solved. (Finished reading the book March 24, 2026)

“He quickly put on his disguise, the one he’d been born with” (p. 156)

Payoff (pages I read per stars I gave): 

214/4 = 43 page/stars

Misc Ratings (Out of 5):

• Steep slopes: 4
• Soft landings: 1
• Eddies: 3

Bechdel Test: Pass – Finally! (Alison Bechdel never said that the two women talking about something other than a dude had to be sane)

(Only one more book to go until I get to the next non-dude writer!)

Review:

At my age — that’s a new fun way to start a sentence — I feel less and less concerned about breaking my own make-believe rules. These days I don’t always have to do the dishes before I go to bed, or respond to every funny text from my spouse with a HAHA (you already know I think you’re funny). I’m still not completely ready to swear in front of my kids or wear black and non-denim blue together, but I’m working on it. My original plan for this blog was that I would buckle down and finish every book on my shelf and then have something insightful, or whatever, to say about them. But this book’s 645 pages of moral responsibility and inherited philosophy has broken something in me, so I’m shaking myself free of my own short-sighted rules and doing whatever I want. Chaos!

On its face, Brothers K is tailor-made for me. A Pacific NW-based family epic about baseball? What’s not to love? Apparently all the religion-y stuff. Normally, I’m good with reading about religion and religious people, ideas, quandaries, explorations, evolutions, etc. Might sound strange coming from me, but I think my issues with this book come from the way the most religious characters were being conveyed as somewhat ridiculous straw men. And also that — here’s me flogging a dead Bechdel horse — they were often the female characters (straw women, if you will). To be fair, there were also science-minded female characters, but alas still portrayed as somewhat ridiculous (i.e. Grandawma). The four sons whose disparate religious paths (molded by a devoutly religious mother, a devoutly science-minded grandmother, and a devoutly baseball-y father) we were going to follow for the remainder of the novel — aptly in keeping with the main theme of The Brothers Karamazov — I just didn’t find that interesting. Blah, blah Mother, Father, and Gma set children in motion. Blah, blah, kids probably turn out different from each other. Too much like my own life but with less well-written characters!

My understanding is that I got through all the best baseball parts, so I’m good with being done now. Next up, a book about tractors or something…

(Finished reading the book Feb 19, 2026)

Payoff (pages I read per stars): 

266/2 = 133 pages to have to get through to earn each star

Misc Ratings (Out of 5):

• Likability of the ridiculous baseball-y characters: 5
• Likability of the ridiculous religious-y characters: 0
• Resulting imbalance as you might imagine: 5

Bechdel Test: Slightly-less fail. The sisters (and grandma) have a whole scene to themselves that includes the one of the best lines from the book:

“You may grow up to become a gargoyle, or a harridan, or a guttersnipe!” she snapped. “We can’t possibly know – and thank goodness not! What most of us become as adults would terrify us a children.” p. 214

(Only two more books to go until I get to the next woman writer)

Review:

I usually write my review immediately after I finish the book, but this review had to take a bit of a backseat to something “more important” (tax season – blecch) and now I’m having some trouble. Paddy Clarke is blurring in with the other four or five books, pretty much in a row, that I’ve read with the father-son theme. Crow Road, Billy Bathgate (father-figure anyhow), The Road (not read or reviewed for this blog but Wow!), Summerland, and with The Brothers K next up. So I’ll do my darnedest not to repeat myself too much, but here goes.

Paddy Clarke is the good parts of those books done even better. It had the wonderfully disjointed narrative structure of Crow Road, but with such a sense of reflecting the way a kid’s thoughts jump around and still end up getting somewhere. Much of this felt like a collection of connected short stories, until, like a knitting a sweater, a subtle pattern develops and the individual rows slowly begin to grow into a novel.

Where Billy Bathgate is clearly narrated by the older version of the character in vocabulary and reflections, Paddy is a ten year-old telling as quickly as he can in the moment. Both have their merits, but you may be able to tell from my own style that I love a chaotic, child-like voice.

Okay, so The Road does tension and foreboding way better, but Paddy Clarke does a pretty good job in its much smaller way with its smaller, but still life changing, devastations. We see his confusion about his family (‘I didn’t understand. She was lovely. He was nice.’), know where it’s going long before he does, and can only watch as it all slowly unfurls.

And Paddy knows its audience and understands its scope (apparently encompassing every single thought a boy can think) much better than Summerland does. Also, this book is hilarious and, therefore, well-titled. The others not so much.

The Brothers K is up next and that will be the test to see if these books can go five for five with father-son books where the son loses (in some form) the father. Just like if there’s a dog in a story it’s going to die. Can it be done or it that the whole point of the genre? Stay tuned…

(Finished book Jan 21, 2026)

Payoff (pages per stars): 

282/4 = 70.5 pages per star

Guest metrics:

• Surprising boy thoughts per page: minimum 282/282 = 1 boy insight per page at the very least
• Awards to stars: 1 to 4 (Guess fancy award folks didn’t like it as much as I did)

Misc Ratings (Out of 5):

• Quotation marks: 0
• Educational use of 1960’s Irish schoolboy slang (e.g gick, pong, mickey): 5

Bechdel Test: Still Fail! (Only three more books to go until I get to the next woman writer)