Review: Isolations and (dis)place in ‘The King is Always Above the People’ by Daniel Alarcón

Review: The King is Always Above the People by Daniel Alarcón, Riverhead Books, Oct 31 2017, 256 pages

---

There was no moon that first night, and we spent it as we spent our days: your fathers and your mothers have always worked with their hands.

Today I want to recommend THE KING IS ALWAYS ABOVE THE PEOPLE, a solid new collection of stories that befit our current times so well.

TL;DR – Themes: grappling with isolation, identity, belonging, the uncertainty of starting over, sons and their fathers, the hard feelings of the immigrant experience for his South American characters as some arrive in search of and some leave in search for a home. Subtly political. Recommended.

“I think I know what my old man is trying to get at,” I said. “I believe I do. And I understand it because I feel the same way toward the capital. He meant no offense, but you have to understand what happens, over time, when one leaves.”

My favourites included ‘The Thousands’ (about the origins of land, set over the course of one night where a group of immigrants made a home for themselves that they were not displaced from, as told to a descendant) and ‘The Ballad of Rocky Rontal’ (the life, crimes, and contemplations of a gang member who after tragic events is forced to contemplate ‘the true meanings of simple words: compassion. Understanding. Consideration. Forgiveness’). My favourite of the longer pieces in this collection were ‘The King is Always Above the People’ (where a young boy who left home now returns, and his ongoing confusion, anguish, and stasis amid instability following democracy replacing a dictatorship) and ‘The Bridge’ (the curious case of the killing of the protagonist’s uncle and aunt, and visitations to his father, to convey the news, and who resides in an institution. The protagonist returns to his uncle and aunt’s home to transformative effect).

There is lots to appreciate about Alarcón’s enviously great writing style. Every sentence progresses action. His descriptions are so clear to envision. Each story feels like a ‘slice of life’ and end poignantly, albeit some poignant endings hit harder than others.

It was a wretched country we were living in, stinking, violent, diseased.

nb. These stories interconnect in theme rather than through overlapping characters/content, but for a mention of The Thousands in a later story.

 

Reviews, II

Welcome to ‘Reviews’, the segment where I review stories I’ve read recently with varying degrees of detail and inanity. Read on to see what I’ve been enjoying and upon which writer the most illustrious and highly coveted 🏆 emoji for ‘The Best Damn Thing I Damn Did Read’ has been bestowed.

---

The Broken Earth Trilogy by N. K. Jemisin – 4 STARS

• The Fifth Season (2015)
• The Obelisk Gate (2016)
• The Stone Sky (2017)

When the end of the world happens, which Essun plays a far greater role in than she could’ve ever anticipated, she is is a mother-of-two whose young son has just been brutally killed by her partner Jija. Essun’s son was an oregene—someone who can harness the Earth’s elemental energy, and has the ability to do things such as causing earthquakes—and with the world now literally falling apart around her, Essun can no longer be an oregene in hiding. Jija has fled with their daughter and Essun leaves her community to find her and get her revenge. That story is just one piece of a ornate puzzle. Essun’s story is joined by Damaya, who is a young girl taken from her home to receive training as an oregene, and by Syenite, a young oregene woman who has received instructions from her superiors that will have very a unexpected and transformative impact on her life and everyone else’s.

There is a lot to love about this series. This is high fantasy that makes me excited as someone who greatly appreciates the genre both as a reader and writer. The Broken Earth trilogy features very detailed, vivid, geology-based world-building that is a delight to get accustomed to. The cast of characters here live in a tough and collapsing world, and are themselves an intriguing lot damaged by an array of traumas and who over the course of the series make unpredictable decisions by grief. Without spoiling the series, there’s a few narrative tricks at play here such as the second person narration and the structure of the first book in particular that were fun. My only criticism is that especially through using second person Jemisin tells you everything about how her characters operate which can be far too much and leaves very little to the imagination. At points in the first book especially the language/dialogue also grows quite melodramatic (far too many italics and ellipsis’s) but this became less of an issue as I got more invested.

Be reassured, however, because those are small complaints. In all, there’s a slow ongoing reveal about what is going on and how everything is connected that takes place in these three books that is greatly satisfying. Once you’re under its thrall The Broken Earth trilogy is absorbing as fuck. This is for the people who love high fantasy and want a glimpse as to what the future of the genre may look like. This is also for those who want to read a high fantasy that isn’t Eurocentric. This series is enjoyable to read and features some really excellent moments to look forward to.

They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera – 3 STARS

The premise is simple but engaging: a company called DeathCast exists and they give you a notification on the day you’re about to die. Because of this company we now live in a society with the blessing and curse that is having advanced warning. When you have advanced warning of your impending death, you can ensure that your last day alive is spent living life to its fullest. We follow two teenage boys marked for death, Matteo and Rufus, as they spend a whirlwind last twenty four hours together.

If a review could hurt me it would be this one. I love Adam Silvera and what his books, featuring LGBT characters of colour, represent for YA. We need him. He is for me the most interesting new YA contemporary/speculative fiction writer of the last few years. Having said that this book didn’t hit the right notes.

Emotionally impacting the reader is of importance for a romance set over twenty four hours featuring two teenagers trying to live their best lives before their inevitable death by the day’s end. And to that end They Both Die at the End is underwhelming. Silvera writes simply and really inhabits the voice of his characters so his books are easy to fly through. But overall this book read a bit too juvenile and (surprisingly for a book on dying and living your best life) did not achieve the depth I was looking for. Including a twenty-four hour romance and the subsequent whistle-stop (and often cheesy) nature of all of the couple’s conversations and interactions that follow have something to do with that. You can read more about my thoughts on my review here but the short of it is that this wasn’t it for me. Silvera has promise, though, and I love that he’s achieving success with LGBT characters of colour. Make money, king.

Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng – 3 STARS

Another one that I was excited to read because there was lot of good things said about Celeste Ng’s debut, Everything I Never Told You. That one came out in 2014 and I still hadn’t gotten around to reading it. Then, in the weeks leading up to release, a succession of positive reviews for Little Fires Everywhere peppered my social media.

Dear reader, I was excited. I harboured no premonitions as I started with book in hand, with green tea besides. I wanted to like this.

The majority of Little Fires Everywhere is pedestrian and underwhelming. The novel is told through the perspective of white middle-class characters and I could absolutely feel it, each page had weight. I just did not care for their perspective around this novel’s interesting central issue regarding a Chinese woman’s attempt to regain custody over her child where that child has been taken in by a white family. There is also so much ‘telling’ used to convey what are supposed to be close and dynamic relationships between the characters. Significant parts of chapters in this novel read like Wikipedia summaries of relationships between characters. The novel does end well and so I am glad to have stuck with it. Unfortunately, as a purported drama between two families that meet and become obsessed with each other at a devastating cost, I was bored and uninterested in the lives of the majority of the run–of-the-mill, bland characters populating this book.

Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward – 4 STARS, and 🏆.

The less you know about this one the better. You must simply know that Sing, Unburied, Sing is fantastically written and deals finely with an assorted bunch of issues that culminate toward an incredible piece of work. This is a story about poverty, the aftershocks of intergenerational trauma, the effects of bad(/borderline abusive?) parenting on children, and drug addiction. All set in the South and with added ghosts. It feels sweaty, grimy, and claustrophobic. Sing, Unburied, Sing is what an engaging family drama (and what literary fiction, generally) should be and I didn’t even know it could be until I read it with my own eyes. You can stick a 🏆 in that pipe and smoke it.

 

And that’s all from me, dear reader. Congratulations to Jesmyn Ward. I know what with the autumn months there are so many amazing books being released but you definitely want to make time for Sing, Unburied, Sing.

Until next time this is your friendly neighbourhood peruser of the written word, signing out!

Reviews, I

Welcome to ‘Reviews’, the segment where I review stories I’ve read recently with varying degrees of detail and inanity. Read on to see what I’ve been enjoying and upon which writer the most illustrious and highly coveted 🏆 emoji for ‘The Best Damn Thing I Damn Did Read’ has been bestowed.

---

Euphoria by Lily King – 3.5 STARS

2014, literary/historical fiction, (minimally elaborated upon) bisexual rep via one of the main characters

This one’s about three anthropologists who are studying Aboriginal tribes in Australia, two of whom are in a relationship, the other a stranger-turned-friend. The three learn more about each other’s troubled pasts and develop an obsession with each other over the course of one tumultuous summer. This was decent enough, but dear Reader I was promised obsession and I didn’t get it to the extent that I wanted. To my readers who are also writers, obsession is definitely something you show as opposed to tell. This is nevertheless a good one to read under sunshine.

To the Bright Edge of the World by Eowyn Ivey – 4 STARS

2016, literary/historical fiction, (minimally elaborated upon) gay rep in one of the side characters

Bright Edge… is a novel about an explorer Allen Forrester who in 1885 undertakes a perilous (and even mystical) expedition to Alaska. It’s also about the transformative year his wife Sophie goes on to have, who is left behind just as she finds that she’s pregnant. We go back and forth between Allen’s diary entries as he faces setback after setback, and Sophie’s journal entries as she loses and then begins to find herself by taking up photography. We also skip tens of years into the future with correspondence between Allen Forrester’s now elderly descendent and a staff member at a museum who takes interest in these unusual diaries. This is the kind of historical fiction I love: dealing with ‘forgotten’ events, transformative encounters, and full of perspectives that all add something to the story. This book definitely could have been shorter but it truly felt like I had ended a journey of my own as I got to its end. This was good.

Days Without End by Sebastian Barry – 3 STARS

2016, literary/historical fiction, war fiction, gay rep, trans rep

I had issues with this one. I read DWE after seeing that it had been nominated for the Man Booker prize this year. It’s also published by Faber, where I was attempting to get a job ().

This one’s set in the late 1800’s and is about the lives of two U.S soldiers, Thomas McNulty and John Cole, who spend the majority of the book in a regiment fighting against Native Americans in the American Indian Wars and later in the Civil War. They are also in a relationship. This is expressly said, and the notion that Thomas is a trans woman is suggested over the course of the novel. So I think it’s fair to state that this is a story of two LGBT soldiers attempting to come to terms with the genocide they are partly to blame for and to carve out a life together away from war. For me, reading about all the fighting got repetitive. But the ambivalent reading experience I had with this book was not entirely wasted because it did leave me wondering what is gained from retelling colonialist narratives from the perspective of LGBT white people, specifically? It’s an interesting question, no? Is there something different about this novel even though it’s just another story about white people killing and colonising and pillaging people of colour, because  those genocidal acts are being viewed from two white people who are part of a minority group, who have to keep themselves closeted?

I have a point to make but it needs groundwork. So here are some more-or-less self-evident things: as you well know, dear reader, being LGBT is a minority status and while the corollary of being queer is our increasing chances of being oppressed, persecuted and straight-up killed, I would like to think our queerness generally increases our empathy towards others, especially towards other minorities. That notion, however, is naïve because in reality we’re all a smorgasbord of privileges thrown into a bucket to create an…interesting alcoholic beverage, one that would likely ferment in fun ways if you left it out too long. Ew. Although LGBT representation is on the rise what with social media, and in mainstream art—novels and film, in particular, but which require big studios and publishers taking a chance/believing work with queer main characters is profitable —we are very much still in the shade. This is because when LGBT representation actually does appear, it tends to be about white LGBT people…because racism (2017 in two words) or an erroneous notion that main characters who are POC are by their skin colour also dissonant with what films the ‘general public’ wants to watch, or more importantly, to pay for. [Why is this an erroneous notion? You need only check out the box office figures for Get Out, Moonlight, Girls Trip, Lion, and Slumdog Millionaire among others. The upcoming Marvel film Black Panther also says hi.]

But however likeable Thomas and John Cole are as individuals and as partners (and they are likeable), however their (relatively) greater empathy for Native Americans and African-Americans, and however their queerness plays a role in promoting both of those things…these two characters maintain(ed) the status quo. Being likeable and empathetic to other people’s struggle may be respectable but doesn’t absolve them of genocide. What interests me, then, about the hype Days Without End is receiving, with its queer love story and Barry’s distinctive, ‘beautiful’ writing style at its centre (and a style that persists as his main characters perform genocidal acts) is the following question: will the queerness of Barry’s characters become instrumental in helping to market this retelling as a ‘beautiful’, ‘progressive’, ’subversive’ or otherwise palatable novel when it remains fundamentally about white characters performing genocide on mostly nameless Native Americans?

Added to that are two things, namely that:

1. It is very difficult for novels about us LGBTQ+ people to make it to the mainstream, and
2. With the success of the film Moonlight the exception to the rule, the rule is that to sell books featuring LGBTQ+ characters, they must be LGBT+ white characters and written by white writers, too. [In my eight years of reading I have encountered but one novel written by a person of colour featuring white gay characters that sold very well, and that is A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. That one’s where the gay and self-harming main character, Jude, suffers beyond measure and that he does not receive a happy ending is but a very light way of putting it.]

So, that a novel like Days Without End may make it to the mainstream with LGBT main characters yet carrying the trappings of white privilege, to be possibly sold as a ‘beautiful’ or ‘subversive’ retelling on these horrible historical events because queerness is present…well, dear reader, it makes me sad.

The Lamentation of their Women by Kai Ashante Wilson – 4 STARS, and 🏆

2017, Urban fantasy, horror, short story, African-American rep

My first short story of this review post, and right now you can click here to go read it! Not only was it brilliant but you can go read it too for free, so go do that. In this story a woman from the Bronx stumbles upon questionable items rummaging through her aunt’s house, who has recently died. She (and her boo-thing) are then compelled toward certain misadventures.