Death and Dinuguan by Mia P. Manansala ****

 Deathand Dinuguan by Mia P. Manansala

Sixth and final mystery of the Brew-ha ha Café. As usual, there are plenty of female entrepreneurs and recipes with Filipino ingredients. Cooperation and security systems have a big role. Incidentally, someone is murdered. #cozymystery #cozyreads

Amateur sleuth Lila Macapagal is an owner and the baker at the Brew-ha-ha Café. Brew-ha is a play on the Filipino word for witch, bruha. Shady Palms is hit with a string of burglaries that peak with the burglary of Choco Noir, where owner Blake is murdered, and partner Hana Lee is left in a coma. Hana is the cousin of Lila’s boyfriend, dentist Jae Park. Jae’s brother is private detective Jonathan Park. Chocolate-themed events play a larger role in the narrative than Blake’s murder. The adorable dachshund, Longganisa, models a variety of cute costumes.

Most of the book is about food, preparing it, eating it, praising it, and talking about it. “Between the four of us, we split twelve (count ’em, TWELVE) different desserts: chocolate chess pie, hummingbird cake, cherry pie, plain cheesecake, carrot cake, key lime pie, coconut cream pie, vanilla cake with sprinkles, baklava, citrus pound cake, banoffee pie, and the day’s special: mocha fudge brownie cheesecake.”

Contemporary topics are mentioned briefly. Suspect Shawn Ford is accused of sexual harassment. One of the café’s employees is Leslie. Her pronouns are they/them. There’s a mention of Galentine’s Day. The Chocolate Shoppe is Black-owned. One of the burglars is motivated by large medical bills. All of these are incidental to the murder, which is incidental to the food and women entrepreneurs.

The book highlights the 5-4-3-2-1 coping technique for panic attacks. This involves identifying five things you can see, four you can touch, three you can hear, two you can smell and one you can taste. These exercises are simple yet powerful. They offer a sense of stability during turbulent times, helping manage panic effectively.

This is a cozy cozy. Amateur sleuth. Food. Cute pets. More food. And recipes at the back of the book.

Check out https://amazon.com/shop/influencer-20171115075 for Omega Cat Press books and book recommendations. 

Orbital by Samantha Harvey ***

Orbital by Samantha Harvey

The International Space Station orbits the Earth 16 times every day. This is a poetic vision of a day when a super-typhoon passes over the Philippines, and a manned mission flies to the moon. A companion to Artemis II. Beautiful poetry, but not much plot.

The ISS crew is divided between two Russians (Anton and Roman) and four non-Russians (Chie, Japan; Nell, GB; Pietro, Italy; and Shaun, US). The ISS circles the Earth in an oblique orbit between 52° north and 52° south latitude every 90 minutes. Meanwhile, the Earth rotates once a day. This means that the view under the ISS constantly changes, and it visits all points within its latitude range. Cambridge, UK, Saskatoon, Canada, and Mongolia to the north. Southern Chile, south of New Zealand and way south of the Cape of Good Hope. Much of the book repeats this geography 16 times.

The Booker Prize frequently rewards "bold voices" that challenge traditional storytelling. This book won the Booker Prize, possibly for its unique style. Orbital has been called a space exploration meditation. This style may be pioneering and unique, but I wouldn’t give it the subtitle, “A Novel.”

Quotes

She finds she often struggles for things to tell people at home, because the small things are too mundane and the rest is too astounding and there seems to be nothing in between.

Why would you do this? Trying to live where you can never thrive? Trying to go where the universe doesn’t want you when there’s a perfectly good earth just there that does. He’s never sure if man’s lust for space is curiosity or ingratitude. If this weird hot longing makes him a hero or an idiot. Undoubtedly something just short of either.

Artemis: It’s about those four astronauts on their way now to the moon, and the next men and women, the men and women who will one day be going to live on a new lunar station, those who will go into deeper space, the decades of men and women who’ll come after them. Except it’s not even about that, it’s just about the future and the siren song of other worlds, some grand abstract dream of interplanetary life, of humanity uncoupled from its hobbled earth and set free; the conquest of the void.

The book has many lists: They see someone’s dog washed down the street in two metres of soupy thing-thronged water, and the dog’s someone following promptly after it, and a parasol, a pram, a book, a cupboard, dead birds, tarpaulin, a van, many shoes, coconut trees, a gate, a woman’s body, a chair, roof timbers, Christ on his cross, a flag, countless bottles, a steering wheel, clothing, cats, door frames, bowls, road signs, you name it.

Check out https://amazon.com/shop/influencer-20171115075 for Omega Cat Press books and book recommendations. 

The Wedding People by Alison Espach ****

 The Wedding People by Alison Espach

Phoebe’s husband cheated and left her. She went to a fancy hotel to commit suicide. Instead, she became Maid of Honor at Lila’s week-long, million-dollar wedding. Phoebe is the natural foil for Lila, though both are introspective & self-obsessed.

Phoebe has a PhD in 19^th-century literature. After graduating, nothing worked.  Despite years of trying, she was not about to publish her research. She “wrote a dissertation tracking each time Jane Eyre went on a walk in Brontë’s novel.” She was unable to secure a tenure-track teaching position. She is married to  Matt, a successful Professor of Philosophy. After five rounds of IVF, she could not get pregnant. Matt leaves Phoebe for Mia, a tenured professor with a child, who has achieved everything Phoebe failed at. Phoebe shines at the wedding, where she is a novelty. This is a novel of redemption through leaving home.

While Phoebe is a total failure at her St. Louis school, she is a celebrity among the Wedding people. “I like that you know when gargoyles were invented.”

“I think it’s just your vibe,” Gary says. “You come off as … very smart. Like you’ve studied everything and now have all the world’s knowledge inside of you.”

“Is that obnoxious?”

“It’s the best.”

 

Phoebe was a “small fish” within her school faculty, but a “big fish in a small pond” among the wedding people. While Phoebe was ordinary in mid-America, she shines among the sophisticated elite of Newport, Rhode Island. I had a similar experience when I left my elite college for the real world.

Most nights, she looked back at all of her research, all of her spreadsheets, all of her journals and her papers and her injections and thought, What the f**k?

Art helps us feel alive. And this had been true for Phoebe—Phoebe used to read books and feel astounded. She used to walk around galleries, inspired by the beautiful human urge to create. But that was years ago. Now she can’t stand the sight of her books. Can’t bear the thought of reading hundreds of pages just to watch Jane Eyre get married again.

“And my advisor kept emailing me being like, Who cares if it’s a piece of shit! Everybody’s dissertation is a piece of shit. That’s what dissertations are.”

“What are you doing to the décor?” Lila asks. She looks at them like she’s stumbled upon a bank robbery. “They’re books, not décor,” Phoebe says. Phoebe doesn’t have too many beliefs, but this is one of them.

“Tomorrow morning, you can join us for the bridal brunch in the conservatory.” A ridiculous sentence if Phoebe ever heard one.

So many clever observations.

Check out https://amazon.com/shop/influencer-20171115075 for Omega Cat Press books and book recommendations. 

The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters *****

 The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters

Four-year-old Ruthie was abducted and raised by Lenore as Norma. Her six-year-old brother Joe was the last to see her. Years later, Joe abandoned his pregnant wife. Norma and Joe were two lost souls until they reunited with their biological family.

This book is about the powerful (and fictional) attraction to our biological roots. Ruthie is never comfortable as Norma. Norma is obsessed with the differences between herself and her parents, Lenore and Frank. “Both my parents had earlobes firmly attached to the sides of their heads. Mine were not.” Joe feels guilty for Ruthie’s abduction, his brother Charlie’s murder at a carnival, and for hitting his wife, Cora. He runs away, waiting for the family to get him. They don’t.

This novel is set within the larger struggle of Native Americans in North America to reclaim their culture and identity within the pressure and coercion of white society. Ruthie’s abduction by Lenore and her judge husband, Frank, stands in for the Indian Schools. “Kill the Indian and save the man.” As an allegory for this battle, the book works well. However, the surface story of the primal attraction to one’s biological roots is overstated. For every person drawn to their biological origins, there is another who couldn't care less.

The author, Amanda Peters, is a citizen of the Glooscap First Nation in Nova Scotia, specializing in stories about Indigenous experiences.

“That’s why I found it strange that no word exists for a parent who loses a child. If children lose their parents, they are orphans. If a husband loses his wife, he’s a widower. But there’s no word for a parent who loses a child. I’ve come to believe that the event is just too big, too monstrous, too overwhelming for words. No word could ever describe the feeling, so we leave it unsaid.”

Check out https://amazon.com/shop/influencer-20171115075 for Omega Cat Press books and book recommendations.