A Visitation of Spirits

This is the second time I've read this novel, but it feels like the first, because the first time I read it was during my first year of grad school and I was dumb enough to take 5 courses, so I was reading 5 or 6 books a week and barely retaining anything of any of them.  Therefore, it was wonderful to be able to just read this novel, to fully absorb its haunting and chilling beauty, and now I even get to teach it to my literature class on Tuesday night.  Visitation is the story of the suicide of 16-year-old Horace Cross, told in a magical realism, Southern gothic style where demons and talking bison appear as characters in Horace's Dickensian journey through his life and everything that led to his tragic end.  Part of the novel is narrated by Horace's cousin Jimmy, a pastor who blames himself for not being able to save Horace.  This novel serves as a warning for anyone tempted to judge, or bully, or convert, or condemn young queer kids, especially in a place like the rural South, specifically Eastern North Carolina in this novel, where it will already be painfully obvious to them that they don't fit in.  Kenan shows his readers that when you are a teenager, your town and your family and your immediate community are your whole world, and if that world rejects you, there is no reason to believe that there is any world out there that won't.  It is about the abject loneliness and despair of being in that situation, and how simple and seductive a "solution" like suicide can seem.  I am so glad I assigned this book, and while I can't imagine that many high school English classes have adopted it into their curricula, I sure wish they would.  Because though this book was published in 1989, in this age of cyberbullying, I would think that the themes presented here are more relevant and urgent than ever.

A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James

I'm not gonna lie -- I am far from qualified to give this book a proper review.  So I'm not even gonna try.  Except to say that everyone should read this book, and coming from me, who generally only reads YA and romance, that's saying a lot.  First of all, I feel very accomplished having finished this novel.  It took me about three months, and I barely read anything else in between to be sure that I actually finished it.  It was worth it.  I am usually a person who thrives on plot, but this one was a study in how to write a novel in many different voices.  There was certainly a plot, that got more interesting as the novel progressed, but the main reason to read this book is because James has a gift for getting into the heads of a whole chorus of characters and making them so distinct that he was able to stop titling the chapters after the characters who were speaking in the last section, and I was able to figure out who each voice was (this is saying a lot because I am not very smart, especially when it comes to character identification).  There was a LOT in this novel that went over my head for various reasons, but it was still compelling throughout and not only do I feel proud of myself for finishing such a complex and difficult novel, but I really enjoyed it.  I wonder how long it's going to take me to stop thinking in Jamaican curse words now.