The Motion Picture Teller

by Colin Cotterill

Soho Press/ Penguin Random House Publisher Services

   Ali & Supot are best friends. Supot works for the Royal Thai Mail Service, Ali's Video Rental is where he & Ali spend much of their time watching movies. In their early thirties, there is a "failure to launch" about them both, which they refer to as "waiting for the big something". In the meantime they rent a few videos to local people and add a movie they deem a classic (Seven Samurai, for instance) free of charge in the hopes of creating some more serious film watchers. They spend most evenings in Ali's viewing room in the back of the shop, watching and re-watching classic movies with Thai subtitles. Ali is hoping they will learn languages this way; he is also working on his own film script, with help and criticism from Supot.

   Their lives change when one night a local named Woot brings some videos to sell. Among the professional cassettes is one plain white box with a handwritten label which says Bangkok 2010. Thus begins a journey for both men, as Supot falls madly in love with the beautiful star and Ali reluctantly agrees to help him find out more about the film and the star.

   This is a wonderful thoughtful look at friendship, obsession, maturity and just a bit of mysterious Thai history. 

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 Independence

by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Wm.Morrow/Harper Collins

   Three sisters in 1947 India are coming of age just as Partition tears their world apart. Each sister's character is very well defined in the days leading up to the chaos and massacres - one a practical but romantic homebody, one a beautiful talented singer and one who wants to follow her father into medicine. Divakaruni interjects brief lyrical pieces that keep us tied to history and does a fine job of showing how each sister changes to face the horrors of their changing world. There is family strife and romance in the novel as it gives a female-centered view of the nightmare of Partition.

   There is also a recent New Yorker article "Blood Lines" by Parul Sehgal (January 2 & 9, 2023) which gives a more in depth look at the literature about this time.

If you would like to know more about or own this book, please try your local bookstore or bookshop.org

 

Tell Me an Ending

by Jo Harkin

Simon & Schuster

   If you could have a memory (or two) permanently removed, would you want to? Even if you knew that you wouldn't remember doing this or what the memory was? 

   People all around the world are suddenly notified that they have the opportunity to regain  memories that they don't remember having had removed and now they have a brief window in which to decide if they want to have a part of their lives returned.

   We meet several of the people making this choice and come to sympathize with their fears and desires and the immense gravity of the decisions they must make.

   Noor is a psychologist recently hired by a clinic in London where these restorations will take place. The more she learns about the program, the greater her moral ambiguity becomes. She must decide if she wants to work for this company and if she does, if there is any way that she can help these people. 

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The Conjure-Man Dies : A Mystery Tale of Dark Harlem

by Rudolph Fisher

Poisoned Pen Press

   This is reportedly the first known mystery novel (published in 1932) by an African American. The setting is an intriguing Harlem peopled with doctors, morticians, gamblers and the man they all are concerned with, N'Gana Frimbo, a self-proclaimed African King and a conjure-man - a teller of futures. 

   Sadly, Fisher died very young and there will not be a series with these great characters who are a large part Sherlock Holmesian, but also Shakespearian. There is much more I would love to read about them.

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Drunk on All Your Strange New Words 

by Eddie Robson 

Tordotcom/Macmillan Press 

   Lydia is a human, a translator working with the extra-terrestrial, Fitz, who is a Logi official in the early days of Earth’s first-contact. The difficulties are many, most profoundly that the Logi communicate telepathically in a language that works like tequila on the human brain. A translator can only do so much before becoming reeling drunk; Lydia and Fitz both understand this and Fitz tries to help Lydia maintain decorum. 

   Unfortunately, a murder occurs and Lydia needs to clear her name within a very dicey situation. Robson writes a deft and humorous science fiction/murder mystery with characters you come to care about and technology you can only wish were real.

If you would like to know more about or own this book, please try your local bookstore or bookshop.org