Review: Partita (by Barbara Kingsolver)

My Rating: 4.5 stars

Barbara Kingsolver’s newest novel Partita is a beautifully rendered, deeply introspective novel about the myriad ways that life and art can intertwine to create moments both tender and harsh, soothing and chaotic, happy and sad. When we first meet the story’s protagonist Livia Bohusz, she is a middle-aged woman living a modest, peaceful life with her husband Charlie on the farm in Tennessee where they both grew up – until one day, Livia receives a phone call from Sigurd, a man with whom she had a passionate but tumultuous love affair back when she was a 20-year-old piano prodigy studying at a music conservatory in Indiana.  Sigurd’s request to see Livia again stirs up traumatic memories of a past filled with loss and resentment that she would rather keep buried.  The rest of the story, then, alternates between past and present, with the first-person narrative from Livia’s point of view giving us a front row seat to the trials and tribulations of her life.  In many ways, Livia’s experiences parallel the ebbs and flows of the musical compositions that are mentioned throughout the story (there is a list of pivotal pieces at the end of the book, along with page numbers referring back to the relevant scenes), and Kingsolver cleverly titles each chapter with a musical term which I assume has significance to things that happen in the chapter (I’m not a classical music person so I’m not 100% familiar with each term, but I recognized a few of them just from having come across them in other contexts). I especially appreciate the way Kingsolver gives readers intimate insight into Livia’s thoughts and feelings at different stages of her life through the first-person narrative voice.  With that said however,  I have to admit that I was a bit apprehensive initially because stories told in first person can be a hit or miss for me – but Kingsolver proves to be a master at it in this case, as I was completely captivated by Livia telling her own story from the very first page.  As a flawed protagonist, Livia could of course be frustrating at times (more than once, I felt like I wanted to shake some sense into her), but even so, I loved that she was portrayed in a nuanced way.  In essence, we are given intimate insight into Livia’s thoughts and feelings at different stages of her life, which allows us to witness the evolution of her character as she reflects upon the past in her current present.  This is, without a doubt, a character-driven story where the protagonist goes through a lot, but learns and grows from those experiences in the process.

My one complaint about this book would be its ending, which I felt was too abrupt and also didn’t match the emotional intensity of the rest of the story.  In addition, it also felt to me that in order to truly appreciate the way that the ending played out, you need to have some familiarity with classical music, whereas I didn’t have that feeling with the rest of the story, even though the entire story is structured liked a musical composition.  It is mostly because of the ending (and a few other minor things) that I ultimately rated this one 4.5 stars, despite the fact that, up until the last chapter or so, this was pretty much a 5 star read all the way through.

This is my first Barbara Kingsolver novel and it certainly won’t be my last!  I can definitely see why Kingsolver won the Pulitzer Prize (which reminds me that I still need to read her prize-winning novel, Demon Copperhead), as the first thing that stood out to me as I was reading Partita is the beautiful, lyrical prose, which honestly blew me away. Kingsolver truly gets at the emotional core of both the character and story with her writing and I’m definitely interested in reading more – luckily, she has a pretty big backlist to explore, which I am absolutely looking forward to!

For those who have read Partita, I recommend also reading this Goodreads interview with Barbara Kingsolver where she talks about the inspiration for the story and also provides some additional context that really enhanced my engagement with the book (though I don’t see any major spoilers, probably best to wait until you’re done reading the book to check out the interview): https://www.goodreads.com/interviews/show/1606.Barbara_Kingsolver?content_type=interviews.

Received ARC from Harper via NetGalley.

Review: Paper Ghosts (by Sarah Addison Allen)

My Rating: 4.5 stars

I’ve had several of Sarah Addison Allen’s books on my TBR for ages, but had never gotten around to reading any of them.  Then, a few months ago, I was sent an ARC of her newest release, Paper Ghosts, and upon reading the premise, I was both intrigued and a little wary at the same time.  Books that incorporate magical realism have always been a hit or miss for me, so from that perspective, I was more than a bit apprehensive going into this one, wondering where on the spectrum this would end up.  It turns out this was on the “hit” side, as I was thoroughly absorbed with the story and, most importantly for me, I absolutely adored the characters.  I especially loved Willamena and Jack, so much in fact, that I honestly could not help feeling a bit disappointed when I realized that the present timeline, with its focus on Willamena’s granddaughter Bailey’s perspective, seemed to be the more dominant arc of the story.  With that said, I did appreciate the interesting way in which the two timelines came together, even if I did feel that there were some unexplained gaps at certain points that kind of threw me for a loop (especially in Willamena’s story arc), though I guess I shouldn’t really have been surprised given the magical realism component, which sometimes I forget about when I’m reading until I come across an element that breaks slightly with reality.  Speaking of which, this was another aspect that I appreciated about the story – how the supernatural elements were incorporated in ways that were subtle and meaningful, but never overwhelming. 

As I mentioned earlier, the story is told via a dual timeline: one in 1976 when Willamena is a young woman in her last year of high school, and the other in Present Day starting with Willamena’s granddaughter Bailey as a child through her adult years.  While I did prefer Willamena’s timeline more, one thing I felt that both timelines did extremely well was in its atmospheric depiction of the Wester House, as well as the overall mystery surrounding the Wester legacy.  This is one of those books where the setting is as much a character as the humans – and not just the house either, but the entire town in which the story takes place also has its own distinctive personality, which contributed to making this even more atmospheric. I also really like the way Sarah Addison Allen writes – she is known for her lyrical prose and I can definitely see why:  the writing flowed beautifully throughout, capturing an emotional poignancy that made this such a heartfelt and moving read.

With its gothic vibes and ghost story element that gives it a touch of spookiness, this is an ideal read for the fall season.  If you love multigenerational family stories with a little bit of everything – romance, mystery, coming of age, and hints of the supernatural – I definitely recommend picking this one up.  Since reading this also piqued my interested in Allen’s backlist works, perhaps this is a good time to finally pick up her books that have been lingering on my TBR.

Received ARC from St. Martin’s Press via NetGalley.

Review: Taipei Story (by R.F. Kuang)

My Rating: 4 stars 

I’m recovering from an ear infection this past week that affected my ability to concentrate, so I haven’t been able to get as much reading done as I had hoped.  I’ve been able to plow through, but it will probably be slow-going for a couple more weeks, which unfortunately doesn’t bode well for my ginormous fall reading list (especially given the fact that I’m also a bit behind on my summer reading too and have been trying to catch up).  That said, I am determined to get through all the 2026 books I’ve been planning to read, since I want a clean slate as much as possible going into 2027 given the number of anticipated releases I already have lined up (I’m sure fellow bookworms can relate).

Anyway, working my way (slowly) through my fall TBR, I decided to start with one of this season’s most anticipated releases, R.F. Kuang’s Taipei Story.  Kuang’s newest work is a bit of a departure for her genre-wise, as she goes the straight up literary fiction route this time around (as opposed to her previous works which leaned more toward fantasy, dark academia, and literary satire), and while I did enjoy this one more than the other works of hers that I’ve read (Yellowface and Katabasis, specifically), it didn’t blow me away in the way that I was expecting it to.  This is an important point to make in this case because for me personally, out of all of Kuang’s works, Taipei Story is the one most in my wheelhouse – from a genre perspective, literary fiction is one of my favorite genres to read, and from a subject matter perspective, my Chinese background means that I am intimately familiar with the language and culture elements that form the crux of the story.  Most of all though, I also share a background with the story’s protagonist Lily Chen, being from an immigrant family and part of the Chinese diaspora, who grew up speaking mostly English in everyday life and Chinese only with my family while learning the mechanics of the language (Mandarin, that is) mostly through school.  To this point, I could absolutely relate to Lily’s struggles with learning Chinese, as I had similar experiences during my own undergraduate education pursuing a degree in Asian Studies.  Indeed, the scenes involving Lily’s one-on-one class with Teacher Sun reminded me of the independent study class I took during that time, which was taught by one of the university’s esteemed Chinese literature professors.  I remember the feelings of anxiety when, for my final project in the class, I had to write a critical analysis essay on Su Tong’s classic novel Raise the Red Lantern entirely in Chinese – a feat made even more difficult given the fact that computer-based foreign language typing applications were not common back then, so I actually had to write the entire essay out by hand (though I guess the silver lining is that I was able to get plenty of practice writing Chinese characters).  Having to endure my own “sea of red” for many of the assignments in that class, I could definitely understand Lily’s feelings of frustration and inadequacy in those instances.

When I read a book where there are so many aspects that I’m familiar with (i.e. the language, culture, history, etc.), it usually enhances the reading experience for me.  In this instance, Kuang packed her novel not just with tons of language-related and historical elements that I was already familiar with, she also incorporated a lot of film, literature, food, and pop culture references that I also recognized.  Yet, oddly enough, while reading this book, I didn’t feel particularly connected to either the story or the characters. Now that I think about it, this seems to be a common problem I have with Kuang’s books – regardless of how much certain elements of the story seem to resonate with me (familiarity with the subject matter and/or cultural elements, a shared background with the main character, etc.), I always feel a bit of an emotional distance with her works that makes it difficult to connect or engage at a level that would make the read 5 stars for me.  I am not able to pinpoint exactly what the issue is; as I mention in my previous reviews of Kuang’s works, she is obviously a skillful, intelligent writer – but perhaps that is precisely the problem:  I think sometimes Kuang’s highly impressive academic pedigree (undergraduate studies at Georgetown, master’s degree from Cambridge, another master’s degree from Oxford, currently working on a PhD at Yale) ends up getting in the way of her stories, albeit unintentionally.  With Taipei Story, there were large swaths of the book that, to me at least, seemed to contain “information dumps” which felt irrelevant to the story – in turn, these “information dumps” were often relayed in a matter-of-fact manner that made me feel like I was reading an excerpt from an academic essay or a textbook.  Of course, there is nothing wrong with showing off what you know (it IS one of the golden rules of writing, after all, to “write what you know”), especially if you’ve put in the effort to do the copious amounts of research (which Kuang obviously does with every book) to back up that knowledge, but I think the less-than-seamless way that knowledge (research) is incorporated into the story can, in some instances, have an unintended negative effect on the story (at least for this reader it did).

Overall, I would have to say that this was definitely an enjoyable read that I liked well enough (I mean, I did give it 4 stars when both Yellowface and Katabasis got 3.5 stars and 3 stars, respectively), but I didn’t “love” it like I initially thought I would.  That said, I definitely continue to be interested in reading Kuang’s works – though perhaps knowing that her books usually take a little more time for me to complete, I should plan better in the future and wait to tackle them during a time when I’m under less pressure to get through a ridiculously long TBR list

Received ARC from William Morrow via NetGalley.