Reviews and Comments

A fascinating memoir about being Jewish and being Black, and about what it takes to thrive in difficult circumstances

I haven’t read much Afrofuturism, but this was an interesting, fun read with a vivid main character and an interesting situation.

Set in the universe of Central Station, which was much better.

This morning I realized that the reason this book seemed familiar when I took it out from the library’s e-book collection was because my wife had bought the physical book last week.

So far, the best comic novel I’ve ever read about a woman with extreme anxiety.

A very readable exploration of what it means to make art and what it’s like to be a teenager and to keep a secret.

(read advance review copy) One of the things I love about Kwei Quartey's Emma Djan series is the slice of life in Ghana that they show. This one takes that up a notch (perhaps one notch too high). There's a lot less of Emma's personal life in this one, and lot more of the life of the victims and suspects. At some times, this background threatened to overwhelm the storytelling. But it did wrap up in a satisfactory way.

This book did make me think much more about addresses. A couple of the wide-ranging chapters made me think and taught me interesting history and made me think (for instance, the invention of numbers in the Austrian Empire and their implications). But others seemed to be stretching it, and treading familiar ground at great length (a brief history of apartheid and how streets named for confederate generals are controversial).

Cleverly intertwined stories. It pulls off the interesting truck of being dystopian sci-fi that is realistic and also not totally depressing. But in the end, I’m not sure it adds up to much.

A good introduction to someone I had heard of but knew absolutely nothing about.

Interesting but not as good as the start of the series