ASRC 2022 Week 9 (8/15-8/21/22)

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Week 9 Board

Here are our staff reviews for the week:

Elias: What a week to land on Religion & Spirituality. I was swamped and nearly didn't have time to pick one of these books up. At least I didn't land on history or I never would've made it in time. As it was, I wasn't able to read a specific book but I did read the Parsha of the week (the weekly section of Torah.) This week was Vaetchanan, which is chapters 3.1 - 7.11 in Deutoronomy, and is notable for containing both a repetition of the ten commandments and for being the source of the first two sections of the Shema, a foundational prayer in Judaism.

I had forgotten that the two sections were basically right next to each other and were near the top of Moses' speech. Also contained here is the revelation, at least to the Israelites at the time, that Moses was essentially stepping down as leader and would not follow them across the river Jordan. It's not quite chapter 1 but that's certainly a way to kick off a final book.

I'm not much into exegesis so that's all I'll really say about that. I know this was a bit cheaty this week but sometimes you gotta find the loopholes in the rules when you're reading a book a week (on top of the other ones on your nightstand.)

Deborah: Oh the horror! Whether you dread it or find it deliciously dreadful, chances are you have strong feelings about this genre. As a tween, I couldn’t get enough of it. I inhaled every disturbing Stephen King and Dean Koontz novel I could get my hands on … until apparently I did get enough because at some point in my high school I stopped reading the stuff. Only recently did I give horror another go, thanks to grad school and reading challenges like these. To my happy surprise, I’ve discovered a whole sub-universe of horror that my more sensitive adult reading self can handle and enjoy. The trick now is to refine my discovery techniques so that I can find the exact right dose and nature of creepy to sink myself into.

The Return by Rachel Harrison (Berkley, 2020) was a perfect example: a creepy, goosebump-raising read about a young woman who disappears in the woods of Maine—and then reappears, long after everyone except her best friend Elise has accepted she must be dead. Elise feels grateful, relieved, even vindicated for not giving up. But when reunited with Julie at a girls’ weekend organized by their close-knit group of college friends at a bonkers hotel in the Catskills, she finds her disturbingly changed and with no memory of what happened in the two years she was gone. Also, there’s something making scratching noises in the hotel walls...

This was Harrison’s debut novel, and although the pacing struck me as sometimes uneven and I felt like some of the plot threads were left dangling, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I thought it was such a brilliant, creative way to explore the complexity of female friendships, the specific grief of losing a friend, and the fear that comes with intimacy—what it means to truly know another person, its possibilities and limits. It filled me with delicious dread and kept me reading beyond my usual gross-out factor.

I say read if you’re in the mood for: haunting, grotesque, menacing, atmospheric, tense, offbeat, flawed characters, slowly-building pace. I’d recommend it to adult or teen readers looking for introspective stories about female friendships, especially with new adult characters—and who enjoy (or at least don’t mind) being scared and, yes, a bit disgusted. This would be a fabulous pick for a friend-based book club.

I won’t say more for fear of spoilers, but if you’re sensitive to certain kinds of content, Storygraph is generally a great resource for content warnings. I like that they pack in extensive information, but laid out so that you see it only if you are looking for that level of detail. The main entry page for each book has a much smaller summarized content warning section tucked into the left side of the page that’s useful if you want it, but also easy to ignore if you’d prefer not to know anything.

* 4/5 stars *

We'll see you back on the the 22nd of August for the start of week 10!