SoMinn THE BOOKWORM SEZ

Admissions: A Memoir of Surviving Boarding School

various weekend bands, travelling the tri-state area.

by Kendra James

c.2022, Grand Central Publishing $29.00 304 pages You had three minutes to get to class. A hundred-eighty seconds to rush from room to room, always on the opposite sides of campus – doable, as long as you didn’t have to fetch something from a locker or another spot. Do-able, if you could run What are three identifying characteristics of fast, leap over crouching freshmen, and dodge slowmoving teachers. Do-able, as in the new book “Admissions” by Kendra James, if you didn’t have other Fast guitar riffs, powerful vocals, and a dense frustrations to deal with. For three years after college, Kendra James’ Saturday mornings were set: she spent them speaking to low-income parents and prospective students at a private high school on the upper east side of Manhattan, talking about the benefi ts of private school and the “golden tickets” that would pay for this opportunity. She spoke from experience: James had graduated from Taft, a private high school in Connecticut. That had been a natural conclusion: after the school began accepting African Americans, James’ father was of the fi rst Black graduates. This made James a legacy student, and she was used to being at Taft, she even knew some of the teachers. Even so, private school was an adjustment. Making friends was diffi cult for James then, partly because she was a Black goth nerd who loved Harry Potter and station, or shopping in a specifi c section of a record Xena: Warrior Princess, and partly because she’d been raised with incorrect perceptions about other Black people. She didn’t know that rap music and intelligence could exist together, or how to “code switch.” It even took awhile for her to understand that not all insults know that you and the person standing next to you were really insults. By the beginning of her second year, her “mid” or sophomore year, James had a string of friends and plenty of confi dence. Her nerdiness had a place at Taft, she’d learned to fi t in, and she was mostly happy there with a new best friend and dreams of romance. But there were things that bothered her, that she didn’t quite have the words for yet. There was quiet racism sometimes, and “microaggressions” that James absolutely noticed – just as she saw the racism in a huge, life-changing accusation for a crime she didn’t do... Please don’t give “Admissions” an eye-roll. Author Kendra James concedes, many times and in many ways, that she knew then how privileged she was – an acknowledgment that sometimes appears as guilt. Still, she admits to familial wealth, social blindness, a life of ease, and that sometimes she didn’t know what she didn’t know. The acceptance of that aside, this book is really quite listen to bringing you together with “your people”. fun: though she graduated not so long ago, reading James’ book is like stepping back in time to fumble with the combination on your locker between classes. It’s like wishing for an invite to the Cool Kids table in the lunchroom. It’s a love story to that perfect teacher, the ill-conceived “it’ll go on your permanent record” caper, and a BFF you never see again after graduation. There’s an urgent message inside this book that’s essential reading for educators, but it’s also just plain enjoyable to have. Find “Admissions.” It’s a class act.

Nailing It: How History’s Awesome Twentysomethings Got It Together

by Robert L. Dilenschneider

c.2022, Kensington $16.95 272 pages You hit it square on the head. You said you didn’t think you’d be able to overcome all the awful things you’ve endured in your life, every setback, every naysayer, every tragedy. But then your strengths took over and look, you’re succeeding! Now in “Nailing It” by Robert L. Dilenschneider, get more of the inspiration you need to hit the marks you’ve set. It’s been a rough two years for most of us. For you, it’s seems longer but you’ve put one foot in front of the other anyhow because what else could you do? Robert Dilenschneider says: a lot. Our lives would be the lesser without the contributions of people who have come through fi re and then turned up the heat. No matter what your age, you can enhance the world and here, he profi les twenty-fi ve people to prove it. Take Mozart, for example. He was born a sickly child and never really shook that off. His father, also a musician, pushed young Mozart to excel. His mother gave him the room to explore, though that cost a lot of money. Still, despite those ongoing health issues, both physically and mentally, Mozart wrote more than 600 musical works in his lifetime. Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin was just 10 days old when her mother died. Her father married again a few years later, but Mary didn’t get along with her stepmother. Pregnant by a married man whose wife committed suicide over the indiscretion, Mary wed Percy Shelley but their baby died soon afterward. Even with all this loss, Mary managed to write a masterpiece novel. You know it as Frankenstein. Ulysses Grant’s “accomplishments came in middle age...” Albert Einstein was a poor student and worked at a clerk’s desk, processing patent applications when he was a young man, which gave him a chance to think. Elizabeth Kenney developed a treatment for polio as a young woman, at a time when doctors were mostly only men. Branch Rickey helped Jackie Robinson break the color barrier in baseball. And it took Maria Tallchief, a Native American dancer, twenty-one years to realize her ballet dreams... You have lots of excuses and even more reasons. Now what you need is a boost to forget those things and reach for the top bunk instead. “Nailing It” will help you fi nd that oomph. There’s plenty of it to be had here, and each of the stories offers a different kind of roadblock, ending in varying types of inspiration. Author Robert L. Dilenschneider, who reminds readers that he’s an adult white man, also mixes up the profi les well, representing many different races and nationalities so that readers can easily fi nd fully-relatable tales. Though this books’ subtitle indicates “twentysomethings,” there’s a wide variety of ages represented here, too. Best of all, you don’t have to be in a doleful state to enjoy this book; it offers great biographies and plenty of interesting side-bars to hold a reader’s attention for a long time. Whether you want something breezy or boosting, “Nailing It” hammers both home.

The Fields:

A Novel

by Erin Young

c.2022, Flatiron Books $27.99 352 pages Have you taken your meds yet today? Everybody, it seems, is on something or other: pills for blood pressure, heart health, asthma, or chemo. Pills for your eyes. Pills for your bones. Pink ones for aches, red ones for sinus issues, purple ones for stomach problems, and in the new book “The Fields” by Erin Young, some white ones for murder. She smelled the body long before she saw it. As Sheriff of Black Hawk County, Iowa, Riley Fisher had seen corpses before but this one really shook her. The dead woman had been nearly ripped apart before she died in an Iowa cornfi eld, but what bothered Fisher more was that she knew the deceased. Years before, Riley Fisher had been best friends with Chloe Clark and her little sister, Mia. The girls had been like sisters when the older two had been in high school, but a secret blew them apart and ruined their childhoods. And now, Fisher was looking at her friend, dead. Who would kill someone as nice as Chloe Clark Miller? And what was she doing in the middle of a cornfi eld that she didn’t own? Those were two questions that Sheriff Fisher had to know, but others at her workplace had reservations: could Fisher keep her long-ago friendship with the dead woman out of the equation? And then another body was found nearby, mutilated in a way that was similar, and with a few more clues. It was unlikely that the two dead women knew one another, but Chloe’s husband might’ve known more than he was telling. Some down-on-their-luck local addicts talked about a white van that had been seen snatching people off the street, while others whispered about a “terrorist” organization that was working against an incumbent politician with ties to a powerful corporate seed company. Then a teenage girl went missing, her mother disappeared, and the sister of a Black Hawk County farmer couldn’t be found. And neither could Sheriff Fisher’s niece... For fans of thrillers, “The Fields” has everything you want: some twists and switches, a little angst, a couple of McGuffi ns, and some perfectly gruesome corpses. But there are some things that are going to rankle you, too. First, there are too many characters inside this book – at least twenty names to remember, some of which are just outside the main circle but are nonetheless important. The “secret” that riles Riley Fisher ekes out slower than an ice melt in January, and once it’s (fi nally!) revealed, it’s pretty tame – especially when that thread is up against the four much bigger plots that weave inside this one book. All that leaves readers with the feeling of being surrounded by fi ve stages, different plays, same characters. You scarcely know where to look next. You can look for “The Fields” – indeed, author Erin Young adds authenticity to her location and the solving – but the tornado of plots and characters are really pretty overwhelming. You might enjoy the excitement of this book, or it might be too much to swallow.

Circus of Wonders: A Novel

by Elizabeth Macneal

c.2022, Emily Bestler Books, Atria $27.99 368 pages You want what he got. It’s only fair, right? Things should be equal, and you both know it. Unilateralism, tit for tat, totally equitability, and no favoritism, that’ll all keep the Green-Eyed Monster at bay. Jealousy is no fun but you want what he got, and in the new novel “Circus of Wonders” by Elizabeth Macneal, you’ll have it – or else. Jasper Brown always got his deepest desires. Whether it was a microscope when he was a boy, war as a young man, a new name, women, monsters, a Circus of Wonders, or his brother’s complete fealty, it was his for the asking. And that included the woman Toby had seen in the dirty little coastal village. The woman that, with the proper costume and a name to match the celestial birthmarks on her body, would get Jasper the invitation to London, and a performance for the Queen. The fi rst time Toby saw her, she had dived from a cliff into the ocean and he thought she was dead. He’d never seen a creature more captivating than the woman with speckles all up and down her body and her face; she confused him and he knew he wouldn’t speak of her to Jasper. If Toby dared tell his brother about the girl, the magic of her would disappear. She knew what the villagers thought about her. Even her own father said Nell was a monster, that it was her fault the sea had risen and ruined the crop of fl owers a season or two ago. They all thought it, though she might consider some of the townspeople as friends and she had her beloved brother to lean on. She wondered what he’d said when he learned that their father had sold Nell to the showman named Jasper. And why didn’t he look for Nell, locked away in a carriage smelling of manure and sweat? Could she ever fi nd her way back home? Would she even want to, after she’d learned to love the art of the performance? Don’t expect a lot of abracadabra inside “Circus of Wonders.” It’s not there, not in plot nor setting and it’s missing in each tormented character. Instead, there’s an irresistible authenticity in this book, a bit of circus history, romance, constant damp, and a dark, troubled soul. Come to this novel for that, and stay. Author Elizabeth Macneal keeps you guessing: many bad things can happen to her characters, but references to fairy tales hold hope that goodness might prevail. Still, multiple obsessions let you know that Happily Ever After is highly unlikely; add a bearded bird-caller, a blind albino child, a booming ringmaster who leans into insanity, mix it with a steampunk vibe, and you’ve got a tale that clinks and hisses and soars toward an ending that’s like a spear to your heart. Fans of the three rings will enjoy this book, but readers who are captivated by shaded Victoriana will be happiest with it. If that’s you, then get “Circus of Wonders.” You want what it’s got.