Hi {First Name},
In this issue, we walk you through the components of our featured books by highlighting Anthony Veasna So's Afterparties, a luminous debut short story collection about a community of Cambodian Americans living in California.
We also take a look at reviews from our First Impressions readers for Blind Man's Bluff, a moving memoir by James Tate Hill about his experience coping with the loss of his sight as a teenager.
And coinciding with the upcoming release of Sally Rooney's Beautiful World Where Are You, we bring you a blog post about Literary Dublin.
Very best,
Davina
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Each month we give away books to BookBrowse members who live in the U.S. to read and review. Members who choose to participate receive a free book about every 3-4 months. Here are their opinions on one recently released title. |
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Blind Man's Bluff
by James Tate Hill
Reader Reviews
"I enjoyed this memoir about a young man who began to go blind as a teenager and his journey through his young adulthood. He spent many years trying to hide his disability before coming to terms with it. The author does a great job describing how he tried to conceal his vision impairment and how he dealt with it. I liked his dating tips for those in denial." - Catheryne Z.
"A sometimes humorous and always poignant story that will hold your attention to the very end. This is the tale of a boy who becomes a man and ultimately finds himself. James T. Hill became officially blind as a teenager due to a rare hereditary condition. As he navigates how to be a 'normal' teenager and later how to fit in with college life and beyond, his personal adventures are fun, bittersweet and finally fulfilling. I would definitely recommend this to any book club and will recommend it to many of my reading friends." - Susan P.
"I loved this book and the manner in which it did not follow the more predictable storylines for a memoir about vision loss. This is less medical and more about growing up and struggling. The loss of vision is a context that sharpens the struggles of so many people - falling in love, falling out of love, learning to drive, finding new apartments, managing college social life and studies. This author had a writing style I personally like very much: spare descriptions of events that convey an enormous amount of detail and feelings. James has great appreciation for his close friends and great forbearance for the many slights he experiences from the sighted-but-unaware people in his world." - Karen S.
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W.W. Norton & Company. Memoir. 256 pages. Published Aug 3, 2021
Readers' Consensus: 3.8/5, Number of Reader Reviews: 20
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As a BookBrowse member, you get access to our full reviews and "beyond the book" articles, but you also get a lot more. Below the review of Afterparties, you can see the different components of a BookBrowse featured book. |
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Afterparties
by Anthony Veasna So
Between 1975 and 1979, nearly a quarter of the population of Cambodia (close to two million people) was killed in the genocide orchestrated by the communist party Khmer Rouge under the leadership of party secretary Pol Pot.
Around 158,000 Cambodians came to the United States as refugees from 1975-1994, with many settling in Long Beach or Stockton, California. Anthony Veasna So's parents were two such refugees and So grew up in Stockton. The stories in his debut collection Afterparties read like compartments in the interior of the author's mind, these characters people he has known and been, loved and been loved by.
In "Three Women of Chuck's Donuts," a woman named Sothy ("she's never met a Chuck in her life; she simply thought the name American enough to draw customers") runs a donut shop, with her two young daughters — Kayley and Tevy — spending most of their time after school helping out. The story is set just after the 2008 economic crisis and their sole customer, night after night, is a man who orders a single apple fritter and sits for hours staring blankly out the window. As the women of Chuck's Donuts observe this nightly ritual, the story of their pasts unfolds through their triad of internal monologues...
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Beyond the Book: Cambodians in Stockton, California
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Several stories in Anthony Veasna So's short story collection Afterparties take place in Stockton, California, the author's hometown. Stockton is home to the fifth largest population of ethnically Cambodian people in the United States as of 2019, according to the Pew Research Center. A 2018 study by U.S. News and World Report found Stockton to be the most diverse city in the United States.
Many refugees who fled to the U.S. during the Southeast Asia conflicts of the 1970s (the Vietnam War, the Laos Civil War and the Cambodian Genocide) came from rural backgrounds and the U.S. government made little effort to assimilate them into their new environments. Upon arrival, many lived in low-income housing projects and had difficulty finding work. The legacy of this rough start is evident in the racial disparities, the prevalence of gangs and the challenges faced by the characters in Afterparties...
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BookBrowse features Read-Alikes, hand-picked recommendations of similar books, for each work we review.
Read-Alikes for Afterparties include:
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On BookBrowse, books are categorized by genre, setting, time period and theme.
- Debuts
- California
- Immigrants & Expatriates
- Asian Writers
- Dealing with Loss
- LGBTQ
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You can also find excerpts of featured books on the BookBrowse website. Our excerpt from Anthony Veasna So's Afterparties is the book's first story, "Three Women of Chuck's Donuts," in its entirety.
Start reading here and access the full excerpt through the link below.
Three Women of Chuck's Donuts
The first night the man orders an apple fritter, it is three in the morning, the streetlamp is broken, and California Delta mist obscures the waterfront's run-down buildings, except for Chuck's Donuts, with its cool fluorescent glow. "Isn't it a bit early for an apple fritter?" the owner's twelve-year-old daughter, Kayley, deadpans from behind the counter, and Tevy, four years older, rolls her eyes and says to her sister, "You watch too much TV."
The man ignores them both, sits down at a booth, and proceeds to stare out the window, at the busted potential of this small city's downtown. Kayley studies the man's reflection in the window. He's older but not old, younger than her parents, and his wiry mustache seems misplaced, from a different decade. His face wears an expression full of those mixed-up emotions that only adults must feel, like plaintive, say, or wretched. His light...
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Ecco. Short Stories. 272 pages. Published Aug 3, 2021
Critics' Consensus: 4.9/5. BookBrowse Rating: 5/5
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Sally Rooney's Dublin
The backdrop of Sally Rooney's Beautiful World, Where Are You (publishing Sept 7) is the city of Dublin and its environs. Rooney herself lives in this UNESCO City of Literature, a metropolis that boasts a flourishing literary scene and an impressive inventory of influential authors, poets and playwrights. The streets of the vibrant capital are infused with the presence of its bookish greats, with landmarks never more than a few minutes away.
Cross a bridge over the River Liffey, and it most likely has a literary connection — three are named after Sean O'Casey, Samuel Beckett and James Joyce, the last of which faces the house mentioned in "The Dead," the final story in the author's Dubliners: "the dark, gaunt house on Usher's Island." Dublin even has its own unofficial literary holiday — Bloomsday — designated as acknowledgement of one of Joyce's most acclaimed novels, Ulysses, which recounts a day in the life of Leopold Bloom (the book's protagonist): June 16, 1904...
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With so many new books published every month, it's difficult to find the standouts, the ones which are really worth your time. This is why hundreds of thousands of readers rely on BookBrowse to do the hard work of sifting though the multitude of titles to find the most promising new books, with a focus on books that entertain, engage and enlighten. |
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BookBrowse Highlights is one of our four free newsletters. We also offer Publishing This Week every Sunday, and Book Club News and Librarian News monthly.
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