Our latest First Impressions read, Lydia Millet's Dinosaurs, is a quiet novel of hopeful introspection that focuses on the search for meaning in life, along with animals and nature.

We're revisiting last year's book club discussion of Margaret Verble's When Two Feathers Fell From the Sky, an absorbing work of historical fiction about a Cherokee horse-diver in 1920s Nashville, now that the book has been released in paperback.

In Editor's Choice, we review Dipo Faloyin's Africa Is Not a Country, a set of essays that upend false ideas about the African continent. You can also read our accompanying beyond the book article on white-savior complex, along with an excerpt from the book, included below.

With best wishes,

Davina Morgan-Witts

BookBrowse Publisher

Each month we give away books to BookBrowse members who live in the U.S. to read and review.

"I really enjoyed this quiet, thoughtful novel. The main character, Gil, is looking for a new start and for purpose in his life, having no need to 'make a living.' Along the way he exemplifies his humanity in his daily life with his neighbors and others. He cares for the desert birds, the surviving dinosaurs, and we're asked to wonder if they can survive the changing world. Gil doesn't see violence as the answer to conflict, but rather it's relationships that give us life and freedom. Beautifully written. Would be great for book clubs." - Lynn D. (Kingston, NY)

"I highly recommend this book for book club discussions. This was the best book I've read this year. Moderately paced writing that describes daily life for the key characters yet consistently and deftly introduces new and timely discussion topics throughout the book. Best for readers who like to think about what and how we are to be in this world as well as what the role of animals in nature is meant to be. Excellent writing and subjects!" - Judy G. (Carmel, IN)

"I love this book so much I'd marry it if I weren't already married. As things stand, my rushed affair with Millet's novel left me feeling bereft when it was over...Take your time, reader, to savor this compulsively readable story so it may last you a while longer. There's much to relish: the relatable characters. all but one of whom I wish could be my friends; the themes of love, loss, privilege, and purpose; the spare and elegant prose that manages to highlight just the right kind of detail. A novel for anyone hoping for a bit of light and enlightenment in what too often feels like dark times." - Helia R. (Goodlettsville, TN)

Last year, BookBrowse's book club discussed When Two Feathers Fell From the Sky by Margaret Verble. It received many positive comments, so we're revisiting it now that it's available in paperback.

Louise Erdrich meets Karen Russell in this deliciously strange and daringly original novel from Pulitzer Prize finalist Margaret Verble: set in 1926 Nashville, it follows a death-defying young Cherokee horse-diver who, with her companions from the Glendale Park Zoo, must get to the bottom of a mystery that spans centuries.

"I really loved this book! The importance of friendship and the acceptance of others really hit a stellar note with me. The setting was so fully developed it became a character in the story. The historical aspects made it even more enjoyable. Two Feathers is an enchanting character and the others were no less memorable." - janeb

"I absolutely loved When Two Feathers Fell From the Sky. The well-developed characters, setting and storyline appealed to me, and the book far exceeded my expectations. I will definitely be reading Margaret Verble’s other books." - BuffaloGirl

"I enjoyed When Two Feathers Fell From the Sky. Ms. Verble is an excellent writer who knows how to entertain while putting forth issues that Tribal members and governments struggle with today: racism, the lack of cultural and historically accurate histories of America's Indigenous peoples, voter rights, blood quantum issues and more. It's put in the context of one woman telling a story that is both universal for women and specific to the Tribal nations. At the same time, this is an entertaining story with allusions to local history in Tennessee and the history of Wild West Shows." - skagitgrits

The discussion of Two Feathers Fell From the Sky took place last winter, so the forum is now closed for new posts, but you can read through all the comments, or explore more about the book, via the links below.

This issue features 14 reviews, covering the novels Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng and The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O'Farrell, as well as the National Book Award Fiction finalist The Birdcatcher by Gayl Jones. We also bring you our Best Fiction Books for Book Clubs in 2023, a new Wordplay and more.

This twice-monthly e-magazine is just one benefit of being a BookBrowse member. Sign up for an individual membership today or ask your library if they subscribe (or check for yourself).

This expert collection of reflections pushes back — often humorously — on the various, maddening ways the wider world treats Africa and speaks of it as a single country, "devoid of nuance and cursed to be forever plagued by deprivation."

Africa is a continent with 54 nations, more than 2,000 languages, and home to 1.4 billion people. According to Faloyin, however, for too long the continent has been thought of as a "buzzword for poverty and strife…where nothing but misery grows" or as "one big safari park."

Joys and revelations abound in Africa Is Not a Country, but perhaps the most satisfying aspect is Faloyin's ability to weave together Africa's painful past with its infinite promise for a brighter future — on its own terms. Highlighting the more positive developments, such as the "significant rise in the number of elected female legislators and women selected for high-ranking government positions" throughout Africa, Faloyin circles back around to the power of individual human beings to be effective in their communities, through grassroots political activism but also through art, literature and music. ... continued

What exactly is a white-savior complex (also known as white saviorism)? In Dipo Faloyin's Africa Is Not a Country: Notes on a Bright Continent, the definition is not as important as the negative impacts upon those who experience it. ... continued

(Click here to read full Beyond the Book article)

Excerpt: Africa Is Not a Country

We are all the sum of a specific set of known knowns and more subtle influences that clash, combine and occasionally curdle. They are the intangibles that drive our most honest intentions and shape the essence of our personalities – something that is often too intricate, too elastic and too personal to ever give full voice to accurately, however hard we try.

Instead, in all our interactions, we leave tiny breadcrumbs as clues to the inner sanctum of our complex identities. It's an unwitting, uneven collaboration between the big things: the genetics we inherit from our parents, and the life decisions we take after careful calculations; the subconscious things – degrees of eye contact, automated anxieties; and the millions of things that thrive in the middle, whether it's checking the weather before stepping outside, the perfect storage place for condiments, a commitment to coordinating socks.

Small patches of persona stitched together until they form someone real.

Not everyone is allowed a complex identity. Throughout history, individuals and entire communities have been systematically stripped of their personhood and idiosyncrasies, often to make them easier to demean, denigrate and subjugate – and, in some cases, eradicate. Being able to define yourself openly and fully is a privilege; it is a grace many take for granted. The ability to walk into a meeting or an interview, or to interact with a police officer, and be given the respect and opportunity to present yourself without pre-judgement, can be life-defining, life-affirming and life-saving.

To strip an individual of that privilege is destructive enough. But when you apply this reductive treatment to an entire community, country or race, you create a poisonously false narrative that permeates for generations, until the fiction becomes fact, which in turn becomes an infected shared wisdom steadily passed down – in schools, at family dinner tables, in words pressed into books, and in the images that populate our popular culture.

Few entities have been forced through this field of distorted reality as many times as Africa – a continent of fifty-four countries, more than two thousand languages, and 1.4 billion people. A region that is treated and spoken of as if it were a single country, devoid of nuance and cursed to be forever plagued by deprivation.

For too long, 'Africa' has been treated as a buzzword for poverty, strife, corruption, civil wars, and large expanses of arid red soil where nothing but misery grows. Or it is presented as one big safari park, where lions and tigers roam freely around our homes and Africans spend their days grouped in warrior tribes, barely clothed, spears palmed, hunting game, and jumping up and down with ritualistic rhythm to pass the time before another aid package gets delivered. Poverty or safari, with nothing in between.

No matter how hard I try to explain that I was raised in a sprawling metropolis with all the twists and tricks of a sprawling metropolis, too many can only imagine what they've been programmed to believe. They cannot picture my mum's primary school, with happy, well-nourished children bursting through the gates every morning, because various international charities have them convinced that to be young in Africa is to be surrounded by flies and fuelled with nothing but contaminated drinking water; that to be African is a daily exercise in barely escaping the clutches of a rotating cast of free-roaming warlords in dirty fatigues, hanging off the back of 4x4 Jeeps that whizz along dirt jungle paths.

In reality, Africa is a rich mosaic of experience, of diverse communities and histories, and not a singular monolith of predetermined destinies. We sound different, laugh differently, craft the mundane in uniquely mundane ways, and our moral compasses do not always point in the same direction.

This book is a portrait of modern Africa that pushes back against harmful stereotypes to tell a more comprehensive story – based on all the humanity that has been brushed aside to accommodate a single vision of blood, strife, and majestic shots of rolling savannahs and large yellow sunsets. It will unspool the inaccurate story of a continent, dragging this bludgeoned narrative towards reality. ... continued