Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson is a five-star book. It has great, complex characters, mystery, drama, a twisty plot that bounces around in time, amazing settings, a surprise ending, all wrapped up in beautiful writing. It really is the whole package. At the heart of the book is Covey. A young black woman growing up on a British island in the Caribbean in the 1950s and 1960s, but the book starts with estranged siblings Byron and Benny forced together by the death of their mother, Eleanor. She leaves them 8 hours of herself telling about Covey. Wilkerson creates tension by making us wonder about all the mysteries and the battered relationships. She presented a tightly coiled story knot and then tantalizingly unpicked it. I found the ending quite satisfying. This might be my best book of the year.
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The Book of Doors by Gareth Brown has all the things I love about fantasy. It has special books that do magical things, time travel, monstrous people, and people who find their bravery. I was impressed that every question I had, and everything I hoped could be repaired, happened. Some writers plan meticulously, then write. Their plots can feel mechanical. Others fly by the seat of their pants, and what happens, happens. Their plots can feel unresolved or ill-conceived. Gareth Brown manages to create an obviously carefully planned plot that felt spontaneous in how the novel's storyline nested together. I enjoyed it from start to finish.
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I have read Elie Wiesel's book, Night before, and am reading it again for June's book club. I had forgotten how bleak it is. It is a memoir of a young Romanian Jewish boy's experience in several Nazi concentration camps. He faced death repeatedly. In the book, he recounts how the brutal suffering stripped him of his love for his father, his humanity, and his faith. He grew into a fierce defender of human rights: Jewish, but also Palestinian. He spoke out against apartheid, the Soviet Union's oppression of Poland, and others. There is a lot of anguish in Night because it is difficult to read the casual cruelty inflicted on fellow humans. It is a worthwhile book to read to know what we are capable of and to be goaded to speak and act against it.
