God Shot
by

God Shot by Chelsea Bieker

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes, 27 seconds

God Shot by Chelsea Bieker, one of NPR’s Books We Love from 2020, is about the town of Peaches, California, where drought has settled in for the long term. The area of the Central Valley where fourteen-year-old Lacey May and her alcoholic mother live was once an agricultural paradise. Now it’s an environmental disaster, a place of cracked earth and barren raisin farms.

In their desperation, residents have turned to a cult leader named Pastor Vern for guidance. Everybody is praying for survival through secret “assignments” to bring the rain.

God Shot is an enjoyable read. However, I first found it challenging to accept Pastor Vern’s assignments, especially to Lacey May and her fellow teenage girls. Would people believe in a cult leader and get “assignments” that involve women fully accepting male domination in the twenty-first century? When I had doubts, I would wake up, listen to the news, or read the papers and discover that it is plausible and does happen in our world.

After being god-shot, Lacey May becomes one day at a time feminist as she has to rely on herself and other women who do not accept Pastor Vern’s divine leadership. Slowly but surely, she and her friends find a miracle to help them escape not only the environmental disaster caused by the drought but the moral depravity of Pastor Vern.

Goodreads provides this overview of the God Shot.

Lacey has no reason to doubt the pastor. But then her life explodes in a single unimaginable act of abandonment: her mother, exiled from the community for her sins, leaves Lacey and runs off with a man she barely knows. Abandoned and distraught, Lacey May moves in with her widowed grandma, Cherry, who is more concerned with her taxidermy mouse collection than her own granddaughter. As Lacey May endures the increasingly appalling acts of men who want to write all the rules and begins to uncover the full extent of Pastor Vern’s shocking plan to bring fertility back to the land, she decides she must go on a quest to find her mother no matter what it takes. With her only guidance coming from the romance novels she reads and the unlikely companionship of the women who knew her mother, she must find her own way through unthinkable circumstances.

Possessed of an unstoppable plot and a brilliantly soulful voice, Godshot is a book of grit, humor, and heart, a debut novel about female friendship and resilience, mother loss and motherhood, and seeking salvation in unexpected places. It introduces a writer who gives Flannery O’Connor’s Gothic parables a Californian twist and who emerges with a miracle that is all her own.

I recommend this novel without reservations!

Subscribe

Contact Us

When you buy a book or product using a link on this page, I receive a commission. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.

The Jan Lilien Education Fund!

Donate Now!
Worry: A Novel

Read: May 2024

Get this book

Worry: A Novel

by Alexandra Tanner

Today, I began reading Alexandra Tanner‘s debut novel, Worry: A Novel. The New Yorker praised it as “dryly witty,” The New York Times Book Review called it “fabulously revealing.” The story follows two siblings-turned-roommates who try to navigate an absurd world on the verge of calamity. It explores existentialism and sisterhood in a Seinfeldian style.

In March 2019, Jules Gold, a 28-year-old woman, felt anxious, frustrated with her art, and addicted to the internet. She lives alone in the apartment she used to share with her ex-fiancé. Her younger sister Poppy unexpectedly comes to stay with her indefinitely. Poppy, who attempted suicide a year and a half ago, is looking for work and purpose in Brooklyn. Meanwhile, Jules spends her days scrolling through the feeds of Mormon mommy bloggers and waiting for something to happen in her life.

Poppy’s hives, which she has had since childhood, flare up again. Jules has health problems with her uterus. Poppy adopts a poorly behaved-rescue dog named Amy Klobuchar. Poppy’s mother, who recently became a devout Messianic Jew, starts believing in the same deep-state conspiracy theories as Jules’ online mommies. Jules half-heartedly tries to find the source of her ennui and cruelly blames Poppy for not being a good enough friend, writer, or sister. As the year progresses and a new decade approaches, a disastrous trip back to Florida forces Jules and Poppy to question their futures and whether they want to spend them together or apart.

Worry is a darkly funny and deadpan portrayal of two sisters struggling through anxiety and uncertainty in America. A bold new voice in contemporary fiction writes it.

×
Intimacies: A Novel

Read: March 2022

Get this book

Intimacies: A Novel

by Katie Kitamura

Intimacies: A Novel by Katie Kitamura is about an interpreter who has come to The Hague to escape New York and work at the International Court. A woman of many languages and identities is finally looking for a place to call home.

Intimacies: A Novel is the second book by Ms. Kitamura that I have read this year. The multiple intimacies of the novel overlap and at times seem confusing, but in the end, it makes sense even if it is unclear how or where she will live the next phase of her life. A Separation is also written hypnotic, making it difficult to stop reading.

I not only highly recommend Intimacies: A Novel but have become a fan of Katie Kitamura and look forward to reading more of her books.

Goodreads summary provides a good overview.

She’s drawn into simmering personal dramas: her lover, Adriaan, is separated from his wife but still entangled in his marriage. Her friend Jana witnesses a seemingly random act of violence, a crime the interpreter becomes increasingly obsessed with as she befriends the victim’s sister. And she’s pulled into explosive political fires: her work interpreting for a former president accused of war crimes becomes precarious as their relationship is unbound by shifting language and meaning.

This woman is the voice in the ear of many, but what command does that give her, and how vulnerable does that leave her? Her coolly impassioned views on power, love, and violence, are tested, both in her personal intimacies and in her role at the Court. She is soon pushed to the precipice, where betrayal and heartbreak threaten to overwhelm her; it is her drive towards truth, and love, that throws into stark relief what she wants from her life.

Register to Attend Celebrate Jan Day

Subscribe

Contact Us

When you buy a book or product using a link on this page, I receive a commission. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.

×
The Morningside: A Novel

Read: March 2024

Get this book

The Morningside: A Novel

by Téa Obreht

Today, I started reading The Morningside: A Novel by Téa Obreht. The book tells the story of Silvia and her mother, who have been expelled from their home and have settled in a luxury tower called Island City, where Silvia’s aunt Ena is the superintendent. The Morningside is a place of magical possibilities, where Ena shares folktales with Silvia about her demolished homeland, a place of natural beauty and communal spirit. This starkly contrasts Silvia’s current reality, where she feels unmoored and disconnected from her past.

Silvia is fascinated by Bezi Duras, an enigmatic woman who lives in the penthouse and is shrouded in mystery. Bezi has her elevator entrance and only leaves the building at night to walk her three massive hounds, returning in the early morning. Silvia becomes obsessed with unraveling the truth about Bezi’s life and haunted past, even if it comes at a significant cost to her.

The Morningside is an inventive and moving novel that explores the power of storytelling and how we use it to make sense of our lives and the world around us.

×
Three Strong Women

Read: August 2022

Three Strong Women

by Marie NDiaye

Three Strong Women by Marie NDiaye is a novel that focuses on three women who say no. Winner of the coveted Prix Goncourt, the first by a black woman, Marie NDiaye, creates a luminous narrative triptych as harrowing as beautiful. With lyrical intensity, Marie NDiaye masterfully evokes the relentless denial of dignity, to say nothing of happiness, in these lives caught between Africa and Europe. I highly recommend this novel.

John Fletcher translated the Kindle version.

The Goodreads summary provides an overview,

This is the story of three women who say no: Norah, a French-born lawyer who finds herself in Senegal, summoned by her estranged, tyrannical father to save another victim of his paternity; Fanta, who leaves a modest but contented life as a teacher in Dakar to follow her white boyfriend back to France, where his delusional depression and sense of failure poison everything; and Khady, an impoverished widow put out by her husband’s family with nothing but the name of a distant cousin (the Fanta above) who lives in France, a place Khady can scarcely conceive of but toward which she must now take desperate flight.

With lyrical intensity, Marie NDiaye masterfully evokes the relentless denial of dignity, to say nothing of happiness, in these lives caught between Africa and Europe. We see with stunning emotional exactitude how ordinary women discover unimagined reserves of strength, even as their humanity is chipped away. Three Strong Women admits to an immigrant experience rarely, if ever, examined in fiction, but even more into the depths of the suffering heart.

The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month are matched dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

Subscribe

Contact Us

I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.

×
My Friends: A Novel

Read: October 2024

Get this book

My Friends: A Novel

by Hisham Matar'

Today, I started reading Hisham Matar’s “My Friends: A Novel.” It is a finalist for the 2024 National Book Award for Fiction and the winner of the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction. This novel explores themes of friendship, family, and the harsh realities of exile. Hisham Matar is also the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “The Return.” The pages on my Kindle App on my iPad fly like autumn’s falling leaves.

One evening, a young boy named Khaled, growing up in Benghazi, hears a captivating short story read aloud on the radio. The story, about a man being eaten alive by a cat, leaves an indelible mark on Khaled, igniting a lifelong fascination with the power of words and the enigmatic author, Hosam Zowa. This transformative experience sets Khaled on a journey that will lead him far from home to the University of Edinburgh to pursue a life of the mind.

In a new and unfamiliar environment, Khaled finds himself far from his familiar life in Libya. His resilience is tested when he attends a protest against the Qaddafi regime in London. The event turns into a tragedy, leaving Khaled injured and unable to leave Britain. Despite the danger posed by monitored phone lines, his determination to communicate his situation to his parents is a testament to his strength.

When Khaled has a chance encounter with Hosam Zowa, the author of a life-changing short story, at a hotel, Khaled begins the most profound friendship of his life. This friendship sustains him and eventually compels him, as the Arab Spring unfolds, to confront complex tensions between revolution and safety, family and exile, and how to define his sense of self concerning those closest to him.

A profound exploration of friendship and family and how time can test and fray these bonds, ‘My Friends‘ is a work of literature that resonates with its readers. Hisham Matar’‘s novel is not just a story but an achingly beautiful reflection on life and relationships crafted by an author at the peak of his powers.

×
How the Word is Passed

Read: December 2021

Get this book

How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America

by Clint Smith

How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America by Clint Smith. This book was a gift from my son Jon. The New York Times selected How the Word is Passed as one of the best books published this year. Beginning in his hometown of New Orleans, Clint Smith leads the reader on an unforgettable tour of monuments and landmarks—those that are honest about the past and those that are not—that offer an intergenerational story of how slavery has been central in shaping our nation’s collective history, and ourselves.

How the Word is Passed is one of the best books I have read in 2021. I had read an excerpt in The Atlantic on the Whitney Plantation, one of the only former plantations devoted to preserving the experience of the enslaved people whose lives and work sustained it. Like most of us, I had placed the book on my to-read list, where it remained lost in the cobwebs. Fortunately, my son Jon purchased the book for me.

Secondly, the book rekindled my long-lost dream of being an American Studies professor. As soon as Jan and I met, I dropped plans to leave Brooklyn and start graduate school in the fall of 1974. I made that decision primarily because of how much I loved Jan. But it was also partly that I did not have a clear vision of what my life would be like as a professor. The book provided clear examples of people like Yvonne Holden at The Whitney Plantation redefining history to be more accurate and inclusive. I probably could not have done as well as she did, but I can now see that it might have resulted in a career for me that could have been impactful.

Goodreads provides this overview for those who still need to be convinced to read this book.

It is the story of the Monticello Plantation in Virginia, the estate where Thomas Jefferson wrote letters espousing the urgent need for liberty while enslaving over 400 people on the premises. It is the story of the Whitney Plantation, one of the only former plantations devoted to preserving the experience of the enslaved people whose lives and work sustained it. It is the story of Angola Prison in Louisiana, a former plantation named for the country from which most of its enslaved people arrived and which has since become one of the most gruesome maximum-security prisons in the world. And it is the story of Blandford Cemetery, the final resting place of tens of thousands of Confederate soldiers.

In a deeply researched and transporting exploration of the legacy of slavery and its imprint on centuries of American history, How the Word Is Passed illustrates how some of our country’s most essential stories are hidden in plain view-whether in places we might drive by on our way to work, holidays such as Juneteenth, or entire neighborhoods—like downtown Manhattan—on which the brutal history of the trade in enslaved men, women and children has been deeply imprinted.

Informed by scholarship and brought alive by the story of people living today, Clint Smith’s debut work of nonfiction is a landmark work of reflection and insight that offers a new understanding of the hopeful role that memory and history can play in understanding our country.

How the Word is Passed is one of the best books I have read this year and many prior ones. I encourage you to read it and share your comments.

Subscribe

Contact Us

When you buy a book or product using a link on this page, I receive a commission. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.

×