May Book Reviews

American Mother by Colum McCann with Diane Foley

Reading a mother’s story about how her son was beheaded on TV by ISIS could have been unreadable, but told through her eyes and the words of prize-winning author of Apeirogon, Colum McCann, it’s unputdownable. It’s politics and memoir combined, offering insights into an American family grappling with their relationship to a country that dramatically failed them. Opening with a conversation between Diane Foley and her son’s hostage taker on his British past and motivations (mainly America bombing Iraq), it moves through the life of James Foley and how he became a journalist in Syria to the unimaginable politics of hostage negotiations, Obama’s government and the moment, after two years of torture, James was murdered. There’s an unexpected humanity to this story, which shows the strength of grace and compassion in the face of life’s most inhumane crimes. It reads like fiction and there’s not a single person who will read this and wish that they hadn’t. 

Non-Fiction: A Novel by Julie Myerson

The contradictory title, Non-Fiction: A Novel, puts the narrator into unreliable territory as she tells a side of her daughter’s addiction in the form of a love letter. The order isn’t linear, it leaps between recovering and using to relapsing and overdosing as if the events of having a child with addiction converge into one unimaginable, chaotic life-defining moment. Interspersed within this horror are the mother’s past interactions, infidelities and memories that you’d expect to be the most painful yet they’re quietly contradicted by the unexpected. Such as when she looks at her daughter and realises there’s nothing about her she loves anymore, or the small window of opportunity she gets for affection as her daughter lies unconscious. It’s a profound novel in the way that it captures the human condition and especially demonstrate the ways we’re able to carry conflicting emotions of resentment and anger alongside unconditional love and hope. If you like a novel with substance that will emotionally push you around this is for you. 

The Bill Gates Problem by Tim Schwab 

It takes an admirable level of confidence to take on the behemoth that is Bill Gates, and Schwab really goes to town. It’s a heavily researched critique of a man seemingly obsessed with wealth and success to a point of callousness - “It’s part of Bill’s strategy. You smash people. You either make them line up or you smash them”. I read it with an air of skepticism (but the Gates Foundation donates billions!) however Schwab makes a compelling case against Gates who has more power than some governments, and too much control over who should be saved and where and why, through the $54 billion Gates Foundation. Schwab argues that like yesteryear’s titans Rockerfeller and Carnegie, and todays Sackler family, the philanthropy and huge donations are there to “distract polite society from looking too closely into the source of their wealth”. And in Bill’s case, it’s a PR strategy that distracts from his real intentions and his “capacity for evasion and unhinged god complex”. It asks questions about the morality of being a billionaire, if they cause a social problem in order to profit from it, and if the more than $150 billion that Gates controls, “through his personal wealth and his private foundation’s endowment, are a totem and a driver of inequality, not a solution to it”. Whatever side of the argument you’re on, The Bill Gates Problem ignites a fascinating debate. 

Splinters by Lesley Jamison 

If you’re in need of a Mother’s Day gift then I’m here to help. It’s a common misconception that all Mums want to be celebrated alongside their children for the day, some see alone time as the real gift. I’m here advocating for the latter. Splinters is a memoir by New York Times bestselling author of The Empathy Exams, Leslie Jamison, on rebuilding a life after the end of a marriage through the lens of motherhood, art and new love. It’s a powerful contribution to this golden age of women’s autobiographical writing that we’re living through, and it need not send a message of divorce if being given as a gift. Rather, it looks at how women are miraculous beings able to perform at once the many identities ascribed to womanhood. As Vanity Fair says, “she excels at drilling into raw experiences and uncomfortable truths until they reveal something transcendent about our existence as flawed humans in a chaotic world.” She’s coming to Auckland for the Writers Festival and you can give the gift of alone time in the form of a ticket to hear her in conversation on May 18th with our very own brilliant memorialist Noelle McCarthy, author of Grand. Buy your ticket here.