Ta-Nehisi Coates: The Water Dancer, 9780593133118, C format Paperback, International Edition, One World/Penguin Random House US

(German edition "Der Wassertänzer", Karl Blessing Verlag, March 2, 2020)

Ta-Nahesi Coates “The Water Dancer” is probably my favorite literary  book of the year, right alongside Ocean Voong’s “On earth we are briefly gorgeous”. Two very different books but both with such powerful prose that it is almost impossible to decide what to read next as they leave such a void.

In my view Ta-Nahesi Coates, who has written non-fiction before,  winning the National Book Award in 2015 with “Between the World and me”,  has written a debut novel that can stand alongside such masterpieces as “Beloved” by Tony Morrison, Maya Angelou’s work and Colson Whitehead “The Underground Railroad”. 

Reminding me also in parts of the magical realism of Latin American authors but with a very distinct voice of its own, “The Water Dancer” tells the story of Hiram Walker who was born into slavery by an African mother and the white owner of  a tobacco plantation in Virginia.  When his mother is sold, in his pain he loses all memory of her but she has passed on a powerful, mysterious gift to him which reveals itself for the first time when the carriage he and his white half-brother are riding in derails and falls into the river Goose. Only Hiram by magic survives and his real life journey begins. What follows is a dramatic story of atrocities inflicted to generations of slaves, where emotional and physical cruelty and disregard of human pain was considered normal by white people and the bravery and human cost of people working in The Underground  unimaginable.

Sometimes I put the book aside and let the power of the story  and the language do its work in my mind and heart before resuming the read.  I urge you to read this incredible book.

Cara Hunter: All the  Rage, Penguin Paperback (Penguin Random House UK) 9780241985113, pub date January 23, 2020

Cara Hunter’s mysteries are always psychologically very cleverly crafted and “All the Rage” is no exception. Set in Oxford featuring DI Adam Fawley and his colorful team of detectives , Faith Appleford, a beautiful fashion design student is found in a deserted part of the city by a taxi driver, looking very distressed, dazed and with her clothes torn.

Everything points to sexual assault but when Fawley and his team start investigating what might have happened to her; she is unwilling to press charges but is able to remember some striking details which point to an old case Adam Fawley would rather forget.  There are obvious resemblances to a case of a serial rapist whom Fawley was able to get convicted despite him claiming his innocence until the end of the trial. Fawley's wife had been one of the victims who got away.

“All the Rage” has a very plausible plot, the characters are richly drawn and I am really into this down to earth Oxford team of detectives now.  Be prepared for several unexpected developments which keeps you on your toes until the very end of the novel!  

Ocean Vuong: On earth we are briefly gorgeous, 9781787331501, Vintage / Penguin Random House, hardback

German Edition: Auf Erden sind wir kurz grandios, Carl Hanser Verlag, hardback

Ocean Vuong’s „On earth we are briefly gorgeous“ is one of these memorable books that will stay in your head for quite a while.  I still remember some sentences after 6 weeks!   One of the best literary reads for me for quite some time. 

Written by a poet in the most beautiful, elegant prose, this debut novel is many things: a heart-wrenching love story of Little Dog, a boy growing up as an outsider in America with a Vietnamese heritage but also discovering his homosexuality at age 15 to Trevor, the son of a tobacco farmer, a love letter written to his mother Rose who cannot read or write and earns their living slaving away in nail salons, the sometimes funny yet sad portrait of their lives as a family together with his very Vietnamese schizophrenic grandmother Lan, the absence of his biological and substitute father, both white Americans, the flashbacks to his grandmother’s and his mother’s lives during the Vietnam war, this novel is a whole mélange of feelings and memories. Vuong is unusually frank with the description of homosexual sex scenes; the tenderness of Little Dogs and Trevor’s feelings for one another and the heart-wrenching unfolding drama brought a lump to my throat.

Reading this unusual novel has been an absolute delight.