Rutabaga's Reads 2023: Part 8

If you think I regularly read adult fiction since I am an adult, you would be mistaken. It has taken me this long to compile an adult fiction compilation post. Better late than never! For those out there who do read adult fiction on the regular, who are your favorite authors?

The All-American: A Novel (Apr. 4, 2023) by Joe Milan Jr.

<This is a standalone novel.>

Thanks to my childhood friend, Kristi W., for gifting me this novel! It’s written by a Creative Writing colleague of hers. All opinions are expressly my own.

            The paperwork wasn’t filed correctly because the check bounced, so after a fight sends 17-year-old Bucky Yi to the police station, the U.S. government deports him to South Korea. It’s a totally foreign land to him, and he doesn’t speak, read or write the language. He can’t even properly pronounce his own name! (It’s Yi Beyonghak.) All Bucky wants to do is fulfill his all-American goal to get out of rural Washington state and become a college football player. But he doesn’t get scouted, and now he’s stuck in Korea. His raw physical strength gets him a job at an expat bar in Seoul until he gets notices of loans overdue courtesy of the bio father he doesn’t know taking out massive loans in his name and soon enough he’s forced into his mandatory military conscription. There’s more remoteness than his backwoods home, but with extras like an erratic sergeant and North Korean spies (they might be chasing shadows). Bucky has to start from the ground up by learning a new language and figure out how to reformat himself with no guide on how to rewrite the code.

            This unique take on undocumented immigration makes for a strong debut. It’s propulsive and irreverent, bold and dark. It is a story of identity, and Bucky goes through quite the disorienting crisis to find who he is or at least who he can be. There is drama: drama feeding into his desire to return home to Washington, drama when it comes to his sexual desires, drama in his family and drama trying to manage his ego. It’s understandable that Bucky has very strong negative feelings surrounding his deportation when he should’ve, like me, been a naturalized citizen from a very young age. But it’s hard to feel bad for Bucky. He feels powerless to control what is happening, everyone and everything seem to be against him, which is very Kafkaesque, but his ego gets in the way of everything. He so often turns to violence. Mad about this? Fight. Mad about that? Fight. Mad in Korea? Fight. I never connected with Bucky, and he never truly grew as a character in the story. I wanted to be impressed by a young man working without the model minority stereotype to rise above the hand he was dealt. But nope, he remained a jerk throughout the story. Chantal should stay far from him. She has wings to fly, but Bucky’s volatile personality, his quick anger, will box him in.

Murder Your Employer (Feb. 21, 2023) by Rupert Holmes.

<This is the first novel in a series.>

Welcome to The McMasters Conservatory for the Applied Arts. Dean Harbinger Harrow opens with a Foreward and entreats readers not to use this as a guide to the McMasters campus, but “for those engaged in home study.” “There is no more unpredictable force of nature than the sadistic employer.” With that said, the three students featured all look to delete an employer: Cliff Iverson, Gemma Lindley and a Hollywood starlet referred to as Dulcie Mown. Cliff’s perspective features the most with his journal entry chapters. He’s the rare student who has a sponsor, unknown to him. He refers to his sponsor as X. There’s an annual “Track Meet” (“track your quarry, meet your quarry, and delete your quarry,”) that carries grave weight in calculating a student’s average for the term and readiness for one’s thesis. Thesis, in this case, outlines the motivation and justification for deleting someone (deleting, if you haven’t figured it out already, is synonymous with murdering, but murdering is so vulgar, where deleting is classy). A successful deletion equates graduation without any pomp or circumstance, as all who graduate to deletists must never receive the credit they deserve. Those who aren’t successful will themselves wind up deleted. Life isn’t easy, nor is it fair, especially with the likes of Merrill Fiedler, Leonid Kosta and Adele Underton still breathing. Best of luck to those fortunate enough to be admitted. Here, have a sherry. Or maybe not. It’s probably poisoned.

            I thoroughly enjoyed this story! It’s delightfully diabolical and completely compelling in a twisted sort of way. The campus of this “Poison Ivy League” college is expansive, luxurious and killer. The wordplay is jaunty, the writing witty, and the plot is clearly that certain sadistic employers will hopefully cease existing, but with so many chapters featuring Cliff’s journal entries, it reads conversationally much of the time. Details into the master plans of Cliff, Gemma and Dulcie give delicious insight and enable readers to craft credible and detailed pictures in their imaginations. Holmes creates an entertaining and specifically educational story set on the campus of a clandestine college and back in “civilian life” (a.k.a. “the battlefield”). It is cheeky and cleverly wicked. It’s a literary dark comedy. Anyone looking to be admitted to this covert school where you can ”learn to live each day as if it might be your enemy’s last?”

Poster Girl (Oct. 18, 2022) by Veronica Roth.

<This is a standalone novel.>

From a time well before Sonya Kantor was born, the Sea-Port (Seattle-Portland) megalopolis lived under constant surveillance from the Insight, an ocular implant that tracked every word and action, rewarding or punishing according to a strict, static moral code set forth by the Delegation. Offering a handkerchief to an elder would earn you DesCoin, while whistling would debit two DesCoin. 10 years ago, the Delegation fell, and was replaced by the Triumvirate. The Delegation’s most valuable members were locked away in the Aperture, a prison on the outskirts of the city. Where everyone in the Aperture still has the Insight implants, everyone in the outside world does not (supposedly). Sonya, former poster girl for the Delegation, has lived in the Aperture for 10 years. Her parents (August and Julia) and older sister (Susanna) are all dead. Also dead: Aaron Price, once her betrothed. Not dead: Alexander Price, Aaron’s older brother. Alexander comes to her with a deal to earn her freedom. All she has to do is find a missing girl who was “rehomed” (stolen) when the parents had a second child, which was disallowed unless a couple had earned that second child and obtained the proper permit (Exception to Protocol 18A). Her search will bring her in contact with the very leader of the Analog Army, a rogue organization that has gone from threats to planting explosives and murdering others. The path Sonya takes will be dangerous and more illuminating than she could ever have guessed. She’s going to learn that her family’s past has deep, dark secrets. How will this affect her view of the Delegation she grew up under and as the face of it, no less?

            I knew I wasn’t going to purchase this novel of Roth’s, but I happened upon it at my local library and decided to check it out. It’s no secret that Roth has a knack for fascinating world-building, and her plot is intriguing, especially watching as Sonya’s morals shift through the story. Self-awareness comes gradually. Sonya’s lived in a world ruled by technology, which readers may think mirrors our own, but it’s definitely not. You’re not just constantly monitored, you’re potentially, constantly rewarded and punished. Like being graded 24/7/365. It’s alarming only in the sense of how close to reality it could be. The novel is fairly slim, but there’s complexity within. I didn’t love the book, but as someone whose bookshelf once contained plenty of dystopian YA, this dystopian adult novel was interesting. Don’t read this if you’re looking for a happily-ever-after. Do read this if you want a story where privacy’s been, essentially, surrendered (especially for those who still have Insights) and technology has been abused. Do read this if you want to see the revelation of complicity and the terrible outcome that comes of it. The story is cold, but there is fragile humanness beneath the chaos and the guilt.