The Undocumented Americans by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio

Given the high visibility in the media of overcrowding and mistreatment at the border, child separation, attempts to eliminate DACA (deferred action for childhood arrivals), and Congress's failure to enact immigration reform, it's not surprising that undocumented immigration is getting a lot of attention in the book world. Villavicencio's account of the lives of the undocumented stands out for her deep connections to the immigrant communities that she writes about.

The Undocumented Americans is part personal narrative and part journalism. Villavicencio interweaves her own story of being undocumented with the stories of the undocumented immigrants that she has spoken to. The book has a loose narrative arc divided according to situations - exploited labor cleaning up after Hurricane Katrina, 9/11, being locked out of the healthcare system, and growing old and being unable to retire despite spending years paying into social security. Each sections reveals how much undocumented labor has propped up the economy and individual communities alongside how much these workers have been exploited in return.

Like Jose Antonio Vargas and Reyna Grande, Villavicencio's advocacy is bound up with her own story of being undocumented. She focuses on undocumented Latinx immigrants, to whose stories she has been granted access through her connections, persistence, and support of the community. She is at turns angry, saddened, and inspired by what she hears, taking an intense personal interest in each person she talks to and drawing parallels to her own struggles. This is a powerful book that delves into the repercussions of a broken immigration system. 

For more about the book and Villavicencio, I recommend listening to Traci Thomas's interview with her on The Stacks podcast.

I received an arc of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

A Modern Retelling of Jane Eyre in Rachel Hawkins's The Wife Upstairs.

This novel takes the characters and plot points from Jane Eyre and recasts them into a suspense story set in modern-day Alabama. I love retellings, and the shifting of Jane Eyre into a dog walker in a fancy housing development is a good choice. The opening scene with the snotty Mrs. Reed who sends her out walking in the rain is well done. Hawkins doesn't worry too much about staying exactly true to the characters as Bronte wrote them, so both the Jane character and John Rivers are a little bit of a surprise.

It's also a very twisty mystery, and I didn't guess the ending, even though in retrospect I totally should have.

While I enjoyed the mystery, characterization, and reshaping of plot points, the pacing was not great. It takes a very long time for the suspenseful part to emerge - in fact, just when I was wondering how much longer she could string out the romance between Eddie Rochester and Jane, a plot twist emerges. Once the suspense gets going, it feels less exciting than I think it's meant to be.

This, however, could also have something to do with the audiobook narration. I alternated between the audiobook and a kindle copy, and I wound up listening to the final third. When Eddie takes over the narration, it's spoiled in my mind because the narrator is very sleepy sounding. Eddie's supposed to be a bit of an enigma, but the narration sounds a little like a deer in the headlights.

Overall, I enjoyed this book and read it really quickly, but I also wished it was just a little bit better.

I received an ARC of this novel from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Poirot Redux: Sophie Hannah’s The Killings at Kingfisher Hill

Wow, was this book a disappointment. I read another book by Sophie Hannah recently - The Wrong Mother - and it was complex, suspenseful, and engrossing. After that, I was excited to see how Hannah was continuing Agatha Christie’s Poirot stories. As the only writer authorized by the Christie estate, she has been vetted and deemed the fitting person to continue the Christie tradition. The official Christie website describes her first Poirot novel, The Monogram Murders, as "a thoroughly stylish affair, faithful to Christie's story-telling style, yet with a modern touch." High praise indeed. 

And, yes, this story does echo Christie in some ways. It has all of the needless complexity of a Christie story, setting up a crime so convoluted that it feels completely divorced from real life.

However, in this case it has none of the charm or fluidity of Christie’s novels. The opening sequence sets up the scenario, but it is so incoherent that it seems hardly worth following. None of the characters seem remotely plausible, and the action is narrated in a way that makes it seem like it has its own time scheme. For instance, the Hastings character (here reimagined as Inspector Catchpool) has an extended interchange on a bus with a woman about the title of a book she’s reading. This scene feels like it goes on forever, and we’re supposed to believe that this happens while a line of people are waiting for him to move along so they can take their seats. I was expecting him to be the first murder victim. 

In addition to the unbelievable characters and unlikely pacing of the action, this novel includes endless - I mean, pages and pages - of exposition. Very little action occurs, but there sure is a lot of tedious explaining. 

I was very much inclined to like this novel, so I was surprised that narrative's execution was so disappointing. It didn’t help that the convoluted solution isn’t even particularly interesting.

I’m likely to pick up more of Sophie Hannah’s non-Poirot novels, but I can’t say the same for the Christie continuations.

I received an arc of this novel from Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review.