Atria Books | Book Chatter

The Double Life of Benson Yu
By Kevin Chong
Published by Atria,9781668005491, April 2023, 224 pp.

The Short of It:

Clever and imaginative.

The Rest of It:

In a Chinatown housing project lives twelve-year-old Benny, his ailing grandmother, and his strange neighbor Constantine, a man who believes he’s a reincarnated medieval samurai. When his grandmother is hospitalized, Benny manages to survive on his own until a social worker comes snooping. With no other family, he is reluctantly taken in by Constantine and soon, an unlikely bond forms between the two.

This is a sweet story and bends genres in the most appealing way. It touches on aging, coming of age, boyhood, male friendships, social welfare issues, and jumps back and forth in time. Benny is a very likable character. As a reader you can’t help but root for him as his world slowly falls apart. But for the most part, he has good people surrounding him. As he uses his art to deal with loss, it is slowly revealed to the reader that Yu, the narrator of the story, is having some trouble continuing Benny’s story. We are left wondering what is real, and what is make-believe.

Can Yu finish Benny’s story without placing him in peril?

I really enjoyed this book. I highly recommend it, especially if you are in need of something different.

Source: Review copy provided by the publisher.
Disclosure: This post contains Indiebound affiliate links.

This Tender Land
By William Kent Krueger
Atria Books, 9781476749303, May 2020, 464pp.

The Short of It:

A lot of heartbreak, but these characters quickly pulled me in.

The Rest of It:

In the summer of 1932, on the banks of Minnesota’s Gilead River, Odie O’Banion is an orphan confined to the Lincoln Indian Training School, a pitiless place where his lively nature earns him the superintendent’s wrath. Forced to flee after committing a terrible crime, he and his brother, Albert, their best friend, Mose, and a brokenhearted little girl named Emmy steal away in a canoe, heading for the mighty Mississippi and a place to call their own. ~ Indiebound

This was the book I was reading when I got hit with all my health issues and so the details of the story are not forthcoming and I had to miss my club’s discussion so I have no idea how they felt about the book but here is my take:

I loved these characters but this book is filled with one heartache after another. These kids do not live an easy life and the people they encounter are both filled with good, and bad. It’s been compared to Huckleberry Finn and Where the Crawdad’s Sing and I can see that comparison, but honestly what it reminded me most of is The Wizard of Oz. Everyone is searching for something, mostly a place to call home. But the rhythm of heartache was hard to read over and over again and parts of the story were a tad hard to swallow. Nevertheless, I did enjoy it but felt that it got a little repetitive halfway through and could have been edited down a bit.

Have you read it? I had no idea how many books this author has written. I will absolutely read another book by him because I was really into these characters.

Source: Purchased
Disclosure: This post contains Indiebound affiliate links.

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