Women | Book Chatter

House of Cotton
By Monica Brashears
Flatiron Books,9781250851932, April 2024, 304 pp.

The Short of It:

Raw and brutal.

The Rest of It:

One night, while working at her dead-end gas station job, Magnolia Brown encounters a mysterious, slick stranger named Cotton. He offers to turn her luck around with a lucrative “modeling” job at his family’s funeral home–where she will pose as clients’ dead loved ones. She accepts. ~ From the publisher

This story will hit you with a closed fist. The author holds nothing back. Magnolia’s struggle to live has her doing things that at first won’t shock you, but then as the story plays out, I found her desperation to survive shockingly sad. The people she encounters never have her best interests at heart. No. And deep down she knows it, but her walk to freedom is alarming at times. So much so that I almost put the book down more than once.

This was chosen for my book club so I felt the need to finish it and it left me in a strange place. On the one hand, the writing is peppered with beautiful moments but the story is dark, very dark. Death and decay hang out at every turn and it’s pretty explicit.

There are moments though, that reveal Magnolia’s true heart, like her relationship with a homeless man and the many memories of her grandma that are shared throughout the story. Life in a funeral home is rough and when you choose to play a dead loved one, things can get a little dangerous. Not so much the action of it, but what it does to your psyche. When you are so fully immersed in death, how do you separate life from death?

I will be honest here, House of Cotton was a FINALIST for the 2024 NYPL Young Lions Fiction Award and NPR’s BEST BOOK OF 2023, but it’s explicit in detail and might be a lot for someone not used to reading something so raw and ragged.

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

Honor
By Thrity Umrigar
Algonquin Books,9781643753300, 2022, 352 pp.

The Short of It:

Weighty.

The Rest of It:

In Honor, Indian American journalist Smita has returned to India to cover a story, but reluctantly: long ago she and her family left the country with no intention of ever coming back. As she follows the case of Meena–a Hindu woman attacked by members of her own village and her own family for marrying a Muslim man–Smita comes face to face with a society where tradition carries more weight than one’s own heart, and a story that threatens to unearth the painful secrets of Smita’s own past. ~Indiebound

I was immediately pulled into this story. Meena’s story of abuse at the hands of her own brothers, was intense in the telling. Permanently disfigured by fire and ridiculed by the entire village for falling in love and marrying a Muslim man, proved to be too much for her to overcome. As unwelcome as she is, her young daughter, Abra is what keeps her there. Forced to live with a MIL who hates her for what happened to her son, the only thing that grounds her are the ethereal visits of her husband Abdul as he makes his presence known through dreams.

Smita, a journalist, returns to India to assist a colleague who is having hip surgery. Her entire motivation for going is to just help her colleague during recovery. India is not a place she ever wanted to return to. Too many memories of when her family was forced to leave when she was a child. But when she arrives, she finds out that Shannon wants her to pick up Meena’s story. That her time in India will not be spent navigating recovery, but interviewing Meena, the MIL, the brothers that caused her so much pain. This was not in the cards, but how can such a story go untold?

Smita’s time in India is wrought with unpleasant memories, difficult people, and reluctant witnesses. Her only saving grace is the man who Shannon brought in to help navigate the language barrier. Mohan’s kindness, common sense and loyalty to Smita and Shannon prove to be invaluable.

This was an easy story to fall into given the weighty subject matter but the ending! No spoilers but I was not prepared for the ending. It was like a slap to the face! Overall, to say that I “enjoyed” this story would be a real stretch but I found myself taken by the characters and the difficulty presenting itself as Meena’s story is told. It was chosen for my book club and I think there will be plenty to discuss.

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

Chatting with friends about books and life…