Review: Deception

Deception by Philip Roth
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Here's my issue with Deception. It's a brilliant book, but you don't realize that until you have about 30 pages or so left of the story. What makes it brilliant is the title. Philip Roth, throughout his career was usually thought to be writing about himself in most of his stories. And this one is no different...but with a twist. I won't spoil what that twist is, but Roth definitely plays with the concept of fiction being reality and reality being fiction. It's a sleight of hand that comes at just the right time, but everything before that is really a whole bunch of, "Am I missing something here?" that pays off in the end, but it was a bit too late for me. But indeed, the reader is deceived in ways I couldn't imagine. Philip Roth was the master, plain and simple.

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Review: Dear Martin

Dear Martin by Nic Stone
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

So, I probably shouldn't have read this right after All American Boys, because I've been angry all week. It's not as good as AAB (Mostly because we don't really get "the other side"), but Dear Martin is still pretty potent stuff. Some of the truth is this book really is soul-rattling. There's a lot in here that I've felt about myself but never really articulated until recently in my life. Centered around police brutality and where black people (specifically black boys) fit into that spectrum, there's a lot here that just burns so hard it's almost hard to read. Powerful stuff. I highly recommend it.

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