Book reviews
Counting Bones: Anatomy of Love Lost and Found. A Memoir by Ellen Anderson Penno, Newest Press, 2024, 248 pp.
Reviewed by Antoinette Bekker, January 2025.
Ellen is a young woman whose ambitions are nearly derailed when her boyfriend Ian (pronounced Yawn) dies in a mountaineering incident. Her memoir explores how she dealt with loss and grief while studying medicine—a challenging endeavour in itself. She personalizes her grief and names it Mabel. Naming grief and befriending it is not the only surprising aspect of this memoir; she also presents her story on two structural levels.
Counting Bones follows a non-linear structure, moving between Ellen’s childhood, her time with Ian, and her present-day experiences in medical school. This fragmented style mirrors the fragmenting effect grief has on personhood. One of the effects of loss is devastation, and by using a fragmented narrative, she illustrates the shrapnel her life becomes following the impact of her boyfriend’s unexpected death. This non-linear approach aligns with the memoir genre’s emphasis on exploring the complexity of human experience. Furthermore, I believe that memory is not linear. A fractured narrative depicts how we recall significant events and make sense of new information—in bits and pieces, building and rebuilding a new narrative.
The writer also frames her narrative through medical metaphors and cleverly organizes her reflections around different body parts, such as bones and the heart, using these elements as guiding symbols for each stage of her emotional journey. This structure creates a bridge between the writer’s internal and external worlds. It also meets the memoir’s expectation of providing a deeper meaning to personal experiences by giving the reader a metaphorical map through which to understand the narrative journey.
Because she (re)lives the past in the present, it is difficult for her to remain anchored in the here and now. She develops several techniques to combat becoming mired in the devastation of her loss, from studying for hours to running marathons. Physical exertion becomes the tool with which she initially sublimates, then projects, and finally accepts her loss. She describes the tension between her roles as a grieving partner and medical student. As she immerses herself in her studies, her identity as a doctor-in-training becomes intertwined with her grieving process. The convergence of personal and professional selves makes Counting Bones not only a meditation on grief but also a reflection on how we reconcile personal suffering with external expectations. This duality of her identity is a central theme of her book. She expands on these aspects of her personhood when she talks about her interactions with patients, where the physician is expected to remain logical and distanced from the emotional pain her patient suffers. The exploration of these striving elements reflects a key aspect of memoir: how life events shape or redefine one’s sense of self. Or, in other words, How did I get from there to here? And why?
Counting Bones fulfills the contract between writer and reader regarding truthfulness and honest writing of the trauma narrative; however, the memoir has flaws. While the prose is often elegant, language sometimes becomes overly poetic, verging on the melodramatic. The florid descriptions of grief become overwrought, and the relationship between the symbolic use of anatomy is not always apparent in the chapter in which it is presented. Or, it is too clear, too on the nose. This tendency towards emotional excess may be a flaw of the editorial process wherein the editor should have guided the writer towards a more restrained exploration of emotions. While, on the one hand, the book’s reliance on medical metaphor and disjointed narrative structure adds to its originality and freshness in the genre, it also, together with excessive focus on medical training, detracts from its emotional impact. Between language, structure, and story, the memoir fights to maintain its balance as it threatens to tumble into one of the crevasses she writes about. At times, the journey through medical school reads as filler to reach the word count.
Furthermore, the reader has to wait until the end part of the memoir to find out why the writer is compelled to write the book at this time. The inciting incident—when a backpack belonging to one of the climbers is found—is left for the end. The writer’s relationship with Ian, a character central throughout the book, needs more exploration. Considering that in the bigger scope of Life, the Universe, and Everything, we all undergo youthful relationship endings (almost always traumatic,) why was the end of this relationship so particularly devastating? The unexpectedness and unusual circumstances of the relationship termination or the very deep bond? These questions remain as the writer indicates that they have not firmly committed to one another or made future plans to move together when she goes back to university.
At times the memoir reads as not only gimmicky but also self-aggrandizing as it explores the writer’s athletic prowess, her academic superiority, and super-human—compared to us yokels who only ever suffer “normal” losses—levels of endurance and perseverance in the face of adversity. Ultimately, there is little interesting about her story, except, perhaps, the circumstances of her boyfriend’s death, unusual for the general person but not unexpected if one is a mountaineer. She did well to include technical aspects of mountaineering as it falls outside the scope of the every-person’s reference and adds interesting details to her narrative.
The setting as a character is only partially explored, as is the character development of the writer and Ian. She returnms to nature as a metaphor in one of her explorations of grief: In grief, we were in the depths of winter, the season of short days and bitter cold silence that coats the earth in darkness. During the winter of grief, fighting is fruitless; waiting and resting are the keys to surviving until spring (page 143.)
Counting Bones led me to another memoir referenced in its text. Aftermath by Susan Brison is a brilliantly written account of sexual assault and the fracturing and subsequent rebuilding of the self. It has none of the flowery language that mars Counting Bones. With its foundation of the personal, philosophical, and scientific, it was a pleasure to read and may stand as a cornerstone for trauma narrative in my library of notable memoirs. Aftermath led me to Auschwitz and After by Charlotte Delbo, a moving, unsentimental hybrid of personal essays and poetry exploring the ephemeral aspects of memory, the influence of circumstance on memory, and the splitting of the self to survive. These are the aspects a reader hopes to find in reading a trauma narrative: the trauma trope is written without sentimentality or unnecessary brutality.
The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka, Sort of Books, 2022, 386 pp.
Reviewd by Antoinette Bekker, November 2024.
If I ever wondered whether death is as much of a bureaucratic mare’s nest as this little life of mine, Shehan Karunatilaka convinced me that the hereafter is as messy as the present and best avoided—Ha! Dream on, sweetness.
The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, winner of the 2022 Booker Prize, is a fruitcake of murder mystery, satire, and absurdist exaggeration that offers the reader up like a piece of marzipan frosting to the limbo of an afterlife that feels alarmingly familiar. And hungry. In this story of ghosts, gore, corruption, and sexual greed, Karunatilaka concocts a biting commentary on Sri Lanka’s history while delivering a story that’s part tragic-comedy, part existential crisis, and qualifies for a second helping. Or a binge. I did finish the book in one day. It was delicious.
What’s It About?
Meet Maali Almeida, a war photographer, gambler, and hornbag who wakes up in the afterlife with one major problem—he’s dead—murdered, poor sod. And because being dead isn’t complicated enough, Maali has just seven moons (read: days) to figure out who killed him, why, and how to ensure that his life’s work—photographs exposing the atrocities of Sri Lanka’s civil war—isn’t captured by the government before he is eaten by a demon and ends up where nobody wants to be. Ever.
The afterlife is a chaotic halfway house of wandering spirits, animal ghosts, and a shape-shifting being with a taste for wayward souls. Add to this the bureaucracy of the “In-Between,” where spectral beings line up to have their fates determined, and you’ve got a supernatural setup that’s as Kafkaesque as it is funny. Funny-haha and funny-peculiar. Sort of a Walmart Black Friday sale in rural Mississippi. That reminds me: you should read Trees by Percival Everett next.
Back in the world of the living, Maali’s friends and lovers—an eclectic bunch of misfits—become entangled in his posthumous investigation. Through Maali’s eyes, readers witness the colonial legacy, political corruption, ethnic violence, and absurdities of 1980s Sri Lanka, all rendered with Karunatilaka’s sharp wit.
The Author: Shehan Karunatilaka
Born in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Shehan Karunatilaka first wrote Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew (2010). This cricket-themed novel won the Commonwealth Book Prize and established Karunatilaka as a storyteller with a knack for blending humour and pathos. With The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, he steps into darker, more experimental territory while maintaining his satirical tone.
Karunatilaka’s 2022 Booker Prize win for Seven Moons of Maali Almeida will hopefully give him the global following his work deserves. His writing, deeply rooted in Sri Lanka’s history and culture, critiques power structures while exploring universal themes of identity, legacy, and morality.
Why This Is an Essential Read
In a world oversaturated with war novels, ghost stories, and historical fiction, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeidastands out for its audacity to mix genres and defy conventions. It’s a murder mystery that doesn’t care if you solve it, a political satire that refuses to take itself too seriously, and a spiritual exploration that finds transcendence in the mundane, that is, if it isn’t making fun of the concepts of transcendence or the mundane.
Karunatilaka’s portrayal of Sri Lanka’s civil war is unflinching but never heavy-handed. Through Maali’s lens—literally and figuratively—the book captures the absurdity of violence and the ways in which history is manipulated and erased. This is not just a story about Sri Lanka; it’s a story about any society that has been scarred by war, where truth is buried alongside the dead, and those who speak out often meet untimely ends.
Karunatilaka’s choice to narrate in the second person draws readers directly into Maali’s chaotic, sardonic mind. Remember what I wrote about offering the reader up? It’s unsettling, immersive, and intimate, as though the protagonist is skewering you on his fork into the maw of chaos.
And then there’s the humour. Maali, for all his flaws, is an endlessly entertaining guide—cynical, irreverent, and often honest. His observations about humanity and everything in between are as likely to make you laugh as they are to make you wince.
A Few Critiques (Because No Book is Perfect)
Let’s address the ghostly demon in the room. The plot twists and turns like one of Maali’s schemes, and the supernatural elements can sometimes feel confusing because there are so many of them. Some readers may find themselves lost in the labyrinth of the afterlife, wishing for a map—or at least fewer spectral bureaucrats. And then, the gore. Lots. The book reminds me of a Quentin Tarantino movie where I’d feel ashamed for finding violence funny. The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida is not for everybody, as it creates a cognitive dissonance that some readers will find unsettling.
The second-person narrative, while innovative, may feel alienating or overly experimental to the more traditional reader. And though the book’s humour is sharp, its relentless satire can occasionally undercut its more poignant moments, leaving readers unsure whether they should laugh, cry, or do both simultaneously. I find the second-person narrative seamlessly done and not gimmicky at all, and the readers who can’t manage a bit of cognitive dissonance...take a clonazepam.
Why You Should Read It Anyway
Despite minor challenges, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida is bold, inventive, and unapologetically sharp. It’s a book that refuses to be boxed into a single genre or interpretation, offering readers a kaleidoscope of ideas and emotions. It is the book that I wish to write.
Karunatilaka entertains and provokes. He forces readers to confront uncomfortable truths about history, memory, and the cycles of violence that plague humanity, and he does so with wit and creativity.
If you’re tired of formulaic fiction and ready for something that challenges your brain and sense of humour, this Booker Prize-winning novel deserves a place on your Kindle.
Ultimately, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida isn’t just a book; it’s an experience that will stay with you long after Maali’s seven moons have passed. Whether you love it or find it maddening, one thing is certain: you won’t forget it. And in a world obsessed with leaving legacies, perhaps that’s the point.
Review: Lincoln in the Bardo, written by George Saunders—the book, not the review. Antoinette Bekker wrote the review, October 2024.
A. triumphantly waves a book with a blue-green cover and a gold star in the top right corner, then plops down at the patio table where her friend L.G. drinks a cappuccino and eats a blueberry muffin in between flapping a paper napkin. L.G. wears rather orange Birkenstocks, claiming a pesky heel spur. It is Sunday morning, 10 a.m., and time for A. to pitch a book for their monthly book club meeting.
Gimme that! I need to wap this wasp. (L.G.)
Wap-wap. The wasp dies.
Sacrilege to use Lincoln in the Bardo as a fly swatter! George Saunders is a scholar, a teacher, a member— (A.)
Wap! A. flinches. Another wasp dies.
What were you sayin’? He has a member? I hope it’s a big one. (L.G.)
Gawd! You’re inappropriate. It’s about the prizes he has won, like the Man Booker Prize in 2017, when he finally arrived and became a member of this most exclusive club of literati. (A.)
A. wrestles Lincoln in the Bardo back and leans her elbows on it. Another wasp is circling, and A. knows L.G. is eyeing the book through her fake Gucci shades.
I’m only interested in sex. If there’s no sex in the book...you’re wasting your breath... (L.G.)
There are lots of sex—ghost orgies. (A.)
L.G. rolls her eyes.
He won the Booker for that? Ghost sex? Puhleaze. (L.G.)
And he won the 2023 Library of Congress Prize for American fiction. And he is a teacher at Syracuse University and a master of the short story and—(A.)
L.G. taps the screen of her iPhone with a coral fingernail. Her manicure is about two weeks in arrears.
That him? Wild moustache. Pity it isn’t growing on his head. I don’t do baldies. (L.G.)
Unholy mother of heathens, will you listen? Lincoln in the Bardo is the only piece of experimental fiction I’ve ever read that is so well-written that it ceases to be experimental. It mimics a play, a dramatic presentation, a running commentary of events as they unfold. It is a perfect depiction of the tragicomedic state of the human condition. And it is easy to read. That’s why we should all read it: It is well-crafted, imaginative, original, and relatable—even though a bunch of odd ghosts narrates it. (A.)
A. counts the merits of Lincoln in the Bardo on her fingers. Her nails are perfectly groomed.
That’s probably why he won. For jibber-jabber. Like that stream-of-consciousness guy. Whassis name? Sounds like a bird—Vulture? Where’s the sex? (L.G.)
L.G. orders another cappuccino. A. bites her tongue. She has always suspected her friend is a lowbrow ignoramus; now she knows.
Go on. I’m listening, but get to the sexy bits soon. (L.G.)
Abraham Lincoln’s young son dies, but instead of moving on to wherever dead souls go, Willie stays trapped in the bardo, a sort of limbo where—(A.)
Why did Saunders name the book Lincoln in the Bardo and not Lincoln in the Limbo? Does he not know anything about poetic devices? (L.G.)
Will you shut up for a single minute? And it’s Faulkner. Not “vulture.” (A.)
Close enough. I meant “falcon.” (L.G.)
The cappuccino arrives, and L.G. does shut up. A. takes off, rather breathlessly, while wondering how on this overheating earth L.G. knows about “poetic devices.”
In the bardo, there are any number of ghosts who are stuck, some for not believing or accepting they are dead, others for loving humanity too much to sever all connections to the living completely. But they all know demons will consume little Willie if he doesn’t let go of his love for his dad; the bardo is no place for children to linger in. The ghosts set off to save the boy by infiltrating Lincoln’s body and convincing him to tell his son that he, Willie, is dead and not to hang around waiting for his dad. (A.)
L.G. yawns.
So? (L.G.)
So? It’s funny, sad, and lyrical, written in beautiful English. We read Willie’s and Lincoln’s stories and experience the ghosts telling us about their lives. Listen to this. (A.)
A. unfolds her arms from the book she has been cradling protectively, takes a sip of coffee, puts on her reading glasses, and reads.
“Only then (nearly out the door, so to speak) did I realize how unspeakably beautiful all of this was, how precisely engineered for our pleasure, and saw that I was on the brink of squandering a wondrous gift, the gift of being allowed, every day, to wander this vast sensual paradise, this grand marketplace lovingly stocked with every sublime thing.”(Roger Bevins III.)
L.G. wipes a tear. A. continues, considering that her friend may not be so bad after all.
“Geese above, clover below, the sound of one’s own breath when winded.
The way a moistness in the eye will blur a field of stars; the sore place on the shoulder a resting toboggan makes; writing one’s beloved’s name upon a frosted window with a gloved finger.
Tying a shoe; tying a knot on a package; a mouth on yours; a hand on yours; the ending of the day; the beginning of the day; the feeling that there will always be a day ahead.”(Roger Bevins III.)
L.G. sniffles, and A. gallops on.
The story is set in the first year of the American Civil War. It is narrated in a series of monologues interspersed with snippets of historical texts offering different perspectives on Lincoln’s public and private life. One feels sorry not only for Lincoln and his son waiting faithfully for his father to “release” him but also for Hans Vollman, a compassionate man who died while making love to his wife and now carries an enormous erection about; the other narrator is sensual Roger Bevins III, sporting many eyes and appendices used for sensory appreciation. (A.)
You mean noses and lips and ears and fingers. Just say so. Why are aspiring writers so pretentious? And I’m glad we’re getting to the sex. Eventually. (L.G.)
Tsk. (A.)
Anyway, Roger Bevins died in a suicide attempt after a thwarted homosexual love affair. Both ghosts are in denial about their death, and the book ends when Lincoln accepts Willie’s death and Willie is released from the bardo to “move on.” All the ghosts developed insight into why they remained in the bardo and that they were, indeed, dead. With this realization, they escape the bardo via the “matterlightblooming” phenomenon. (A.)
I don’t like sad books. All this death and suicide...(L.G.)
It’s sad but funny, too. All the characters—and there are many, perhaps too many—grow and change in their believable character arcs and are written sympathetically, even Eddie and Betsy Baron, impoverished drunks who neglected their children and swore like you can’t believe. And we have two couples constantly having group sex, adding absurdist comedic relief. (A.)
So, the themes are struggling with and overcoming loss. Abraham Lincoln, the loss of his son; the ghosts, the loss of what they held dear; the reckoning of their doings (wrong or otherwise); the acceptance of the consequences of their decisions, and then the moving on, wherever that may be? All written in bits of dramatic monologue without a single quotation mark, right? (L.G.)
Right. I thought you weren’t listening. (A.)
L.G. waggles her eyebrows.
My manicure may be tatty, but my brain still works. And the genre? Historical fiction? Experimental fiction? Magic realism? Absurdism? What? (L.G.)
All of the above. It’s an adjustment getting used to the structure, and the historical bits about Lincoln do get a bit boring. And the many, many characters...but the book is an imaginative exploration of where we go when we die and how we cope with loss—(A.)
Mmm, I don’t know if I like this genre-straddling business. And I’m not into absurdism. It’s all too modern for my tastes. Anyway, Saunders has bad hair, and the Booker Prize is overrated. Give me the Pulitzer any day. Night Watch by Jayne Ann Phillips—(L.G.)
Aaargh! (A.)
And the two frenemies are off, debating the merits of literary prizes and all things literary including the modern preoccupancy with genre. They keep at it till the earth explodes during a particularly nasty stint of overheating. That’s the end of their argument in this reality. They both end up in the Medicine Hat Cemetery, navigating the limbo, till one day, an orange infant terrible with bad hair arrives. His name is Donald.