Book reviews: finding the stolen children of Argentina’s Dirty War, a feminist history of Russia, and more

The Luminous Fairies and Mothra by Takehiko Fukunaga; Yoshie Hotta; Shin’ichiro Nakamura; trans. by Jeffrey Angles. 5/5

If you’re a Mothra fan, this book is for you. Read the original stories of Mothra and its fairy attendants in a new translation, and be prepared to be enchanted. The extensive notes that follow the stories are worthy in and of themselves, discussing translation challenges, how Mothra became a kaiju in the movie world, and more. Perfect for any collection on monsters, mid-century lit, and Japanese culture.

Motherland by Julia Ioffe. 5/5

Motherland is an outstanding history of feminism and women in Russia, the USSR, and Russia. Ioffe deftly weaves in the histories of prominent women in the Russian revolution, the USSR, and modern-day Russia with the stories of the women in her own family. If you’ve only ever heard of the Night Witches who flew for the USSR in WWII, or know a little bit about Soviet poets like Anna Akhmatova, Motherland provides all of the context and analysis you need for that history to make more sense, to understand more deeply, and to learn how the earliest feminist goals of women leaders in the new USSR were squashed, discarded, and lost–and what that has meant for Russian women today. Ioffe, a well-known journalist, writes clearly and elegantly about complex issues. I do wish Ioffe had more coverage of queer or gender non-conforming women in this history, even if to make people aware about the policies against them. Nonetheless, this should top book clubs’ lists.

Atlas of Unknowable Things by McCormick Templeman . 3/5

This book has such promise, and so many good ideas, I can’t wait to read a version that’s been through a developmental edit and a copy edit. As it is, it’s a hot mess of ideas and tropes and some very strange set pieces that don’t connect well, characters who are wildly uneven, and what feels like are those kinds of errors where you delete some text but forget to remove references to it later in the book and end up with phantom ideas and such. It could be an excellent example of “dark academia”–if it gets the treatment it deserves and needs.

You Did Nothing Wrong by CG Drews. 3/5

I was drawn to this by the promised confluence of autism and horror. As someone who is #ActuallyAutistic, it’s a good day when the autism ISN’T the horror. And in this book, it’s the neurotypical(-ish; do we consider sociopathy NT?) parents and their house that are the horrors. There’s still a certain amount of sympathy, however, for the mother who fantasizes about killing her autistic child–who she insists has “nothing wrong with him”–and that’s a problem, even insetting her up as one of the villains of the story, because at that point of the novel, she’s meant to be seen as perfectly relatable. It’s a short book and a quick read, and has a kinda happy ending for the autistic child, which is nice. The twists are pretty good, but the house itself could use some more boosting as a space of horror–it feels like an afterthought, where it could have been more evenly integrated.

A Flower Traveled in My Blood by Haley Cohen Gilliland. 5/5

This is a fantastic, devastating, and timely book about the kidnappings and murders and re-homing of thousands of Argentines during the country’s Dirty War in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Among those kidnapped were many pregnant people, who were forced to give birth so that their children could be given to government officials. Gilliland documents the organization and work of the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, women who sought information on their “disappeared” children and grandchildren. Working with sympathizers inside the military government, researchers in DNA technology, and others, the Abuelas slowly began identifying and contacting their grandchildren. For the grandchildren, learning that their parents were not theirs, and that their parents had likely colluded in the murders of their biological parents, the Abuelas were both saviors and demons; Gilliland writes about them with sympathy and care. This is a must-read, especially as more countries move towards authoritarianism.