The Captive (2025) by Kit Burgoyne

 Audiobook Review

The Captive (2025)

by Kit Burgoyne

  Kit Burgoyne is the horror nom de plume for science fiction author Ned Beauman.  I read Beauman's 2022 novel, Venomous Lumpsucker back in 2023 and it inspired a pretty thorough review. Beauman remained in my mind as a solid example of a genre writer with literary fiction reach, so I was interested when I read that he'd launched a horror alter ego for his new novel, The Captive, which  has been described as, "A Rosemay's Baby for the late capitalism period."   In other words, he wrote an A24 movie.  So be it! I'll take an update on Rosemary's Baby any day of the week.  Within the horror genre, I am particularly interested in the detailed depiction of the craft and practice of horror-genre devil worshippers. Devil worship is such an interesting inversion of conventional religious practices, and I like to see how different authors depict the practices of the various versions.  

  Here, Burgoyne/Beauman links the devil to the UK equivalent of the GEO/Wackenhut group- a privately owned corporation that runs quasi-public institutions like prisons, jails and mental hospitals. As someone who visits privately run prisons on the regular, including immigration facilities, I can testify that Beauman's take is a little hysterical.  His merry band of anarchist-terrorists who put the plot into motion seem to have extremely fuzzy ideologies but are firmly committed to putting the plot into motion by concerted criminal action. 

  The Captive was a fun audiobook; I'd recommend it as a good format here.

  I'm thinking Jenny Ortega as the lead.

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café (1987) by Fannie Flagg

1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe (1987)

by Fannie Flagg

Whistle Stop, Alabama (Mobile area)

Alabama: 12/18

   The last geographic cluster of Alabama books in the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America map is around Mobile- on the Gulf coast in the south of the state.  It's another area I have never visited.  Nor, for that matter, do I have any idea that I ever might be there.  The same can't be said for northern Alabama, easily reachable from Nashville (a place I've been and could go again).   Mobile doesn't have the historic heft of the Birmingham and its important role in the Civil Rights movement.   I didn't get much of a feel for real world Birmingham, since Fried Green Tomatoes is close to being a fantasy novel about some semi-idealized version of the south where decent people actually exist.

  Fried Green Tomatoes mostly reminded me of The Oldest Living Confederate War Widow Tells All, which uses a similar narrative convention (death bed flashbacks from one of the protagonists with an interlocutor trying to figure out confused events of the past.  Widow was published in 1984, which makes me think author Fannie Flagg must have read it.  Unlike Widow, Tomatoes is not 800 pages long.  The central themes, which treat both racial and LGBTQ issues in a sympathetic light, made me laugh, because the attitudes in this book are unlike any in the other 50 plus titles in this chapter.  Here, we've got a small-town Alabama sheriff who is protective of his African American community, and an LGBTQ business owner who isn't afraid to stand up to racists and suffer no consequences from her actions.  That is not the Deep South I've read about up to this point- where the characters in this book would have all been murdered for their behavior.  Maybe it has something to do with Mobile. 

The Pretender (2025) by Jo Harkin

 Audiobook Review

The Pretender (2025)

by Jo Harkin

   The Pretender is a rare 2025 Audiobook listen, written by English author Jo Harkin, one of the cover quotes describes it as "Glorious Exploits meets Wolf Hall" and I agree. Specifically, I agree with the comparison to Glorious Exploits which brought some contemporary characterization into a historical milieu while still keeping things from getting anachronistic.  There's a pot of gold for any writer of literary or historical fiction who can pull off this trick- see the endless attempts by the film industry to recharacterize and repurpose novels from the early 19th century.  Clever stuff, recommended. 

Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry (1977) by Mildred D. Taylor

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry (1977)

by Mildred D. Taylor

Jackson, Mississippi

Mississippi: 3/18

  Ran out of Audiobooks in Alabama about one Audiobook in, so it is on to Mississippi and Louisiana, where the pickings are almost but not quite as slim. The rule with Audiobooks in the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America is no chick lit and no YA titles- everything else, including actual children's books, of which this is one.  This is a good children's book, written before kids were wimps and parents were insane.  Back in the 1970's an African American author could use the n word in a children's book and win Awards, nowadays some libraries won't even carry this title for the same reason.

  Roll of Thunder was a genuinely effective children's book, like something out of the nineteenth century and filled with the unmitigated terror of the "Night Riders" on a community of African Americans in rural Mississippi.  The protagonists is the youngest daughter of a rare family of African American property owners- with the land now in the second generation of the family.  That already makes Mississippi different than Alabama, where some of the book's detail how it was impossible for African American families to even rent, let alone own land in swathes of Alabama.   

  Many times as I listened to this Audiobook I thought about the horror movies of Jordan Peele and the idea that the African American experience in much of America is, in fact, a real-life horror film.  You look at the central family in this book: Property owning farmers, no bad habits and their very existence is an affront to their white neighbors.  These people are literally not allowed to live.  It is a deeply Unamerican environment and I think there is a strong argument that it simply is not. 

The Watsons go to Birmingham (1995) by Christopher Paul

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

The Watsons Go To Birmingham (1995)

by Christopher Paul

Birmingham, Alabama

Alabama: 11/18

   Arguably not a book about Birmingham since most of the book takes place in Detroit before the Watsons Go To Birmingham (right before the church bombing). This is a children's book, not a YA title, so it is pretty straightforward.  The Watsons does have a road trip, which, I think because of the map-based categorization of the titles, are sorely lacking in the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America.  The most interesting portion of this title was, in fact, the drive itself.

    Just the fact that this family hops in a car and drives somewhere not in their neighborhood puts them in a rare subgroup of this project.  It's like, for most of the characters in these books, the idea that one might just leave the terrible place where they happen to have been born is unfathomable.  I mean, I'm talking about hundreds of books at this point.  And this observation has nothing to do with this title in particular but it's crazy how none of these books have characters who in any way, shape, or form transcend their surroundings or low beginnings.  Stasis and regression is the rule of thumb in the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America project, and not just for the South, although that weight is heavy in Alabama. 

Looking for Alaska (2005) by John Green

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Looking for Alaska (2005)

by John Green

Culver Creek (Birmingham), Alabama

Alabama: 10/18

   I checked out the Hulu Version of this paperback- with a picture of who I presume was the actress who played the eponymous Alaska of the title.  Before I shit all over this book let me just say that I understand that John Green has multiple YA hits (The Fault in our Stars), that he is a popular YouTuber and I think Podcaster, and that he has lots of fans some of whom might actually read this post.  In other words, Looking for Alaska is a hit, and the author has other hits, but the books are terrible. 

  Set in a progressive co-ed high school and narrated by a fish-out-of-water type, Green brings together a familiar band of misfits which includes a Japanese guy buy no African American.  In fact, there are no African American characters in this book which is enough to make me hate John Green.  There's nothing specific to Alabama in this book beyond, I think, the geographical location of the school and the fact that the author went to a similar school in Birmingham.  You can tell it's a new generation of YA author because of the presence of the most harmless blowjob depicted in this history of literature in these pages.

Luminous (2025) by Silvia Park

 Book Review

Luminous (2025)

by Silvia Park

     2025 was a down year for literary fiction neither the race for the Booker nor the National Book Award interested me- I didn't even recognize the semi-finalsts for the National Book Award.  Luminous, by first time novelist Silvia Park, stood out to me this year as an excellent combination of genre (science fiction) and literary fiction themes.  Luminous moves in a couple different directions and handle all its issues in a way that isn't overly didactic or stereotyped.    Luminous is one of the first really vivid visualizations of what a post-human society might look like- here we have characters who are part robot, part human, humans who have familial relationships with robots and robots that definitely, definitely want to be human.  At times, the literary fiction element made me feel like I was reading a contemporary I, Robot as written by Virginia Woolf, but my take is always that a difficult to read novel is interesting in a way that an easy-to-read novel simply is not.

  I'd highly, highly recommend picking up a copy of Luminous if you can find it in a book shop.

Crazy in Alabama by Mark Childress

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Crazy in Alabama (1993)

by Mark Childress

Industry, Alabama

Alabama: 9/18

   It's the half-way mark for the Alabama chapter of the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America.  The Alabama chapter is weak, and it got me thinking how editor Susan Straight made her picks for this state, where the only sure-fire canon level pick is To Kill a Mockingbird.   I realized, walking the dog last night, that you can use the subject categories from the Library of Congress, like Alabama - fiction, to look at every title so classified, and that there was likely to be a 100% overlap.  The Alabama - fiction tag in the library of congress returns about 330 titles.  I looked through 80 of them on my walk and saw 40% of the titles from this chapter, so I think it is likely that Straight must have had the same insight.  

  Crazy in Alabama is the kind of title that would have driven me nuts as an Audiobook but was fine to read in physical form.  It's a comic novel, later turned into a film by Antonio Banderas, of all people, starring Melanie Griffith, about an abused housewife in small-town Alabama who murders his husband and escapes to Hollywood to pursue her dream as an actress.  Meanwhile, back at home her relatives deal with the consequences of her actions and their own feelings about the incipient civil rights movement.

Four Spirits (2003) by Sena Jeter Naslund

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Four Spirits (2003)

by Sena Jeter Naslund

Birmingham, Alabama

Alabama: 8/18

   I'm mention again that Northern Alabama is the biggest literary dark patch I've observed since upstate New York.  The sole exception is four novels set in Birmingham, all within six blocks of each other.  Three of the books are works of historical fiction about the Civil Rights movement, the last is set at a strangely integrated high school.  Four Spirits is a complicated mutlti-viewpoint novel that switches between white and black characters. The four spirits are the four girls murdered in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing on September 15th, 1963.  Naslund is nothing if not committed to the bit, including as one of her characters a highly unconvincing Klu Klux Klan bomb maker.  The characters closer to her own experience are more believable but overall, I thought the single incident was thin source material for a book that tries to convey multiple points of view.   The chapters involving the actual Civil Rights leaders like Martin Luther King and his local counterparts were interesting but also reminded me of the almost total absence of political fiction in this chapter of the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America- it's domestic fiction till the cows come home in the Deep South.

Dessa Rose (1986) by Sherley Anne Williams

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Dessa Rose (1986)

by Sherley Anne Williams

Marengo County, Alabama

Alabama: 7/18

  Dessa Rose was a genuine surprise from the Alabama chapter of the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America project, a transgressive work of fiction about a white plantation wife and a band of escaped slaves she shelters- set in the 1830's.  It is the first book set in the 19th century in the South which depicts a sexual relationship between a male slave and a female mistress- which- if you just kind of described the outlines of the culture in this part of the country, you would think relationships between black men and white women would be, whatever else, an interesting subject for literary fiction.  But it is not, and I think that is because, unlike relationships between white men and black women, relationships between black men and white women were punishable by immediate extrajudicial murder.

  I'd like to say that this idea is either a myth or exaggeration, but the essential truth of this situation is revealed in cases like the murder of Emmett Till, an African American murdered for allegedly cat-calling a white woman in public.  I imagine there are still parts of Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia where a black man/white woman couple would face trouble.  The relationship depicted here is a casual one, but the utter absence of any fully developed relationships between black men and white women across Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana is enough to give one pause.  Really?  Not a single novel written on the subject.  Perhaps there is a work of science fiction out there that covers such a relationship in an alternate universe.