Well, I have accomplished one thing in 2023. I finished a book I had previously marked as Never Finished. I picked up Grab On to Me Tightly as if I Knew the Way by Bryan Charles because 1) I was trying to read something outside my normal style or approach 2) it was connected to Kalamazoo, Michigan, and as a born and raised Michigander I guess I hoped that would connect with me.
As publishers are wont to do, the blurb made big promises:
A wise, bighearted, and hilarious look at one teenager’s life by a remarkable new voice in contemporary fiction
and
Generous in spirit and laugh-out-loud funny, here is a novel that introduces a tremendous new talent and deftly captures the alternately amusing and harrowing process of holding on until you find your way.
That is what I was hoping for, but nope. It was vulgar and full of angst. I get that is what it means to be a teenager, but at my age I guess I just have a low threshold for these things. So when the digital book was due and people were waiting for the book I gave up.
But in an interesting twist, writing the post about books I didn’t finish motivated me to take another crack at it. And one night when I couldn’t sleep I was able to read large chunks and find a rhythm so to speak.
I still didn’t love it, but I was able to finish it and appreciate aspects of it.
In the small mining town of Malmberget, north of the Arctic Circle, residents and their houses are being relocated. As the mine that built the town slowly swallows it street by street, building by building, the memories of the community have collapsed into the huge pit they call “the hole.” Only a few stubborn souls cling to their homes, refusing to leave. When two workers making their final preparations hear a sound coming from a basement, they break a cellar window and find a terrified man curled up in a corner.
It’s been more than twenty years since Olof Hagström left home. Returning to his family’s house, he knows instantly that something is amiss. The front door key, hidden under a familiar stone, is still there. Inside, there’s a panicked dog, a terrible stench, water pooling on the floor: the father Olaf has not seen or spoken to in decades is dead in the bathroom shower.
One morning, a man wakes up to find himself transformed. Overnight, Anders’s skin has turned dark, and the reflection in the mirror seems a stranger to him. At first he shares his secret only with Oona, an old friend turned new lover. Soon, reports of similar events begin to surface. Across the land, people are awakening in new incarnations, uncertain how their neighbors, friends, and family will greet them.Some see the transformations as the long-dreaded overturning of the established order that must be resisted to a bitter end. In many, like Anders’s father and Oona’s mother, a sense of profound loss and unease wars with profound love. As the bond between Anders and Oona deepens, change takes on a different shading: a chance at a kind of rebirth–an opportunity to see ourselves, face to face, anew.