Christopher Schroeder

Category: literacy, literature, and language

  • More Like a Summer Slurpee

    NPR critic Maureen Corrigan suggests that El Dorado Drive by Megan Abbott (2025) is one of the better summer suspense novels, but I think it barely qualifies as a beach read.

    Harper, the youngest of three Bishop sisters, is invited by her older sisters Pam and Deb to join a female financial club that seems as much a ponzi scheme as an empowerment source. Their individual financial needs are not unlike those of the other middle-aged women in their Detroit hometown, and the ensuing mayhem could have been caused by any of these financial investors or Harper’s ex-brother-in-law or her niece.

    Harper, the youngest of three Bishop sisters, is invited by her older sisters Pam and Deb to join a female financial club that seems as much a ponzi scheme as an empowerment source. Their individual financial needs are not unlike those of the other middle-aged women in their Detroit hometown, and the ensuing mayhem could have been caused by any of these financial investors or Harper’s ex-brother-in-law or her niece.

    The suspense, which surfaces early, eventually rises to a modest wave, but that isn’t enough to carry readers to the shore. Moreover, possible themes — sisters’ adult relationships for example or female financial independence — loom on the horizon but never crest atop the churning water. And the character development at most can sustain casual floaters who would still have to paddle to the shore.

    This story despite any aspirations gets caught in a genre conventions current. Abbott is know for her efforts to reconfigure conventional genres around female perspectives, but this attempt seems unable to decide whether it wants to be a serious story or is willing to settle for something somewhat less.

    As such, it seems unfinished even for a summer beach read.

  • A Need to Read?

    Gloria Edim’s (2024) new memoir is a project in search of a problem.

    The book is a series of thematic chapters loosely organized in chronological order. These offer clusters of experiences, and the ways that reading helped her think through and about these.

    Edim’s claim to fame is the the Well-Read Black Girl organization, which began with a birthday t-shirt from her ex- that enabled her to escape her social isolation and connect with others. She used these casual conversations to launch a book club with friends, which she has developed into an organization that uses storytelling to advocate for social change.

    An account of its origins, and a justification for such a life, might make for relevant reading. The latter could be especially engaging in this era of digital culture, and its attendant challenges to previous justifications for reading, and the humanities.

    The problem is that it never quite gets there. Instead, it focuses more on who Edim has become and how she got there, which is obviously important to her but not necessarily at least as the way these are treated in this book to others.

    A second problem, which emerged after I finished it, is missing information. The timeline is somewhat unclear although I had attributed that to artistic choice. However, it omits details that if included could create challenges at least to the story as presented and promoted in it.

    A good example is her missing father, and he and their subsequent reconnection in Nigeria play prominent parts. However, the book is somewhat unclear that he had previously left for Nigeria, and that her mother and she had reportedly accompanied him when she was younger and frequently visited him, which suggests a somewhat different perspective on for example the house he built there, and left after his death for her brother and her.

    This issue, which is more a challenge for the genre, has little impact on the central limitation. That for me is how books justify their existence, and made this one less satisfying than I expected and hoped.

  • Secularism Indeed

    I had an unexpected experience at a recent secularism and literature mini-symposium.

    This event, which was moderated by the UIC English Department Head, included three other presenters, two local and one with some Chicago connection. The moderator offers initial observations, the presenters read papers aloud, and then the audience asked questions.

    I am genuinely interested in functions for literature beyond literary studies journals and college English classrooms. I expected something about secularism and literature in the present tense. What I got unexpectedly intrigued and repulsed me.

    (more…)