Category: Books

Shuna’s Journey, by Hayao Miyazaki (First Second, 160 pages)

At a glance, Shuna’s Journey feels like well-mapped territory for author and acclaimed director Hayao Miyazaki. Originally published in 1983, the story about a prince who leaves his home on an ungulate steed for parts unknown bears a striking resemblance to Miyazaki’s 1997 film Princess Mononoke. Assumingthe graphic novelis only a springboard for the acclaimed animator’s later film, it would only seem accessible to mega-fans of his work. Assumptions are often proved wrong and Shuna’s Journey is much stranger than anyone could hope to assume.

The book itself is not laid out like a traditional comic or manga, stereotypically filled with sliced and diced frames meant for frenetic page-turning. In fact, the layout of Shuna’s Journey shares more commonality with a children’s book of myths and legends. Pages primarily consist of large single-columned panels, the maximum being only three per page. They bleed over onto the corresponding pages in uneven hand-painted watercolor, bringing humanity to the larger-than-life renderings.

The book opens peacefully among the mountains that tower over Shuna’s village with the lines, “These things may have happened long ago, they may be still to come.” and it could almost serve as an excuse for an unrealized, undeveloped setting. Instead, the stage is set with background art portraying an environment triumphant over human civilization. Empty ruins look like dry bones against barren plains and the desert lands stretch endlessly into the horizon, marbled in red and blue hues. Even human creations feel alien in this land. As Shuna makes his way west he takes shelter under giant abandoned robots as well as a colossal battleship, grounded and wasting in a sea of sand. All serve as breadcrumbs of a mythic past where humans thrived, making the reader wonder what happened to make Shuna’s world this way.

There is also an anthropological element that helps flesh out Shuna’s world. In his home village, walls painted with cosmological designs hint at a culture with deep-rooted beliefs and customs. The fur hat Shuna wears marks him as someone of high status, and other characters who also wield power wear similar headgear. Some of the bigger antagonists in the story, those participating in the slave trade have their own menacing iconography differentiating themselves from the small village kingdoms. These details help cut down on exposition that could cramp the page. The narrative does not need to slow down with backstory exposition when Thea (a character whose perspective takes over for the final third of the book) is introduced. Her distinctive hair ornaments tell everything about how she treasures her past and fights for her individuality even as the slave trade tries to take it from her.

Storywise, the book follows the archetypal hero’s journey, making the narrative easy to follow. Shuna and his people are caught in a cycle of hunger and scarcity. There’s not enough food for the people and animals, so when there is a chance to break the cycle, the hero sets off on his quest for a crop that will sustain his people. Miyazaki makes sure to impress upon the reader the constant looming state of desolation in which the characters find themselves. While Shuna must overcome physical challenges to survive, he needs more than muscle to accomplish his goal. The trials during the story test his resolve to complete the journey, making him learn what it means to both help and hurt others.

The pacing is even; the climax hits when Shuna finally makes it to the land of the god-folk. This is where the graphic novel’s art and story both reach their peak. The environment, with its vibrant forests filled with animals and large cultivated fields, is completely different from the wastelands Shuna previously journeyed through. The land of the god-folk is more than paradise and it is here where Shuna’s Journey dips into the realm of cosmic horror. The creatures that make the land their home look like they come straight from the Cambrian explosion, while the mechanisms that cultivate grain are beyond human comprehension. When the truth is finally revealed the reader may find themselves so horrified and filled with existential dread that they wonder whether it was worth it for Shuna to have left his home after all.

The story does not end in the land of the god-folk, but comes to a satisfying, if not complete, conclusion. The final third of the book, with Thea at its center, feels slightly disjointed from the first two-thirds of the story, but it would be much more disappointing if Thea’s section were not included. Since the core of Shuna’s Journey focuses on the quest to cultivate grain it makes sense that part of the story should involve farming. After all, the problem of hunger in Shuna’s world will not solve itself with force, but instead with patience, understanding and kindness. A

— Bethany Fuss

Leech, by Hiron Ennes (Tordotcom, 336 pages)

If you’re looking for gothic fiction, horror spiced up with adventure, LGBT representation or just plain good writing, check out Hiron Ennes’s debut novel, Leech. Fair warning: This novel is packed with spookiness, body horror and psychological dread. Upsetting things that happen in this book that make it appropriate only for older teens and adults, like murder and rape. A few times I had to put the book down and felt my skin crawl (or I was delightedly disgusted).

Anyway, I liked Leech quite a bit! I was immediately hooked by the first few pages. You follow the narrator, a doctor traveling to a haunted château in a remote alpine town to investigate the death of their colleague. When a string of hideous discoveries threatens the doctor’s existence, their control of the situation and themself unravels. It’s later revealed that the main characters are not the people you were at first led to believe they were.

The story has good pace; each chapter ended with a discovered secret or new information that underscored the horror and kept the plot surprising. As the reveals pile up, you slowly learn more and more about the narrator, their relationship to the denizens of the château, and what secrets they keep hidden.

The writing is heavily erudite and had me reaching for a dictionary even more often than Seth Dickinson’s The Traitor Baru Cormorant. I wrote down more than 50 terms to double-check. Many of these are medical or scientific, like “atrophic,” “hyphae,” and “enucleated.” The obscure vocabulary sometimes distracted me (if I bothered at all to stop and discover its meaning), but I also think that the vocabulary supports the narrator’s character as an overly educated doctor. Regardless of that, the writing was obviously talented and enjoyable on its own.

The setting is a post-apocalyptic steampunk-ish version of Earth orbited by the pulverized chunks of a destroyed moon and beset by natural disasters like earthquakes and hurricanes that are as normal as the weather. Some of the details felt a bit disjointed when put together. Why was it mentioned that one city is paved with ruby bricks? This didn’t turn out to be important. Nevertheless, other elements of the setting well support the genre and themes. The very landscape seems to haunt humanity for its past transgressions, isolating modern society into a huddled clan terrified of science, the sky and the unknown. Fantastical elements such as the mineral wheatrock used for fertilizer, the arctic cryptids called the ventigeaux, and the native Montish with their black eyes give the novel a mystical feel like a fairy tale or myth.

The plot was always exciting and the reveals unexpected, sometimes putting me on the edge of my seat. I was caught off guard when the narration changed focus to different characters midway through the novel, and the genre took a swing toward hopeful adventure, fast-paced, full of danger and action. The uplifting final act was a sweet way to wash out the doom and gloom from earlier. My only critique is that the very ending was a bit abrupt and open-ended for my taste.

In Leech, some characters suffered, some heroes became the villains, and others got the second chances they deserved. This novel’s horror lightened by relief, clever writing, and compelling characters made it an enjoyable read. Give Leech a shot for a spooky Halloween! A-

— Alaina Tocci

Carrie Soto is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid (Ballantine, 384 pages)

You know when a book’s protagonist is really hard to like but, for reasons that you can’t quite understand, you root for her anyway? That is Carrie Soto.
When we meet Carrie, she’s 37 and has been retired from professional tennis for six years. After watching Nicki Chan match her Grand Slam record, she decides to come out of retirement and win back her spot at the top of the tennis world.
Taylor Jenkins Reid has created a character in Carrie who is so real, I keep expecting her to show up in daily sports headlines. But her name appears in fictional media stories time and again, as Jenkins Reid uses sports commentary and news articles to help shed light on what the world thinks of Carrie. And the world sees her exactly as she is: supremely talented but ruthless. In fact, she was given the nickname of “the Battle-Axe” when she was in her prime.
We see some of that ruthlessness during a press conference that takes place during her first event back, the Australian Open. One of the reporters asks if there’s truth to her comeback being a stunt. Carrie responds, “I’ve proven so far that my game is outstanding. So everyone can whine and moan all they want about me being here, but I’ve earned the right.”
Another reporter asks about her upcoming match, to which she replies, “I’m gonna crush Carla Perez and anyone else I play on my way to the final. I’m going to hold their beating hearts in my hand.”
That’s Carrie, inside and out. She’s as abrasive internally as she is externally; it’s not just a show for the media. She’s hard on everyone else, and she’s equally hard on herself. We see this in the thoughts that permeate her mind during her games, including during a tight match against Natasha Antonovich, one of her more formidable rivals.
“I do not look at my father. I do not want to see the worry in his eyes. I tell myself: Do not let her win this set. You are either a champion or a ****up. There is no in-between.”
Rarely, we see Carrie’s vulnerability. She puts a hard wall up against Bowe Huntley, a fellow tennis pro with whom she’d gotten too close to in the past. She has the chance to train with him again, and she imagines a scenario in which she does let him back into her life.
“He’ll say something wonderful at some point, and I’ll start to believe he means it, despite all evidence to the contrary. And then I’ll start to like him or love him or feel something that I swear I’ve never felt before. And then one day, when I’m in too deep, he’ll stop liking or loving me, for one reason or another. And I’ll be left with a hole in my heart.”
Also softening the storyline is Carrie’s relationship with her dad and coach, Javier, a former pro himself. Their relationship, at first, seems all business; when Carrie trains with him as a child, Javi is demanding and has what some might see as unrealistically high expectations. But as the story goes on, we see how deeply he loves her and just wants her to be happy. And Carrie’s feelings for him change, seeming to soften over the years. She had fired him as her coach during her pre-retirement career, but she agrees to work with him for her comeback. Javi becomes a likable character, an endearing foil to Carrie’s hard-headedness.
Carrie Soto is Back is very much about tennis, but don’t let that stop you from picking it up, even if you care nothing about sports in general or tennis in particular. I’ve never played tennis, never watched more than a few minutes of tennis, and never really cared to. But Carrie is tennis, and who she is is expressed through her intense tennis practices, tennis games and tennis relationships.
It helps that Jenkins Reid has done her homework. According to an Aug. 29 interview on The Cut, Reid has played tennis for fun, but “I don’t think I’ve ever won a game, let alone a set or a match. … I had to learn it all for this book, and I’m very insecure about it. Did I learn it right? I don’t know, guys. I’m an imposter. I’m trying really hard. I’m trying to learn as much as I can so that I can give you a good time.”
Jenkins Reid has done just that. Carrie Soto is Back is a good time, not in spite of Carrie’s brashness — or the intense focus on tennis — but because of it. A-

Sacred Nature, by Karen Armstrong (Knopf, 224 pages)

In the opening to Sacred Nature, Karen Armstrong tells a story of visiting a British library to look at original manuscripts of the poets William Wordsworth, Samuel Coleridge and John Keats. She was deeply moved by the visit, which she described as “a kind of communion.”

“I was looking at the moment that these poems, which were now part of myself, had come into being. I did not want to analyze the manuscripts. I simply wanted to be in their presence.”

Today, she is troubled by the people who walk through museums seeming more interested in taking photos and selfies than allowing themselves to become absorbed in the extraordinary things stored there. This tendency is also reflected in our relationship to the natural world, which Armstrong says has become an irrelevant backdrop in our busy lives. She quotes Wordsworth to describe this: “light and glory die away / and fade into the light of common day.”

It’s not all because of social media. In fact, the disconnect between humans and nature can’t be fully explained without also explaining the ways in which Western culture dissociated from nature when it embraced monotheistic religions.

The ancient Egyptians believed the annual flooding of the Nile was a “divine event,” as was the rising and setting of the sun; as such, it was near impossible to ignore Mother Nature, who could, at any moment, be ready to unleash divine wrath. As science and theology ran down separate paths that grew further apart, the thought of nature being somehow divine, or even vaguely important, was swept aside as dusty myth.

Armstrong wants to change that, by gleaning wisdom from the myths and practices of the Axial Age, 900 to 200 BCE, a time she says was “pivotal to the spiritual and intellectual development of our species.”

The religions of that time, including Confucianism, Daoism, Hinduism and Buddhism, had practices that can profoundly benefit us today if we can look beyond our modern view of a myth as being a fabrication, a “charming story,” and instead look at the meaning of the myth and allow it to be a guide. Yes, that is Oprah-level malarky, but hear her out. “A myth is true because it is effective,” she writes.

Armstrong begins by exploring the Confucian belief in “qi,” the energy that links all life, animal or plant, human or divine. Interestingly, Chinese religions are unlike others because they have no creation story, no God-creator, but the opposing forces of yin and yang. (They also were among the first to articulate what is known in Christianity as the Golden Rule.)

Early Buddhism, too, taught that enlightenment could be achieved in not just human beings but was “inherent in plants, rocks, trees and blades of grass.”

Armstrong walks through practices of other ancient modern religions, including the respectful rituals of animal sacrifice (many of the ancients who practiced it would be horrified by our mass slaughter of animals today, she says) and the practice of kenosis, or “anatta,” the “emptying” of the self required in many faiths. St. Paul, Armstrong notes, used the language when he wrote that Christ had “emptied himself” on the cross.

Although Armstrong makes clear the ways that Christianity dissuaded people from seeing nature as sacred, there have been exceptions. A disciple of St. Paul called Denys saw the natural world as revelatory of God, believing “We can only intuit God’s presence through the veils of natural objects, which conceal as much as they reveal. If we could see God clearly, it would not be God. But if we learn to contemplate nature correctly, we find that the tiniest particle of soil can yield a glimpse of the ineffable divine.”

At the end of each chapter, Armstrong offers what she sees as “the way forward.” Her recommended practices include altering our perception of “God” to be not a male dwelling apart from the Earth, but a “dynamic inner presence that flows through all things”; embracing not only stillness and silence, but images of suffering in order to develop compassion; developing our own “Five Great Sacrifices” similar to Hindu practice; the ritual practice of gratitude for the natural world that sustains us; and adopting the Indian rule of “ahimsa” or harmlessness that holds every creature deserves to live, or at least not to suffer. (The Jains took this to the extreme, believing that even stones were capable of pain.)

Regrettably, there is an overarching preachiness in Sacred Nature with regard to deepening “our spiritual commitment to the environment” that will repel some readers.

“Recycling and political commitments are not enough,” Armstrong says, later adding, “We must re-form our attitude to nature and that will entail sacrifice. We can no longer board airplanes, drive our cars or burn coal with our former insouciance.”

You can agree with her completely but still wish for a book that is more poetry, less sermon. Although it is an interesting compilation of major religious traditions’ teachings on the natural world, Sacred Nature will appeal mostly to those who already share Armstrong’s views. B-

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Book Events

Author events

• JOSH MALERMAN, a horror novelist, will be at Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) to presentDaphne on Thursday, Oct. 13, at 6:30 p.m.

• MELODY RUSSELL will sign and discuss her book Noni and Me: Caregiving, Memory Loss, Love at Toadstool Bookshop (12 Depot Square in Peterborough, toadbooks.com, 924-3543) on Saturday, Oct. 15, at 11 a.m.

• RICHARD LEDERER will discuss and sign his books about language at Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) on Monday, Oct. 17, at noon.

• JOHN IRVING The Historic Music Hall Theater (28 Chestnut St., Portsmouth, 436-2400, themusichall.org) will host novelist and Exeter native John Irving to present The Last Chairlift, at the Music Hall on Tuesday, Oct. 18. Tickets are $49 and include a book voucher.

History, stories & lectures

• BRET BAIER, the Fox News Chief Political Anchor and author of several books, will discuss his career in media and news journalism, followed by a book sale and signing, on Saturday, Oct. 15, at 7:30 p.m. at the Palace Theatre (80 Hanover St. in Manchester; palacetheatre.org). Tickets start at $59.

Poetry

• GAIL DiMAGGIO and KAY MORGAN hosted by the Poetry Society of NH at Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) on Wednesday, Oct. 19, from 4:30 to 6 p.m.

Writer events

• THREE-MINUTE FICTION SLAM Monadnock Writers’ Group is hosting its regional Three-Minute Fiction Slam on Saturday, Oct. 15, at 9:45 a.m. at the Peterborough Town Library, 2 Concord St., Peterborough. Prizes will be awarded to the top three winners. The first-place winner will advance to the statewide finals and a chance to win $250. Everyone is invited to take part in the free competition by either participating or observing the fun. The competition challenges writers to perform original pieces of fiction in three minutes or less before an audience and a panel of judges. The regional event is part of an annual competition sponsored by the New Hampshire Writers’ Project. See monadnockwriters.org.

• TENACITY PLYS and JULES PERLARSKI host a craft class on nonlinear storytelling for all at the Bookery (844 Elm St., Manchester, 836-6600, bookerymht.com) on Saturday, Oct. 22, at 4 p.m.

Babysitter, by Joyce Carol Oates (Knopf, 448 pages)

My desire to read books about abduction and murder of children was never strong even before I had children of my own. After becoming a parent, I wondered how anyone could.

As such, I wasn’t sure if I could get through even two chapters of the long-awaited novel from Joyce Carol Oates, which is built around a serial killer who specialized in children. Dubbed the “Babysitter,” because he abducted children between the ages of 11 and 14 who were neglected and unattended, the killer murdered five children near Detroit, Michigan, when the novel opens in 1977.

The victims speak collectively to reveal details: “When we died, our bodies were carefully bathed, the smallest bits of dirt removed from every crevice of our bodies and from beneath our (broken) fingernails, and the fingernails cut with cuticle scissors; rounded and even, as our hair was washed with a gentle shampoo, combed and neatly parted in such a way to suggest that whoever had so tenderly groomed us postmortem had not known us ‘in life’.”

Even as we may want to run screaming from what came before and what will surely come after, we cannot.

Joyce Carol Oates didn’t become one of America’s most celebrated writers for lack of talent, and with that horrific opening, she glides seamlessly into what at first seems an unconnected story: The budding affair between a wealthy housewife in Far Hills, Michigan, and a man she met only briefly at a fundraiser.

Hannah Jarrett is 39, beautiful, privileged, vapid, taught by her parents to prize elegance, simplicity and taste: “Never take a chance of appearing common” is a mantra to which she clings. Her life and her marriage somewhat resembles that of Don and Betty Draper in Mad Men — outwardly perfect, if vaguely hollow, with picture-perfect children, a girl and a boy. Unlike Betty Draper, Hannah Jarrett has a live-in housekeeper, who, despite Hannah’s belief that she is an attentive mother, seems to do a significant amount of the mothering in the household.

When Hannah is contacted by the man with whom she shared an electric moment at a charity event, she decides to meet him at an elegant downtown hotel, enabled by her husband’s business trip and the housekeeper, who will be with the children no matter how late Hannah returns.

On the drive to the hotel Hannah tells herself a reassuring story: she’s only going to satisfy her curiosity, to feel beautiful and desired for an afternoon; she won’t break any vows, but will have a satisfying and fulfilling conversation with the man in the hotel bar about their mutual and ultimately thwarted desires.

That, of course, is not what happens. In her skillful narrative, Oates makes Hannah’s drive to the hotel, and even the ride up the elevator to the man’s suite, suspenseful and chilling. It is a drama seemingly completely unconnected to the “babysitter” killings, but also, we know, somehow entwined. Moreover, there are hints of future — or are they past? — events that push their way into the telling, making it unclear if what happens on any given page is, as Ebenezer asked of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, things that definitely happened or things that simply could happen.

The dynamic between Hannah and her Manila-born housekeeper, Ismelda, is polite, but fraught, as perhaps all housekeeper/employer relationships are. Hannah is both grateful and resentful of the help, and at times the similarities between “the Babysitter,” serial killer, and the babysitter/nanny/housekeeper are a bit heavy-handed. While Hannah’s children, we are led to believe, are not neglected in the way that the Babysitter’s victims are, their mother’s deficiencies are revealed in her interactions with her housekeeper.

Coming home distracted after a tryst, Hannah is so consumed by her fantasy life (“I have a lover!”) that she is unaware that her daughter is gravely ill until the housekeeper apologetically wakes her. While in no way evil or even deeply unlikeable — she is much too bland a person for that — Hannah is not a sympathetic character, even though her upbringing was in many ways troubled. Which is why it’s a shock to so quickly care so much about what happens to her and her family.

When Oates writes, “Despair of women, that men are unknown to them, essentially,” she speaks not only of the overt monsters but also of the hidden lives of husbands and friends. But women, too, have parts unknown to others and also to themselves, as Hannah learns as she is drawn deeper into a relationship despite the frantic screaming of conscience.

Babysitter is no cheap thriller but offers sharp cultural commentary on racism, class, religion and modern-day parenting. Give all the credit to Oates, who has crafted a finely tuned horror story that, like the film Fatal Attraction, is all the more horrific because of its placid suburban setting. A

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Book Events

Author events

• DONALD YACOVONE will discuss his new book Teaching White Supremacy: America’s Democratic Ordeal and the Forging of Our National Identity on Thursday, Sept. 29, at 7 p.m. at Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com).

• STEPHEN PULEO visits the Nashua Public Library (2 Court St., 589-4600, nashualibrary.org) on Sunday, Oct. 2, at 2 p.m. to discuss his book Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919. Registration is required.

• RENEE PLODZIK, Concord author, visits Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) on Thursday, Oct. 6, at 6:30 p.m. to present her cookbook Eat Well Move Often Stay Strong.

• MARGARET PORTER presents The Myrtle Wand at Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) on Wednesday, Oct. 12, at 6:30 p.m.

• JOSH MALERMAN, horror novelist, will be at Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) to present his newly released bookDaphne on Thursday, Oct. 13, at 6:30 p.m.

• JOHN IRVING The Historic Music Hall Theater (28 Chestnut St., Portsmouth, 436-2400, themusichall.org) will host novelist and Exeter native John Irving to present his newest release, The Last Chairlift, at the Music Hall on Tuesday, Oct. 18. Tickets are $49 and include a book voucher.

• LYNN LYONS, psychotherapist and anxiety expert, returns to Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) on Wednesday, Nov. 16, at 4:30 p.m. with The Anxiety Audit: 7 Sneaky Ways Anxiety Takes Hold and How to Escape Them.

• JOSH FUNK & KARI ALLEN Children’s authors Josh Funk and Kari Allen present their newest books, The Great Caper Caper: Lady Pancake & Sir French Toast Book No. 5 and Maddie and Mabel Take the Lead, atGibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) on Saturday, Nov. 19, at 11 a.m.

The Milky Way: An Autobiography of our Galaxy, by Moiya McTier (Grand Central Publishing, 244 pages)

In college, I once signed up for an astronomy class. I dropped out after two weeks, having painfully discovered that astronomy isn’t so much about looking at celestial bodies in awe as it is about doing complex math. After that, other than a star-gazing class at a local community college, my knowledge of outer space hasn’t evolved much beyond watching Men in Black, which I maintain is a documentary.

So I was excited about the publication of Moiya McTier’s promised examination of the Milky Way in down-to-earth terms, billed as “an autobiography of our galaxy.” Finally, I could get the astronomy class of my dreams, on my couch, in a mere 244 pages, with an instructor who studied both astronomy and mythology at Harvard and went on to earn a Ph.D. in astrophysics at Columbia.

And I could have, and should have, except for the dumb gimmick that cripples the book: the Milky Way as narrator.

Maybe if this had been a kindly, wise Milky Way, a sort of cosmic Gandalf the Grey, the gimmick would have been easier to stomach. But we are instead given a haughty, snarky, disparaging galaxy, whose persona is made even worse by its perception that it is talking to puny, finite creatures not really worth its time. “I know it’s likely a lot for you to take in, and your brain is fully formed!” the narrator says at one point.

Another time, it says, “Sadly, your ignorance compels me to explain so much to you that I’m still not at the part about me yet.” And then there’s this: “A mayfly can live its entire life in one room of your homes. Isn’t that sad? Don’t you ever wonder why the mayfly even bothers to do anything at all? Because that’s how I feel about you.”

He seems nice, right? Or she. Who knows? This middle-school snark is hard enough to stomach for one chapter; it’s wearisome for the whole of a book. And this persona is so unnecessary; plenty of people write autobiographies without constantly addressing “dear reader.”

The implication of “Dumb reader,” over and again, is even worse.

To be fair, McTier is trying to convey the unconveyable: the vast chasm between small, finite creatures like human beings and the unknowable expanse of space and, if you’re into that sort of thing, a cosmic Intelligence, with a capital I. But Ed Yong did this without talking down to us in An Immense World, and for that matter, there are Twitter accounts that do as much without even using words, like ones that consist of nothing but photos of outer space or microscopic images.

Maybe this is just the kind of unintentional dumbing down that occurs when astrophysicists try to talk to regular people. There aren’t that many of them, after all, and they’ve got their own peculiar brand of humor. As McTier says while trying to explain red dwarf stars, the most common ones in the Milky Way, astronomers don’t all agree on the “initial mass function” of red dwarf stars: “If you ever want to cause an uproar among your astronomers, stand in a crowded planetarium and claim that the Kroupa IMF is better than the Salpeter. Most won’t be able to refrain from loudly asserting their opinion back at you.” Astronomers are clearly the life of the party.

McTier awkwardly hobbles from the Big Bang (“Don’t concern yourself with thoughts of what came before the Big Bang. That kind of knowledge is not for the likes of you — or even me, though I am fabulously worthy on nearly all other counts — to understand”) to the creation and destruction of other galaxies, to black holes, to the modern, mind-boggling telescopes to myths about space, to theories about when and how the world will end. It’s not all terrible, but it’s like eating pistachios with shells; at some point, you question the effort, particularly when she answers the question of extraterrestrial life, “Well, that’s for me to know, and hopefully for you and your scientists to find out.”

What’s most disappointing is that McTier does have a fascinating story to tell: her own.

In a much-too-short foreword written in her voice, McTier throws out a tantalizing morsel of her life story: how a girl who grew up in a cabin with no running water after her parents’ divorce fell in love with the universe and launched herself on an intellectual journey that found her, in her undergraduate studies at Harvard, having an internship that involved spending hours “analyzing five-dimensional data cubes to measure properties of a distant star-forming galaxy.” This from a girl who had to cross state lines to visit a bookstore when she was child.

It speaks to the power of imagination — she used to imagine the sun and the moon were her celestial parents — but also an incredible internal drive and intellect. I would gladly read 500 pages of McTier’s autobiography. But spare me her version of the galaxy’s in half that. D

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Book Events

Author events

• DONALD YACOVONE will discuss his new book Teaching White Supremacy: America’s Democratic Ordeal and the Forging of Our National Identity on Thursday, Sept. 29, at 7 p.m. at Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com).

• STEPHEN PULEO visits the Nashua Public Library (2 Court St., 589-4600, nashualibrary.org) on Sunday, Oct. 2, at 2 p.m. to discuss his book Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919. Registration is required.

• RENEE PLODZIK, Concord author, visits Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) on Thursday, Oct. 6, at 6:30 p.m. to present her cookbook Eat Well Move Often Stay Strong.

• MARGARET PORTER presents The Myrtle Wand at Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) on Wednesday, Oct. 12, at 6:30 p.m.

• JOSH MALERMAN, horror novelist, will be at Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) to present his newly released bookDaphne on Thursday, Oct. 13, at 6:30 p.m.

• JOHN IRVING The Historic Music Hall Theater (28 Chestnut St., Portsmouth, 436-2400, themusichall.org) will host novelist and Exeter native John Irving to present his newest release, The Last Chairlift, at the Music Hall on Tuesday, Oct. 18. Tickets are $49 and include a book voucher.

• LYNN LYONS, psychotherapist and anxiety expert, returns to Gibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) on Wednesday, Nov. 16, at 4:30 p.m. with The Anxiety Audit: 7 Sneaky Ways Anxiety Takes Hold and How to Escape Them.

• JOSH FUNK & KARI ALLEN Children’s authors Josh Funk and Kari Allen present their newest books, The Great Caper Caper: Lady Pancake & Sir French Toast Book No. 5 and Maddie and Mabel Take the Lead, atGibson’s Bookstore (45 S. Main St., Concord, 224-0562, gibsonsbookstore.com) on Saturday, Nov. 19, at 11 a.m.