My review for Hugo Best Novel finalist New York 2140 by Kim Stanley Robinson is here. 

The Perfume Burned his Eyes, by Michael Imperioli. Akashic Books, 2018

The story starts with 16 year old Matthew in 1976. His estranged, bad example of a father dies, then his grandfather follows shortly. This plunges his mother into a depression that she treats by eating tranquilizers, but it also provides an inheritance that allows them to move uptown and into a fancy apartment building in New York City. When he takes a part time job as a delivery boy for a local Chinese restaurant, he discovers that the people who he thought were a homeless couple when he’d seen them in the lobby actually live in his building, just a couple of floors up. It is, in fact, Lou Reed and his trans girlfriend Rachel. When Reed takes Matthew on as an assistant, it’s down the rabbit hole for Matt. Adding to the surrealness of his life, he falls for a girl at school: Veronica, who is an outlier, a witch, and a part time prostitute. Between Reed and Veronica, Matthews coming of age is more abrupt than most people’s, and definitely weirder. Whether it’s driving a borrowed van having never driven before, accompanying Veronica on a trick, or watching Reed basically melt down, it’s a walk on the wild side.

Matthew comes across as real and a sympathetic character. He’s been torn from his past life at a vulnerable point in his life. He’s smart. While the story takes place when he’s 16, it’s written from his POV at 18, and he looks at himself clearly and maturely. And, despite the grim subject matter, it’s funny. Four stars.

I came to The Vitamin Murders by James Ferguson, by way of the Gastropod podcast's episode on the history of Vitamins. It sent them off on an interesting tangent so when I spotted it in the library I was pretty excited to read it. Unfortunately, while it was interesting it was less about what I was interested in than I expected. (Jack Drummond was a pioneering food scientist during the interwar period and especially during WWII, arguably responsible for rationing actually improving the nation's health.) It's much more of a investigation into a murder than it is a book about healthy eating and vitamins, or even food science more generally. It's more the story of a journalist investigating an old murder and the weird tangents of research and somewhat horrifying discoveries on related subjects that he makes along the way. I enjoyed reading it, but I kept wanting the author to focus more on particular parts of it. Basically, there's a much better book in there somewhere, and I really wish I could have read that one.