​Ploughshares Vol. 50, No. 2 is a collection of stories guest edited by Rebecca Makkai spanning the lives of sperm donor children, cancer diagnoses, a video store robbery, and a child with a frog heart. The stories I particularly enjoyed—and there were many—were ‘Rooms’ by Molly Anders, ‘Frog Heart’ by Joy Deva Baglio, ‘Video Wonderland, How Can I Help You?’ by Diana Cao, ‘Goodbye, Raymond Carver’ by Jane Delury, ‘Prolific Donor’ by Peter Mountford, and ‘Gaps and Silences’ by Suzanne Roberts. Though, the story with the greatest impact was ‘Back-up Mom’ by Janice Furlong which is about a gay woman who doesn’t have a desire to have kids. However, her sister, a doctor, has recently and suddenly left her husband with their child. The sister continues to pull away from her family, and has an outburst at her son’s birthday party. Eventually, the son stays more often with the narrator until one weekend the narrator realizes her sister is about to kill herself. The narrator then finds her sister puking due to an overdose of Valium. At the end, the son stays more often with the narrator, and her ideas of parenthood slowly morph through the story. It was a powerful and heartbreaking story to read with the way the narrator at first views her nephew. Overall, I was floored with the stories in this issue, in both their range and their emotion.
 
Final Rating: 4.5/5

​State of Paradise by Laura van den Berg is a novel about a ghostwriter living in Florida whose sister becomes obsessed with a VR headset called MIND’S EYE. Set at the tail end of a pandemic, the narrator discusses her past episodes then her admittance into a mental hospital, her father’s passing, her runner husband, and her mother unknowingly beginning a cult. It follows the narrator as she experiences strange weather occurrences and then the disappearance of her sister. She believes it has something to do with MIND’S EYE, so she goes into the virtual world which turns out to be a parallel universe where her sister died from the pandemic and she is an author as opposed to a ghostwriter. In the parallel world, they find out that the narrator’s employer is dead and the assistants continue to publish formulaic novels as well as the fact that the creator of MIND’S EYE was close friends to the author the narrator ghostwrites. Her half twin sisters then take her to the bedside of the father in the parallel universe, soon coming upon the idea that all of them should return to the narrator’s world. When they return, the pandemic has started to change people’s bodies and the twins decide to move away, thus being saved from their initial world.
 
van den Berg writes in sharp prose that electrify the weird and strange things that occur in the novel. The narrator’s sister’s eyes continually change color, her belly button becomes a deep tunnel then smooths over, while other body transformations being described in interesting ways. I loved the idea of ghosts (i.e. the narrator being a ghostwriter as well as her father’s ghost talking to her sister through MIND’S EYE) that van den Berg weaves throughout the novel. It’s a climate novel, a pandemic novel, and a novel that uses its surrealness to create moments of tenderness.
 
Final Rating: 5/5

​Role Play by Clara Drummond is a novel about Vivian Noronha, a curator as well as daughter to a well-off family in Brazil. She sees herself as middle class, though has servants and her family owns multiple properties, putting her firmly in the wealthy class. Throughout the novel, Vivian goes to parties, does drugs, has sex, and lives a life of a Brazilian elite. Though, under the surface there are problems: Vivian grew up in a conservative household where sex was taboo, had medical problems with her eyesight, and was put on medication for her depression. There’s a moment where her cousin, Albertinho (whose father is actually the one supplying Vivian’s family with money), makes her drink until she blacks out because she doesn’t want to answer his invasive questions. Then, one night at a party, one of the usual vendors selling beer, Darlene, doesn’t appear. Vivian asks another vendor, and it turns out Darlene had died. This causes Vivian, not necessarily to feel pity for Darlene, but to think about Vivian’s life in context to Darlene’s. At the end of the novel, Vivian has rough sex with Luiz Felipe, in a way to work through her feelings both in relation to Darlene and to her family.
 
Drummond provides a really strong and nearly satirical voice to Vivian, which shows on the outside she’s a strong, rich woman. Though, on the inside has loads of insecurities that materialize in the way she approaches sex and partying. It’s a really interesting look into the lives of the elite, and the problems that they encounter.
 
Final Rating: 4.5/5

​When They Tell You to be Good by Prince Shakur is a memoir about being Black, gay, and struggling with the absence of a father and a mother’s refusal of acceptance. Shakur describes his years of travel to France, the Philippines, Jamaica, South Korea, and throughout the US. It’s in these places where he attends protests, stays with the locals, meets and falls in love, all while trying to understand his place in a family that hates gay people and how he’s meant to deal with the story of his father’s death. In childhood, Shakur’s mother finds his journal which detail his feelings for another boy, which enrages her. Throughout all his travels, Shakur then processes his mother/community’s reaction, both getting close to other men and pulling away when the pain is too much. Shakur’s family is embroiled in a history of violence: his two uncles in Jamaica were shot and killed due to drug disputes, his other uncle in the US was killed by police, and his step father was arrested because of his citizenship status. Near the end, Shakur comes to realize his father is alive in Arizona, where they talk in a diner and part ways knowing their relationship existed only in imagination.
 
Throughout the novel, Shakur pulls in quotes and discusses James Baldwin, W.E.B Du Bois, and Frank B. Wilderson III to contextualize and make meaning out of the horrors that Black communities face. There were moments that felt as if some paragraphs were tangentially related, which sometimes gave a disconnected feeling while reading. Though, on the whole, I felt that Shakur’s synthesis of his life brought an intensity that I was glad to read.
 
Final Rating: 4/5