Reviews

When young Carter Jones opens his door at 7:15 one morning, he never expects to find an English butler. Enter Mr. Bowles-Fitzpatrick, a gentleman’s gentleman from England, whose master, Carter’s grandfather, willed him to the family upon his death. When Carter’s mother, stating the obvious, suggests a dearth of gentlemen upon the premises, the butler merely eyes Carter, retorting, “Perhaps not yet…”

National Book Award finalist Eugene Yelchin offers a poignant satirical portrait of his childhood in his 2021 autobiography, The Genius Under the Table: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain. With humor and sensitivity, he describes his experiences growing up in Cold War Russia…

When five-year-old Khosrou’s Shiite Muslim mother converts to Christianity, his life changes forever. Soon he finds himself hurried onto a plane, leaving behind his father and the familiar landscape of Iran to live as a refugee in the United States. Rural Oklahoma’s flat and dusty landscape isn’t the only thing unfamiliar to him; his very self seems strange in his transplanted condition. Everything is new: new home, new father, new school, new language. He even has a new, American name: Daniel. Who is he now? Will he ever feel at home in this new place? Will he ever belong in this new life?…

At 12-years-old, the release of Pixar’s original Incredibles hit me right between the eyes. Young enough for cartoons, old enough to understand some deeper implications of the story, I imagine I was at the center of their target audience. Certainly the question of Syndrome, the piece’s villain, was one I was beginning to ask myself as a budding teenager: if everyone is special, isn’t it true that no one is? How can I be uniquely valuable in a world where everyone is also uniquely valuable? It is a legitimate question, not just for children…

Picture this: a young child, just beginning to develop his own taste, personality, and interests, takes up an art and begins to pursue it with all the intensity and excitement of youth. Along the way, however, he feels rejected and oppressed by his family, who vocally oppose his dreams of a grand future in which his art becomes his sole focus. “Wealth and fame might look alluring now,” they say, “but getting rich as an artist isn’t as easy as it looks, and the lifestyle holds far less actual happiness than you assume!”…

“The resonant voice rose and the words seemed to be all around them so that Meg felt that she could almost reach out and touch them: ‘Sing to the Lord a new song, his praise from the end of the earth, ye who go down to the sea, and all that is therein; the isles, and the inhabitants thereof. Let the wilderness and the cities thereof lift their voice; let the inhabitants of the rock sing, let them shout from the top of the mountains. Let them give glory unto the Lord!”…

Introducing a new feature of The Hovel, in which CenterForLit staff will occasionally be forced to confess what it is that they are currently reading, no matter how nerdy or frivolous…