{"id":10691,"date":"2025-07-20T14:43:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-20T14:43:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/10691\/"},"modified":"2025-07-20T14:43:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-20T14:43:09","slug":"alafair-burke-is-subtle-but-focused-and-clear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/10691\/","title":{"rendered":"Alafair Burke is subtle but focused and clear"},"content":{"rendered":"

Book Review<\/p>\n

By Derryll White<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Burke, Alafair (2025).\u00a0 The Note.<\/p>\n

This novel begins without much energy \u2013 girl talk, catch-up and relatively boring fill-ins of yet to be remembered background situations. The reader has hints that these occurrences will be important, but the reader is not sure how.<\/p>\n

The author Alafair Burke is a hard-working grounded American of Asian background.\u00a0 When the novel starts documenting the texting of a Covid-era incident of racial insults, the story takes on energy and becomes relevant comment on today\u2019s America.\u00a0 The author creates a manifestation of the xenophobic \u2018perpetual foreigner\u2019 stereotype, in which even native-born citizens are viewed as unassimilated outsiders.\u00a0 Here the author starts to write from real vested experience and the tenor of the novel shifts.<\/p>\n

The gender politics of \u2018The Note\u2019 follow the path all readers are now familiar with \u2013 a triangle, wealth, who has the power?\u00a0 We read about it every day in the news.\u00a0 It echoes today\u2019s re-shaping of the Smithsonian Institution under Trump, and indeed the re-shaping of America.\u00a0 Alafair Burke is subtle but the lens is focused and clear.<\/p>\n

********<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Excerpts from the novel:<\/p>\n

AMERICA \u2013 \u201cBecause they knew we were waiting.\u00a0 And they didn\u2019t care.\u00a0 Because something is broken in people now.\u00a0 Rules don\u2019t matter.\u00a0 Basic decency doesn\u2019t matter.\u00a0 And it\u2019s not just that they did it.\u00a0 They were proud of it.\u00a0 They loved getting away with it.\u00a0 It\u2019s like there\u2019s no such thing as shame any more.\u00a0 So it\u2019s not just about a parking spot.\u00a0 It\u2019s the whole fucking society.\u201d<\/p>\n

PUBLIC CORRUPTION \u2013 And finally, the story presents yet another example of the ways that private wealth can influence public and quasi-public institutions.\u00a0 If Mrs. Welliver is to be believed, Ms. Berry might not have been offered her current position, however well qualified she might be for it, without a wealthy-insider benefactor.\u00a0 And the fact that Mrs. Welliver turned to her private access to a member of the symphony\u2019s governing board in an attempt to fire her husband\u2019s alleged lover demonstrates the power that she appears comfortable wielding behind the scenes.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u2013\u00a0Derryll White\u00a0once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them.\u00a0 When not reading he writes history for the web at\u00a0www.basininstitute.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Article Share<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Book Review By Derryll White Burke, Alafair (2025).\u00a0 The Note. This novel begins without much energy \u2013 girl…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10692,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[353,49,48,75],"class_list":{"0":"post-10691","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10691"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10691\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}