Book Review: Long Division

 

Image: The cover of the book is a black background with multicolored illustrations on top. There are blue leaves and grass on the top and bottom with yellow zigzag lines behind them. In the upper left corner is a partially obscured illustration of a keyboard. In letters ranging from white to cream in a style of being painted capitalized with a wide brush is the title of the book, an elipsis, and under it the author's name. below that in small white letters is a blurb from Jesmyn Ward saying, "Smart and funny and sharp... I loved it."

I usually reserve posts on this blog for books to be released or that which have been released in the past year. In the case of this post, I am reviewing the newest edition of Kiese Laymon's "Long Division," despite it first being published in 2013. I did not read it back then, but can tell from the book design alone that it has been given a necessary makeover. 

In order to avoid spoilers, I will remain vague about why the cover matters here. But, I will say that the design of the print version of this book is grounded in what happens in the story more than the previous cover. This occurs in a way that I have previously never encountered and added to the direction the book took me on. I felt like part of the story in some ways.

I had previously only read nonfiction by Laymon, and knew he excelled immensely in that realm. But, I am always cautious going into a book that is a genre shift that the author or I am not used to. Some authors can write beautiful nonfiction and terrible fiction and vice versa. However, I was unsurprised to find that Kiese Laymon also excels in the fiction arena.

The book is a bit of a genre bender. At one point it is referred to as a "young adult book for adults" and I see how that fits. You follow teen and young adult characters throughout the story, but it strikes me as a bit different from the usual YA sort of style. (Though I completely admit, since I haven't enjoyed a lot of YA, I am no expert there.) This book also can be classified as scifi or even fantasy, but it doesn't settle directly into those genres either. Judging by the other books of Laymon's I have read, this is also a autobiography-inspired fiction, where characters in the story deal with similar things that Laymon has dealt with in his own life. One could likely attach a number of other genre labels to this as well.

I enjoyed this about this book and how Laymon did not allow the expectations of fiction genre to dictate the arc of this story. I loved how the design of the print book fit into it all. I found myself surprised by where it took me and enjoyed the ride. I have yet to meet a Kiese Laymon book that I did not like. I am looking forward to the next thing he puts out.

This was also posted to my goodreads.