Harriet Tubman: Live in Concert is a novel whose concept intrigues, but whose execution is unfortunately lacking.

(I immersion-read this through ebook and audiobook, and I definitely feel like the audiobook added a lot to an experience that I otherwise would have found completely underwhelming. Audio is definitely the way to go with this one!)

Harriet imagines a world in which various figures from history have been returned to us in the modern day through an event known, appropriately, as The Return. Our protagonist Darnell Higgens, a gay Black man and former hip-hop songwriter forced to leave the industry, is approached by none other than Harriet Tubman herself to help write and produce a hip-hop album about her experiences as an abolitionist and conductor on the Underground Railroad.

The book's strongest aspect, for me, was its deep dive into a number of lesser-known histories of mid-19th century, pre-Civil War America. I live in southern Ontario, so we get quite a bit of education on the Underground Railroad that I would guess the rest of Canada (and probably much of the U.S.) doesn't get, yet there was still quite a bit here that I was completely ignorant of. The novel definitely raises multiple opportunities for the reader to go down a number of historical rabbit holes on their own, while still giving them enough to chew on in the text itself. This is something I always value in fiction!

My issue, however, is that while the novel is conceptually strong, the execution is lacking on basically every level. The prose itself lacks polish, the world-building of this post-Return world is practically non-existent, and most of the characters act as thematic mouthpieces and vehicles to present historical facts rather than feeling like fleshed out characters. This truly read like a debut novel that still needed a few more drafts.

My biggest issue was with how much this concept of The Return felt like set dressing. Now, Harriet isn't trying to be a high-concept science fiction novel, but as an author I think if you're going to introduce any speculative elements in your book, you owe the reader a bit more than a cardboard backdrop. I probably wouldn't have even felt so disappointed by the lack of world-building if the novel only ever explicitly mentioned Harriet and the Freemen and left the rest completely up to interpretation, but we're given mentions of other Returned historical figures outside of them (Frederick Douglass, John Rockefeller...). To dangle morsels of world-building in front of the reader only to never follow up or expand upon them just felt disappointing, especially in a book that would only have benefitted thematically from even a slightly deeper exploration.

Which brings me to my next big critique: the lack of character depth. On a certain level, I kind of understand this. I think there's a bit of a moral quandary with portraying actual figures from history in a fictional setting; I still don't know how I feel about it myself whenever I encounter it in fiction. Writing these characters as thematic vehicles/mouthpieces is one way to avoid entering any sort of RPF/fanfiction territory (as long as you don't drastically change their stances or ideologies), and I think Bob did a decent job of that with Harriet Tubman. But most of the other entirely fictional characters in the novel suffer from the same issue, even Darnell. The book truly doesn't let you infer anything about Darnell's character journey. How he feels about events, people, himself... It's all told directly to the reader, even when it's entirely obvious without the hand-holding. I have very little patience for tell-over-show these days, and this novel is full of it. Pretty much the only character who wasn't a victim of this was Slim, and I wish we'd gotten more of him as a result!

The characters also felt like they were lacking agency. Again, this does make a bit of sense. Darnell is a character who's lost and floundering at the beginning of the novel, and his character journey is about breaking free from that helplessness. I have no problems with that. But the plot just felt like it was happening to our characters the entire way through, with the very obvious hand of the author pushing them along. There's no major setbacks, no real connective throughlines between important events... We get to the end of the novel, the album is written and the concert is about to happen and I'm left feeling like we haven't even started the real work yet.

I think given a few more drafts and a stricter edit, Harriet could have been a lot stronger than it was. Bob clearly has a lot of passion for the project and the idea, and it does come across (again, I highly recommend the audiobook, particularly for the two songs at the end)! The themes are strong and timely, the concept has a lot of potential... But, unfortunately, this reminded me of why I'm so hesitant to pick up books penned by celebrities: not because they don't have stories worth telling, but because they're so often let down from an editing standpoint in the belief that a big name will do the heavy lifting.

2.5/5.

Briefly, A Delicious Life does exactly what it says on the tin: it is both brief and delicious, yet I was left more than a little unsatisfied.

I always love a historical fiction that zooms in on a specific person or small group of people, and that's exactly what this novel does. Taking place during a disastrous yet artistically prolific vacation to Mallorca taken by author George Sand and composer Frédéric Chopin in 1838, Briefly, A Delicious Life delves into themes of gender non-conformity, queerness, xenophobia, chronic illness, ableism, and the persistence of patriarchy. So, basically all of my thematic buzzwords.

Probably the most interesting aspect of the novel comes from our unique narrator, Blanca, the ghost of a centuries-dead girl haunting the abandoned monastery that Sand, her children, and Chopin are inhabiting. Blanca's ability to flit in and out of the heads of the living (literal head-hopping!) lends the narration a sort of pseudo-omniscience, as we get the thoughts, feelings, and sensory experiences of multiple characters in the moment without ever concretely shifting perspective. This is a really unique way of playing with perspective, and I quite enjoyed it! But I do think Blanca's character gets overshadowed by her also having to play the part of narrative device; I wanted to see more of her outside of that, in the current timeline. Her narrative voice also reads WAY too modern, which was distracting on occasion.

Along with the tumultuous events of 1838, we also get brief snapshots from the past and future, mostly from Blanca's and Sand's perspectives. I do think these flashbacks and flash-forwards enrich the novel for the most part, I just wish they didn't feel so... discordant? Interrupting? They almost never seem to piggyback off of the "current" events in the book, and there's an entire cascade of them towards the end that felt especially ham-fisted and which negatively altered my final rating considerably. I was constantly longing for more intentionality that never came.

I also have to say that the marketing for this book is more than slightly disingenuous. The blurb presents Briefly, A Delicious Life as a sapphic coming-of-age, but I don't feel like Blanca's infatuation with George ever featured much. In terms of queerness, the book focuses a lot more on George's gender non-conformity (while also touching briefly on both her and Chopin's possible bisexuality). I wouldn't go into this expecting intense sapphic yearning and attraction; more an exploration of gender and how both men and women suffer under patriarchal systems, and not an especially innovative or deep exploration at that.

Despite all my various critiques, Stevens is certainly an author to watch. With her debut novel, she's already proven that she's not afraid to experiment with narrative framework. Her sensory prose is absolutely delicious and excels in this novel centered around artists and food and the brilliance of life (and death!). Music especially is an incredibly difficult thing to describe in words, but the way Stevens captures Chopin's Preludes is, quite frankly, nothing short of sorcery. Whatever this novel was lacking for me in thematic depth, consistency, and polish, it adequately made up for by being a treat for all the senses. I'm interested to see what this author can do next!

3.5/5.