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Alafair Burke is subtle but focused and clear
Book Review
By Derryll White
Burke, Alafair (2025). The Note.
This novel begins without much energy – 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.
The author Alafair Burke is a hard-working grounded American of Asian background. 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’s America. The author creates a manifestation of the xenophobic ‘perpetual foreigner’ stereotype, in which even native-born citizens are viewed as unassimilated outsiders. Here the author starts to write from real vested experience and the tenor of the novel shifts.
The gender politics of ‘The Note’ follow the path all readers are now familiar with – a triangle, wealth, who has the power? We read about it every day in the news. It echoes today’s re-shaping of the Smithsonian Institution under Trump, and indeed the re-shaping of America. Alafair Burke is subtle but the lens is focused and clear.
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Excerpts from the novel:
AMERICA – “Because they knew we were waiting. And they didn’t care. Because something is broken in people now. Rules don’t matter. Basic decency doesn’t matter. And it’s not just that they did it. They were proud of it. They loved getting away with it. It’s like there’s no such thing as shame any more. So it’s not just about a parking spot. It’s the whole fucking society.”
PUBLIC CORRUPTION – And finally, the story presents yet another example of the ways that private wealth can influence public and quasi-public institutions. 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. And the fact that Mrs. Welliver turned to her private access to a member of the symphony’s governing board in an attempt to fire her husband’s alleged lover demonstrates the power that she appears comfortable wielding behind the scenes.
– Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them. When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org.
