Throughout, this is a book about how music can make and unmake us. Satomi meets Lan, and slowly, and often revolving around wonderfully depicted food, they become friends. ().) She is the head of the operation that works like clockwork, but fails to capture the ineffable something that makes a donut worth pursuing. (As an aside, Aoki brilliantly captures so many subcultures, including the Southeast Asian-owned donut stores in Southern California ( Here’s how Los Angeles became the donut capital of the U.S. She and her family are cranking out donuts with precision, while adjusting to life in Southern California. Meanwhile, Lan Tran has purchased a donut store with a giant donut ring out front. However, Katrina gains so much from the bargain – love, a boundless understanding of the violin and of music – that she is honored to uphold her end, no matter what it is. Satomi knows she is making a Faustian bargain with Katrina, Katrina makes it clear later in the book that she assumed there was a catch because all of her relationships have involved a quid pro quo. Satomi and to live in her lovely Monterey Park home. She meets Shizuka Satomi, a reclusive world-renowned violin teacher seemingly by chance, and is offered the chance to study with Ms.

For Katrina, the violin is her escape and the best way she has of presenting herself to the world – a world that rejects her very being. She is a beautifully articulated character, and a few sharply delineated encounters show us the hourly humiliations and violations that Katrina has lived with for most of her life. We are first introduced to Katrina Nguyen, a teenage trans girl, as she is running away from a brutal home, carrying her beloved violin. Does it thrill your senses and grow your heart? It absolutely does. Does it hold together in a tight narrative? Light from Uncommon Stars does not. Riddle me this: what do you create when you combine a violin prodigy, “the Queen of Hell”, and an alien doughnut maker? If you are Ryka Aoki, you create a wild, delicious, devastating, hilarious brew.

Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki