When you see that certain authors have new books coming out, you just get excited, right? For me, two of those authors are Barbara Kingsolver and Kate Atkinson, so when both recently dropped new books, I couldn't wait to snatch them up.
Before I had gotten very far into Unsheltered, Barbara Kingsolver's new book, I happened upon a couple of reviews, neither of which sounded much like the book I was enjoying. One called it the "first major novel to tackle the Trump era straight on"--really? It's certainly (partially) set in the present and refers indirectly to Trump (as "The Bullhorn) and discusses his surprising rise, but it's so much more than that. The second review I saw called it a story of mother-daughter relationships--wow! A mother-daughter relationship is certainly part of the story, but so are mother-son, daughter-in-law/father-in-law, husband/wife (two of those), brother-in-law/sister-in-law, grandmother-grandson relationships. Piqued by these two reviews, I looked at what people were saying on Goodreads and found equally (to me) weird comments--"It's too much about plants" and "It's too whiny" are two examples. A reminder that the same book can be a very different reading experience for different people.
So what was Unsheltered to me? A good book about people struggling and the relationships and principles that sustain them in hard times. As I mentioned, half of the book is set in the present, half in the 1870s; both stories feature people living in a town in New Jersey established as a Christian utopian community but hardly offering a utopian home to our characters. In the 1870s, newly married science teacher Thatcher Greenwood is struggling with both a school administrator who restricts what he can teach and a wife who wants a higher status life than Thatcher can give her. Thatcher's house, which his wife's mother has "inherited" from a relative who has moved West is falling down around them and they don't have the money to fix it. Thatcher does have friendships that help him stand his ground, with his young sister-in-law; his nextdoor neighbor, naturalist Mary Treat (an actual historical figure); and the editor of the alternative newspaper.
In the present, Willa (a laid-off journalist) and Iano (a college professor whose employer went out of business due to financial problems) are also struggling with an inherited home that is collapsing, quite literally. While Iano has found a temporary position with a college in Philadelphia, the family doesn't have the resources to fix the house; they must get Medicaid to provide medical care for Iano's diabetic (and conservative) father and their baby grandson, whom their son--mourning the suicide of his partner--has left with them while he pursues business opportunities. Their underemployed daughter Tig, who also lives with them, is often a thorn in Willa's side, pointing out the failures of the older generation. Willa, too, has relationships that sustain her, in this case her marriage and a new friendship with the curator of the local history museum.
My description makes the book sound rather grim, but I didn't find it so--the ways in which Thatcher, Willa, Mary, and Tig find meaning amid difficulty were actually inspiring.
One small quibble: I listened to the audio book, which is read by Kingsolver. At one point when Willa is having an unsatisfying exchange with an African American social worker, she reports the woman saying "aks" rather than "ask" and then makes fun of that pronunciation. Honestly, that should be beneath both Willa and Kingsolver.
I was less enamored with Kate Atkinson's new book Transcription. I loved her two earlier books set during World War II (and before and after)--Life after Life and A God in Ruins, both of which played with the meaning of narrative and what a novel is in thought-provoking ways. Transcription is essentially a spy novel featuring a young woman protagonist; since spy novels have never particularly appealed to me, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that I wasn't too excited about this book. The main character wasn't very believable to me--a weird combination of totally naive and very well read. And the twist that came at the end of the book seemed equally unrealistic.
So a thumb's up for Unsheltered and a thumb's down (unless you're a spy novel aficionado) for Transcription. But I'll still be looking forward to Atkinson's next book.
Whose books do you particularly look forward to?
Monday, October 29, 2018
Wednesday, October 24, 2018
Reading Politics: What Happened, Shattered, and Fear
In the past few months, I have read What Happened by Hillary Rodham Clinton, Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton's Doomed Campaign by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, and Fear: Trump in the White House, by Bob Woodward.
As was the case with Fire and Fury, which I read earlier in the year, I wasn't really surprised by much in Fear. Any relatively sane person observing events since Trump's inauguration in 2017 would find the atrocities Woodward describes much as they expected. It's fairly easy to discern who Woodward's major sources were--Priebus, Porter, Bannon, Cohn, Dowd, and Lindsey Graham--and, of course, the story is thus filtered through their points of view. Porter comes across as more important and reasoned than I had previous thought him to be (with just a, you know, little violence against women problem); Kelly comes across as less focused and more hair-triggered than I had realized. And Lindsey Graham--good grief, he should really be voted out of office. Perhaps most noteworthy about the book is that it is the only book I've ever read that ends with the words "You're a fucking liar" (although John Dowd has denied ever saying or thinking that statement attributed to him).
Hillary Clinton's book was probably written too soon--before the shock of her defeat had fully worn off (if it ever will). She blames "what happened" primarily on the undue attention to the emails and the interference of James Comey, with some misogyny thrown in as well. One anecdote that gave me a sense that she still doesn't "get" her own failure to make the kind of connection with people that she wants is the story of meeting with Black Lives Matter activists. Even after time has past, she still doesn't seem to understand that they wanted her to listen to them, not share strategies with them about how to be effective.
Shattered presents a different perspective on "what happened." While the authors would agree that the email "scandal" and Comey's actions were significant in her loss, they see those events as playing into a larger story of people's distrust of the Clintons. They also find much to critique in her campaign, including an over-reliance on analytics (based on bad data) and the attempt to bring new areas into the Democratic tent (e.g., Arizona) rather than solidifying traditional Democratic strongholds, which she later lost. Ironically, the authors suggest that if the campaign had listened to "old pols" like Bill, she might well have won the election (and, of course, we do have to remember that she did win the popular vote).
One of the tidbits in Shattered that I found interesting was that the Clintons evidently place high premium on loyalty--which gives them something in common with Donald Trump. This has gotten me thinking about loyalty--how often do most adults think about whether someone is loyal to them? I don't think I've had that thought since my school days, which, trust me, were a long time ago. When I consider how someone has acted towards me (which I rarely do), I think about it in the same terms I use to evaluate any action: Does it adhere to important values or ethical standards? If not, was there a motivation behind the action that I can understand even if I don't agree? Thinking about loyalty to self seems very immature (or for educators of my era, very low on Kohlberg's stages of moral development or Gilligan's stages of ethical care).
So is this obsession with loyalty simply a quirk of these three (Bill, Hillary, and Donald) flawed people or a correlate of the ego required to run for high office or run a business empire or a defense mechanism when one operates in a cut-throat environment or something else entirely? I'm interested in what others think about this issue--and may be interested enough to do some digging to see if anyone has researched the question. But right now, I need a break from the dark side of human activities--perhaps a good murder mystery!
As was the case with Fire and Fury, which I read earlier in the year, I wasn't really surprised by much in Fear. Any relatively sane person observing events since Trump's inauguration in 2017 would find the atrocities Woodward describes much as they expected. It's fairly easy to discern who Woodward's major sources were--Priebus, Porter, Bannon, Cohn, Dowd, and Lindsey Graham--and, of course, the story is thus filtered through their points of view. Porter comes across as more important and reasoned than I had previous thought him to be (with just a, you know, little violence against women problem); Kelly comes across as less focused and more hair-triggered than I had realized. And Lindsey Graham--good grief, he should really be voted out of office. Perhaps most noteworthy about the book is that it is the only book I've ever read that ends with the words "You're a fucking liar" (although John Dowd has denied ever saying or thinking that statement attributed to him).
Hillary Clinton's book was probably written too soon--before the shock of her defeat had fully worn off (if it ever will). She blames "what happened" primarily on the undue attention to the emails and the interference of James Comey, with some misogyny thrown in as well. One anecdote that gave me a sense that she still doesn't "get" her own failure to make the kind of connection with people that she wants is the story of meeting with Black Lives Matter activists. Even after time has past, she still doesn't seem to understand that they wanted her to listen to them, not share strategies with them about how to be effective.
Shattered presents a different perspective on "what happened." While the authors would agree that the email "scandal" and Comey's actions were significant in her loss, they see those events as playing into a larger story of people's distrust of the Clintons. They also find much to critique in her campaign, including an over-reliance on analytics (based on bad data) and the attempt to bring new areas into the Democratic tent (e.g., Arizona) rather than solidifying traditional Democratic strongholds, which she later lost. Ironically, the authors suggest that if the campaign had listened to "old pols" like Bill, she might well have won the election (and, of course, we do have to remember that she did win the popular vote).
One of the tidbits in Shattered that I found interesting was that the Clintons evidently place high premium on loyalty--which gives them something in common with Donald Trump. This has gotten me thinking about loyalty--how often do most adults think about whether someone is loyal to them? I don't think I've had that thought since my school days, which, trust me, were a long time ago. When I consider how someone has acted towards me (which I rarely do), I think about it in the same terms I use to evaluate any action: Does it adhere to important values or ethical standards? If not, was there a motivation behind the action that I can understand even if I don't agree? Thinking about loyalty to self seems very immature (or for educators of my era, very low on Kohlberg's stages of moral development or Gilligan's stages of ethical care).
So is this obsession with loyalty simply a quirk of these three (Bill, Hillary, and Donald) flawed people or a correlate of the ego required to run for high office or run a business empire or a defense mechanism when one operates in a cut-throat environment or something else entirely? I'm interested in what others think about this issue--and may be interested enough to do some digging to see if anyone has researched the question. But right now, I need a break from the dark side of human activities--perhaps a good murder mystery!
Tuesday, October 9, 2018
Girls & Boys, by Dennis Kelly (performed by Carey Mulligan)
If you are one of the 2.5 people who read my blog regularly, you may have noticed I haven't posted for a couple of months. I actually sat down to write about my August reading and realized I just had nothing new to say. So I decided I would only post when I had something I actually wanted to talk about . . . so here is my first post in the new regime.
Audible recently added a new "perk" for subscribers--two free Audible Originals every month. The first few I've downloaded have been a mixed bag, but all interesting in their own way. However, Girls & Boys stood out. Dennis Kelly wrote Girls & Boys as a one-woman play; it has been produced in London and New York, performed in both cities by Carey Mulligan.
For this Audible Original, the play has been modestly adapted to be, more or less, a radio play, again performed by Mulligan--and she is wonderful! It's surprising that a voice can tell a story so compellingly with no visuals and no information provided via anything other than the monologue.
So what is Girls & Boys about? It's a story of a marriage, from the moment the husband and wife (the narrator) meet until the marriage ends, complete with career ups and downs and the birth of two children. The story is interspersed with "scenes" in which the narrator is interacting with the children; of course, we only hear her voice, but every mother will recognize the tone of the interactions ("Danny, stop it!" "We'll play architect for 5 minutes, and then war."). The narrator is a documentary film producer, and one of the films she works on features the work of a scholar whose focus is gender and violence, prompting reflections on culture, violence, and men that are relevant to events as they develop in the marriage. I don't think I can say more without it becoming a spoiler.
Although some reviewers of the Off-Broadway version of Girls & Boys lauded Mulligan while finding the actual play flawed, I found it sufficiently interesting to listen a second time. While the audio version would be less compelling in another performer's hands, I think Girls & Boys would be interesting and thought-provoking no matter in what form you encountered it.
Favorite passage:
We didn't create society for men, we created it to stop men.
Audible recently added a new "perk" for subscribers--two free Audible Originals every month. The first few I've downloaded have been a mixed bag, but all interesting in their own way. However, Girls & Boys stood out. Dennis Kelly wrote Girls & Boys as a one-woman play; it has been produced in London and New York, performed in both cities by Carey Mulligan.
For this Audible Original, the play has been modestly adapted to be, more or less, a radio play, again performed by Mulligan--and she is wonderful! It's surprising that a voice can tell a story so compellingly with no visuals and no information provided via anything other than the monologue.
So what is Girls & Boys about? It's a story of a marriage, from the moment the husband and wife (the narrator) meet until the marriage ends, complete with career ups and downs and the birth of two children. The story is interspersed with "scenes" in which the narrator is interacting with the children; of course, we only hear her voice, but every mother will recognize the tone of the interactions ("Danny, stop it!" "We'll play architect for 5 minutes, and then war."). The narrator is a documentary film producer, and one of the films she works on features the work of a scholar whose focus is gender and violence, prompting reflections on culture, violence, and men that are relevant to events as they develop in the marriage. I don't think I can say more without it becoming a spoiler.
Although some reviewers of the Off-Broadway version of Girls & Boys lauded Mulligan while finding the actual play flawed, I found it sufficiently interesting to listen a second time. While the audio version would be less compelling in another performer's hands, I think Girls & Boys would be interesting and thought-provoking no matter in what form you encountered it.
Favorite passage:
We didn't create society for men, we created it to stop men.
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