Reading around the Edges of a Mystery Binge

I've been on a bit of a mystery binge (a sadly disappointing mystery binge), but have read a few other books worth  mentioning in September (and how can it be nearly October already?). After drafting this post, I realized that my reading in the latter half of September was pretty depressing!

Nonfiction

My book club started up again for the fall, and Educated by Tara Westover was our first book for the year. I thought I was the only person left in the Western United States who hadn't read this memoir of a young woman's upbringing in an "off-the-grid" (but not really family) in Idaho, but it turns out that wasn't true. The story is amazing, in that Ms. Westover managed to get away from her crazy family and gain an education, including a Ph.D. from Cambridge. However, it's also infuriating in that the Westover children were horribly mistreated by their father (Tara was also mentally and physically abused by one of her brothers), not defended by their mother or anyone in the community, and  completely uneducated (the parents claimed to be home-schooling them but in truth they were unschooled). There is much that a person who grew up in a "normal" situation simply cannot comprehend, but when I finished the book I wasn't sure that Tara herself has even now completely processed her experience, but maybe that's not possible either. The book did cause me to consider the line between mental illness and evil and to what extent someone's mental illness should excuse their abusive behavior; that question remains unresolved but I appreciate being prompted to think about it.

Grace Will Lead Us Home, by Jennifer Berry Hawes, was another thought-provoking read that leaves one with more questions than answers. Hawes documents the horrific 2015 shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Charleston, SC, and the aftermath for the survivors and the families of the victims. It was upsetting to learn that the survivors were badly let down by the church and their pastors in the aftermath--very little spiritual assistance was provided and funds sent to the church but intended for the survivors and victims' families were taken by the church. The depth of the indifference shown these good people is literally shocking. Many of the survivors and members of victims' families were admirable in the strength and forgiveness they showed following the tragedy; as one might expect, other families experienced conflict and ultimately estrangement, compounding their losses. The story of the perpetrator is difficult to take in. Though his childhood and young adulthood seem to have been rather chaotic, he was not explicitly raised to be a racist; his radicalization seems to have occurred largely online, which is a frightening reinforcement of other stories we've all read. And, while some progress in race relations in Charleston are documented, much remains to be accomplished there and elsewhere. The book offers moments of uplift, but it's mostly terribly sad.

Fiction

Idaho, by Emily Ruskovich, might almost fit into my mystery binge, but the author definitely had more complex motivations than simply to entertain. The book has multiple narrators and jumps back and forth in time. In the present, Ann and Wade are married, and Wade is suffering from early onset dementia. One of Wade's daughters, May, is dead, and his first wife Jenny was convicted of killing her; his other daughter, June, disappeared on the day May died. Without being able to discuss the events with Wade, Ann tries to find her way to the truth of what happened and why it happened. Meanwhile, Jenny is in prison, where she has one friend, a woman who killed two people but is eager to learn.  The book is beautifully written and the characters come alive in Ruskovich's prose. I definitely recommend it--but only if you don't need everything neatly wrapped up.

The Immortalists, by Chloe Benjamin, got a lot of positive reviews and landed on a several "Best of" lists, but I actively hated the story of four siblings who at very tender ages go to see a psychic who tells them when they will die. This, not surprisingly, screws them up rather thoroughly. Who would predict children's deaths? How did no responsible adult in their life never find out and help them deal with the predictions? I found the entire scenario so disgusting I could not enjoy any of the deep points other reviewers thought Benjamin was making. Not recommended.

Classic

Unlike House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence, Ethan Frome is not set among the upper class denizens of New York. Rather, Edith Wharton sets this "tale" (as she called it) in rural Massachusetts among struggling farmers, of which the title character is one. Ethan had gone off to college but been forced to return home to care for his ailing mother; he was so grateful to his lively cousin Zenobia for helping in his mother's illness that he married her. Shortly thereafter, Zeena transformed into a dour invalid. Then her cousin Mattie came to stay with them, and the situation between Ethan and the two women became complicated and ultimately sad (I won't say more to avoid ruining the twist at the end of the book). Wharton frames Ethan's story as being told by a visitor to the area 20 years after the end of the story took place; I didn't find this framing added anything (but in general I dislike such frames), but I found the tale interesting. Of course, Wharton's prose is admirable.

The Binge

• Blood Oath, by Linda Fairstein -- possibly her last book, since she has lost her publisher due to her role in the Central Park Five case (as portrayed in Ava Duvernay's Netflix series). Surprisingly, I thought this book was better than a lot of the previous Alex Cooper series.
• A Better Man, by Louise Penny -- Inspector Gamache, Jean-Guy, Three Pines, blah, blah, blah.
• In Her Bones, by Kate Moretti -- Daughter of a female serial killer becomes obsessed with survivors of her mother's crimes and then is suspected of killing one. Interesting premise, not that great in execution. 
• Whistle in the Dark, by Emma Healey -- What do you do when your daughter returns from four days being missing and won't tell what happened to her? Again, better premise than book. 
• The Wife Between Us, Greer Hendricks & Sarah Pekkanen -- A controlling husband and the women who fall for him and then must escape -- ugh. 
• The Last House Guest, by Megan Miranda -- rich friend, poor friend, mysterious death -- again ugh.
• Sins of the Fathers, by J.A. Jance -- I have always liked Jance's character J.P. Beaumont, but this isn't really much of a mystery. More of a dip into Beau's drunken past -- definitely not the strongest entry in the series.

Favorite Passages:

Guilt is the fear of one's own wretchedness.

     Tara Westover, Educated

How quickly someone else's life can enter through the cracks we don't know are there until this foreign thing is inside of us. We are more porous than we know.

Theirs is a devotion that is possible only because of their equal disappointments in each other and the knowledge they share that at one time, to the one who mattered, they were each separately enough. 

     Emily Ruskovich, Idaho

Reading OBOB Authors: Recursion and The River

One Book One Broomfield has introduced me to some authors I might never have encountered otherwise; two of these are Blake Crouch and Peter Heller, both of whom have new books out. The two books are both engaging, although in totally different ways.

Recursion 

Crouch's Recursion is a time travel tale but different than other such books I have read (and I have to admit, I haven't read that many) because people in this story travel only backward, have different lives when they travel, and, at some point in the future, can remember all of the lives. Aside from those who have created the time travel apparatus, people do not understand what has happened to create the conflicting memories--indeed, they think they have something called False Memory Syndrome (FMS)--and a suicide epidemic results.

The narrative is told from the viewpoints of two characters. New York police officer Barry Sutton  starts investigating FMS when he fails to prevent the suicide of a woman who is tormented by her memories of another life. Barry has also experienced tragedy--his teenage daughter was killed in a car accident and his marriage subsequently fell apart--and is open to return to the day of her death to prevent the accident. When he is afforded that opportunity, he enjoys his altered life until the day his wife and daughter remember the other life. At that point, his thinking about time travel changes.

The second protagonist is scientist Dr. Helena Smith, who is working on a device that will help people with Alzheimer's (including her mother) recover some of their memories. When a wealthy investor offers to underwrite her work, she is delighted until . . . no spoilers here.

Recursion bears some similarities to our 2017 OBOB selection by Crouch, Dark Matter. People have alternative lives--clearly a fascination for Crouch--but the focus is somewhat different, in that Recursion explores the functions of memory while Dark Matter looked at how the smallest decisions can change a person's life. Each book contains a device whose function is somewhat magical to this reader and which some more scientifically picky readers will likely find infeasible. And each book contains some violent scenes that I could have done without; I can't help wondering if Crouch was thinking about the TV/movie adaptation when he wrote those scenes.

In the midst of Recursion, I sometimes struggled to figure out what life someone was in (and why) but then remembered what my friend Suzy advised me when I was reading The Time-Traveler's Wife:  "Don't worry about the details; just let it flow." Hardline sci-fi people might have difficulty with that approach, but it allowed me to enjoy this book.

The River

Peter Heller wrote two books between our OBOB selection The Dog Stars and his latest release The River.  I was not overly fond of either The Painter or Celine, but The River lives up to that earlier work. Although The River is not set in a post-apocalyptic world as The Dog Stars was, it features men surviving in the outdoors as they battle nature and their fellow humans--and Heller writes about these themes exceedingly well.

Dartmouth roommates Jack and Wynn decide to take a canoe trip on the Maskwa River in northern Canada before they return to school in the fall. The two young men are different--tough guy Jack grew up on a ranch near Granby, Colorado, where his  mother was killed in a fall when he was a boy; Vermonter Wynn, while bigger, is more tender, perhaps because he grew up in an intact family that included a sister with cerebral palsy--but they share a love for the outdoors, fishing, and literature. The trip starts out as the idyllic trip they had imagined, but then it goes all Deliverance on them (that book/film is referenced more than once) as they encounter wildfire, a pair of drunk Texans, and a badly injured woman.

I can't say much more without veering into spoiler territory, so let me conclude by saying that The River is riveting.

Favorite Passages

Life with a cheat code isn't life. Our existence isn't something to be engineered or optimized for the avoidance of pain. That's what it is to be human--the beauty and the pain, each meaningless without the other.

Blake Crouch, Recursion


He heard a loon call, piercing and forlorn, and it poured into his spirit like cool water. It was a sad cry and he realized as he listened how barren the river had felt in the days without it. Why was a wail that
seemed so lost and lonely so . . . what? Essential and lovely.

There's always relief in committing to a decision, even when there's no choice.

The implacability and violence of nature always awed him. That it could be entirely heedless and yet so beautiful. That awed him. But also its intricate intelligence. Its balancings. Its quiet compensations. I twas like some unnamed justice permeated everything. He would not go further than that. Still, the workings of nature made the voracious, self-satiating intelligence of humans seem of the lowest order, not the highest.

Peter Heller, The River

One Book One Broomfield 2019: Beautiful Boy

This year's One Book One Broomfield pick is Beautiful Boy, by David Sheff. The memoir of the author's journey through his son Nic's meth addiction has a new Afterword added in 2018, ten years after the book was initially published. His descriptions of the pain Nic's addiction--and his behavior while using--caused are raw and heart-rending: the worry about the child; the feelings of guilt and powerlessness; the difficulty of figuring out what, if anything, can be done to help the child, particularly given the varying advice given by different professionals, not to mention friends, family, and others with addiction experience; the sometimes delusional hope; the concern about how the addiction is affecting younger siblings and the parents' marriage. It's overwhelming--especially (for me at least) when I think about Sheff's wife (Nic's stepmom) and two younger children, whose pain and steadfastness bring tears to my eyes as I write this.

Sheff, who is journalist, also did voluminous research on addiction, particularly meth addiction, and shares that information in an understandable form. This information is one reason that the book feels like more than a memoir to me. The other is Sheff's obvious intent to help others by telling his family's story. I don't always perceive that same intent when I read other memoirs.

It is interesting that the meth epidemic has faded from the public consciousness as concern about the opioid epidemic has grown. But meth is still a problem, and a quick Google search reveals that it is growing. If you're interested, here's an informative piece from Kaiser Health News, written in May of this year: https://khn.org/news/meth-vs-opioids-america-has-two-drug-epidemics-but-focuses-on-one/.

Back to Beautiful Boy, note that the film of the same title is based not only on this book but also on Nic's book Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines.  I'm thinking I should read this book too before the author's appearance in Broomfield on November 8.

Favorite passages:

When we talk, in fact, I realize that Nic has discovered the bitterest irony of early sobriety. Your reward for your hard work in recovery is that you come headlong into the pain that you were trying to get away from with drugs.

. . .  in mortal combat with addiction, a parent wishes for a catastrophe to befall his son. I wish for a catastrophe, but one that is contained. It must be harsh enough to bring him to his knees, to humble him, but mild enough so that he can, with heroic effort and the good that I know is inside him, recover, because anything short of that will not be enough for him to save himself.

How innocent we are of our mistakes and how responsible we are for them.