Dog Days Start Early

It seems like the Dog Days of Summer have started early this year--perhaps because it's been hot or because the pandemic is resurging (if that's a word) or because I dog-sat an actual dog twice in a month (technically, one time was in June, but who's counting?). Or maybe it's because I read some dogs this month. But, as usual, there were some good ones too. 

Fiction

Lost Children Archive, by Valeria Luiselli. None of the four major characters in this novel have names--they are a married couple referred to as Mama and Papa, his son (The Boy), and her daughter (The Girl). After meeting and falling in love while working on a project to archive the sounds of New York City, the parents are both contemplating new projects and decide to take a family trip to the Southwest to explore the possibilities. Papa is obsessed with the Apache, while Mama is researching lost child refugees. As they travel cross-country, tensions between the parents increase, and The Boy, at least, is aware of the possible break-up of their family and looking for a solution.The book is much more complex than I am depicting it--it's complicated and sad and well worth reading.

Anatomy of a Miracle, by Jonathan Miles. This is a very unusual book, written to resemble a nonfiction book about a paraplegic veteran who suddenly stands up and walks (the resemblance to a nonfiction treatment seems to fade as the book progresses). The mysterious miracle has a ripple effect, influencing the vet's sister, his doctor, his pastor, the couple that runs the convenience store where the miracle happened, a reality show producer who wants to make a show about the vet. It's weird, and the romantic ending comes out of nowhere, but the book is nonetheless entertaining. 

Recipe for a Perfect Wife, by Karma Brown. I had read some glowing reviews of this book, which depicts the lives of two women who lived in the same house, 70 years apart. While Nellie Murdoch appears to be a perfect 1950s housewife, her husband is abusive, and she is determined not to have his child. The current occupant of the house, Alice Hale, has been pressured by her husband to move to the suburbs after losing her job. He sees it as the ideal opportunity for her to write her novel while they work on getting pregnant.  She finds Nellie's cookbook and a neighbor gives her some letters written by Nellie, and she begins to feel comfortable wearing retro housedresses and cooking such 50s gems as tuna casserole with potato chip. Yet she resists getting pregnant by secretly getting an IUD and doesn't tell her husband that she hasn't written a word of the novel. While the format of the book and the cover suggest a lightness, both stories are on the dark side.  Not really up to the glowing views, but still fairly entertaining.

The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien. I've had this book for years and resisted reading it, at least in part because I have trouble dealing with books or movies about Vietnam. It's been described as "an arc of fictional episodes, taking place in the childhoods of its characters, in the jungles of Vietnam and back home in America two decades later"-- and that description is better than anything I could come up with.  There is circling back to tell stories in different ways, some brutal descriptions, and also lyrical language. There are "meta" aspects to the book, with O'Brien talking about stories told that didn't happen but were true. A masterpiece but not always easy to read. 

Goodbye, Vitamin, by Rachel Khong. Ruth decides to leave her job in the Bay Area for a year to return to her parents' home and help her mother with her father, who has dementia and has been involuntarily retired from his job as a professor. Ruth, her father's teaching assistant, and a group of his students decide to cheer him by telling him the department has decided to let him teach one seminar. The seminar is fake, but it has the desired effect until he discovers their deception. The book is sweet and funny while giving some insight into the progress of dementia. I loved it! 

Meg and Jo, by Virginia Kantra. Meg and Jo is a somewhat silly retelling of Little Women set in modern-day North Carolina (and New York), with Mr. March cast as a self-satisfied jerk (I might have to reread Little Women just to see how Alcott treated him--or maybe Geraldine Brooks' March).  Yet I enjoyed it and fully expect to read Beth and Amy when it inevitably comes out. 

Mysteries

Two Girls Down, by Louisa Luna. Single mother Jamie leaves her 8- and 10-year-old daughters in the car when she runs into K-Mart for 5 minutes. When she returns, they are gone. With the police seemingly overburdened with the meth and opioid crisis, the family hires bounty hunter Alice Vega, who has a reputation for finding lost children. She's from out-of-town, so hires on local ex-cop Max Caplan to help her try to find the girls. Not a standout, but good enough that I'm currently about to start another book by Luna. 

Nonfiction

First: Sandra Day O'Connor, by Evan Thomas. This biography of Sandra Day O'Connor made me appreciate the tremendous pressure that Sandra Day O'Connor was under as the first female Supreme Court Justice, especially one who was not as well-prepared as many other justices. I also found myself somewhat annoyed by the very social (and, one might say, political) life that she led in Washington, DC, at least in part to make her beloved and very social husband John happy. (Her efforts to keep John at home and maintain her job when he was slipping rapidly into dementia are heartbreaking.) Her clear partisanship make her vote in Bush v. Gore easier to understand, but no less infuriating.  Still, even after reading the book, I found I did not understand her as a person very well at all--she remained an enigma. One irritating thing about the book: The author often wrote about her as thought she were dead--which she still is not. But that doesn't stop me from recommending the book.  

The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race, edited by Jesmyn Ward. Although published in 2017, this collection is tragically just as timely (and sadly shows very little has changed since Baldwin's work was published in the 1960s). As with most collections of essays by various authors, some entries resonated more with me than others. Some of my favorites: Wendy Walters' "Lonely in America" describing her attempts to uncover the truth about the discovery of long-buried African Americans in Portsmouth, NH;  Garnette Cadogan's "Black and Blue" about walking in Kingston, Jamaica, New Orleans, and New York; Claudia Rankine's "The Condition of Black Life Is one of Mourning," which connects Mamie Till's decision to allow her son's body to be photographed with the Black Lives Movement. You would likely find others most interesting/challenging/stimulating--definitely worth exploring the collection to find your favorites. 

The Dogs (Oh, look, they're all mysteries!)

A Reasonable Doubt, by Phillip Margolin

I Know Who You Are, by Alice Feeney

The Escape Artist, by Brad Meltzer

Dark Corners of the Night, by Meg Gardiner

The Murder List, by Hank Phillippi Ryan

A Double Life, by Flynn Berry

Someone We Know, by Shari LaPena

The Suspect, by Fiona Barton

These Women, by Ivy Pochoda (despite very positive reviews suggesting this book was a significant commentary on class, I thought it was completely unbelievable)

Favorite Passages:

The way home became home.

Garnette Cadogan in The Fire This Time

What imperfect carriers of love we are, and what imperfect givers. That the reasons we can care for one another can have nothing to do with the person cared for. That it has only to do with who we were around that person, what we felt about that person.

Rachel Khong, Goodbye, Vitamin