Reading and Reopening

Our library started curbside pickup in June, which was great (it also had delivery to seniors but I figured though I am pretty darn old, I am also able to get around and shouldn't use that service). The library is reopening July 1, with restrictions and safety precautions. Book stores have also reopened, although I have not ventured into one as yet. I did get two book store gift cards for my birthday and have to report that the online mail ordering process at Denver's renowned Tattered Cover was much less user-friendly than that at the much smaller Book Bar, which has done a great job throughout the pandemic. They definitely have a new fan in me.

Anyway, as an older person, I have mostly been remaining home in June and have gotten a lot of reading done, some of it good.

Fiction

Self-Help, by Lorrie Moore is an older collection of Moore's short stories (I think it was her first book). I was surprised--but perhaps shouldn't have been given the collection's title--that a majority of the stories are written in the second person, parodying the self-help form. Stories purport to give advice about how to be the other woman, get through your parents' divorce, leave a man who's dying, talk to your mother, or become a writer. The last story in the collection, not in the second-person format, details the mental collapse of a middle-aged woman whose marriage is loveless and whose mother has dementia. As is typical for Moore, the stories can be both grim and funny. Remembering how my first book group responded to another Moore collection 30 years ago, I can imagine that some readers would not find the humor in the stories--but I enjoyed her work.

My Dark Vanessa, by Kate Elizabeth Russell, is one of the disturbing books I have read in some time. As a 15-year-old, the titular character was abused by her 45-year-old English teacher. Yet, as an adult, she struggles to see their "relationship" as abusive, despite the evidence that the teacher repeated the same behavior with multiple other students--indeed, she refuses to believe the story of another woman who comes forward. Russell does an especially good job of depicting the manipulation that the teacher subjected Vanessa to and the long-term effects of being the victim of such manipulations. I questioned whether we needed the rather detailed description of sexual encounters between Vanessa and the teacher. The author has talked about this in multiple interviews, saying "Those scenes are so important and so formative, because even though those are scenes of abuse, that's also her introduction to sex, and you can't untangle the two . . .  it is coercive and even violent, but it's also just sex." To my mind, no, not really. There's also been controversy around the book, with Latina author Wendy Ortiz alleging that the story was plagiarized from her memoir, which she had difficulty getting published. In a preface to the book, Russell had emphasized that this was not her story, that it was fiction. Since the plagiarism accusations came out, Russell has gone public with the fact that she was abused by older men as a teenager. Still sorting out my thoughts on this book so not sure I can say I recommend it. I can say that the audiobook was very skillfully narrated by Mamie Gummer.

Your House Will Pay, by Steph Cha, is extremely timely, as it is a fictionalized account of the long-range impacts of the killing of African American teenager LaTasha Harlins by Korean American shopkeeper Soon Ja Du on the two families involved. Two characters center the novel. Shawn is the cousin of the murdered girl; has spent some time in prison but has been out and working hard to build a life and support his extended family. His cousin's death has scarred him, but he is still shocked when the killer, who escaped jail time, is shot--and the evidence suggests it was someone in his family when shot her. The second key character is Grace, the daughter of the shopkeeper-killer, who knew nothing of her family's history until her mother is shot. The two individuals' struggles to do the right thing, the dynamics in both families, the cultural context--all are presented thoughtfully and yet the book also is a "good read." Highly recommended.

Fools, by Joan Silber, is a collection of six interconnected short stories. The title (and first) story is about a group of young radicals in New York in the 1920s. While ideology shapes them, they are still subject to the vicissitudes of everyday life and one of them "folds";  Betsy leaves her husband Norman to run off with the owner of the local speakeasy to run a hotel in Florida. But Vera and Joe remain together and committed to their beliefs. The second and third stories focus on the next generation--Betsy's son, who runs away from the prospect of marriage (and of being caught stealing from his parents' business) to a challenging life in Paris, and Vera and Joe's daughter, who struggles with her parents' beliefs while trying to maintain a more mainstream public face during World War II and ends up in a marriage in which she and her husband live thousands of miles apart but do not divorce.  The protagonists of the final three stories have less tight connections to the original group-- the son of one of Betsy's employees, who learns after a long separation from his Muslim wife that she needs his permission to go on the hadj; a gay man going through a breakup finds solace in a memoir of Greenwich Village written by Norman; and a woman who stole from Betsy's son in Paris becomes the target of New York fundraisers. I found some stories more meaningful than others, but enjoyed the connections, the reflections on belief and life choices, and Silber's writing.

The Night Watchman, by Louise Erdrich, was inspired by Erdrich's own grandfather, a night watchman who sent numerous letters to officials in Washington about the future of his tribe. The title character of the novel is Thomas Wazhashk is also a night watchman, at a factory that employs many Turtle Mountain clan women doing exacting work for the Defense Department. Thomas is organizing to save the tribe from termination by the federal government. Meanwhile, his niece Patrice, who works at the factory, is trying to find her sister, who went to the Twin Cities and disappeared, while protecting her family and trying to figure out how she can go to college and find more rewarding work. Add to these two plots Erdrich's usual tribal lore and mysticism and you get a thoroughly rewarding read. Not Erdrich's very best, but darn good.

I found The Perfect Nanny, by Leila Slimani, both creepy and dull. You know from the prologue that the perfect nanny kills the two children she has been hired to care for. The rest of the book narrates how she devolved from "perfection" to murder, while the children's parents gradually become so reliant on her they virtually disappear. The book has gotten a lot of kudos, but I simultaneously hated the characters while also not caring what happened to them.


Mysteries

Follow Her Home, Beware Beware, and Dead Soon Enough, by Steph Cha. After reading Your House Will Pay, I decided to read Steph Cha's series of mysteries featuring Korean American sleuth Juniper Song. Although they're not perfect, I liked them well enough to read all three--and really enjoyed the way LA is a essentially a character in the books.

Miracle Creek, by Angie Kim. A mystery that deals with serious issues, from the immigrant experience to what it is like to be the mother of a child on the autism spectrum. Every character revealed themselves to be deeply flawed (if not hateful) and yet I still liked the book.

Yesterday, by Felicia Yap, is an imaginative and twisty mystery set in a time/place where people have only one or two days of memory, and the "Duos" regard themselves as superior to the "Monos." The discrimination is so bad that the police detective tasked with solving the murder of a beautiful woman has hidden the fact that he is a Mono throughout his career--and the murdered woman's unusual memory is key to her history and fate. Definitely enjoyed this one.

The Break Down, by B.A. Paris. Most predictable "mystery" ever.

The Child, by Fiona Barton. So-so mystery with a twist at the end based on such a huge coincidence that it seems completely unbelievable (and yet predictable--I had figured it out quite a few pages before it was revealed, and I'm not even that good at  figuring out whodunit).

I'm not sure The Need, by Helen Phillips, is a mystery, but the main character, Molly, and readers are trying to figure out who the intruder who looks just like Molly and wants to care for her children really is. The author does a great job depicting the difficulty of caring for children and working (Molly's husband is out of the country for work). But I guess I wasn't paying close enough attention (that does happen sometimes when I'm listening to a book) because the ending made no sense to me.

A Measure of Darkness, by Jonathan and Jessie Kellerman, was the first of the father-son duo's books that I have read. Okay.

Non-Fiction

How to Be an Antiracist, by Ibram X. Kendi, is an interesting combination of scholarly analysis, exhortation to us all to be better, and memoir. Kendi defines an antiracism someone who supports ideas and policies affirming that "the racial groups are equals in all their apparent differences--that there is nothing right or wrong with any racial group." Some of his ideas may be controversial. He asserts, unlike many, that black people can be racists. He also says that self-interest, not hatred, is the root of racism. Agree with all of his ideas or not, Kendi sparks thought.

The New Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander, is an extremely well-documented analysis of how drug laws, unequal enforcement, and mandatory sentencing laws constitute a new Jim Crow system that has produced loss of freedom for African American men through, not slavery, but mass incarceration. I think it's a little longer than it needs to be, especially when Alexander strayed away from her primary point to frown upon civil rights lawyers and critique affirmative action. Still it's a book anyone who questions whether systemic racism exists should read.

Inheritance, by memoirist Dani Shapiro, is the story of what happened when Shapiro learned that the father who had raised her was not her biological father. Rather, she had been the result of artificial insemination with donor sperm. Since both of her parents were dead by the time she made this discovery, she began researching every aspect of it herself; surprisingly, she found the donor relatively easily and was able to start a relationship with him and his family. Other questions were less easily answered. I found the book interesting, while thinking that Shapiro completely overreacted to the news (as, in my anti-memoir frame of mind, seems like something a memoirist would do). Of course, you don't know how you would react to something so unusual when you haven't experienced it. In addition, the author was raised as an Orthodox Jew, and biological inheritance seems to be very important in Judaism. 

Stories I Only Tell Myself, by Rob Lowe, is the somewhat interesting story of the actor's life. Lowe comes across as a nice guy who is a little paranoid about having been mistreated in the industry.

Favorite Passages

You never forget certain years of being young.

--Joan Silber, Fools

Black people are apparently responsible for calming the fears of violent cops in the way women are supposedly responsible for calming the sexual desires of male rapists.

Racist ideas love believers, not thinkers.

--Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist