October has been a high stress month--the upcoming election, the surging coronavirus, raging wildfires, and some family health concerns have combined to put me pretty close to the edge. I'm blaming that stress for the fact that most of my reading this month has been crappy mysteries. Here's hoping a good election result (Vote Blue!) will push me to more challenging reading in November. Meanwhile . . .
Fiction
The Only Story, by Julian Barnes. Julian Barnes is an amazing writer--I love the way he uses language. I don't, however, always love (or understand) his plots. The protagonists of The Only Story (which apparently is love) are Paul and Susan, who are 19 and 49, respectively, when they meet and fall in love while playing tennis. Eventually, Susan leaves her husband (who we later learn was abusive) and moves with Paul to his university town. Their relationship thrives for a time, but then Susan's drinking and mental illness drive them apart. Paul leaves, but can never entirely escape that first love affair--his only story. The early part of the novel alternate between first and second person--first when Paul is relating events, second when he is reflecting. The latter part of the book is written in third person, indicating that Paul has even further distanced himself from his experience. I didn't find that technique especially effective, I didn't think any of the characters other than Paul himself to be well-developed (and Paul seems to have remained a juvenile), and I doubt that love, and particularly first love, are the only story of significance in a person's story. So, despite some beautiful language and interesting insights, I don't recommend this book.
All the Little Live Things, by Wallace Stegner. This book is a "sequel" (though written before) to The Spectator Bird, which introduced retired literary agent Joe Allston and his wife Ruth. Still trying to recover from their son's death, they become entangled with two younger people. Jim Peck asks to camp on their land, and under pressure from Ruth, Joe agrees despite his own reservations. Those reservations prove to have been well-founded, as Peck is soon running a commune of sorts (the book is set in the 60s), espousing yoga, sex, and drugs. In contrast, Marian Caitlin, the young wife and mother who moves in next door with her family, is a sunny lover of "all the little live things," whose personality enthralls Joe and Ruth. But Marian has cancer, which recurs when she becomes pregnant. The book has beautiful descriptions of place and some interesting reflections on aging, but the ongoing arguments, especially between Joe and Peck, become tedious. Worth reading but certainly not up to the standard of Stegner's best works.
Nonfiction
Intimations, by Zadie Smith. You have to hate/admire someone who cranks out a book of essays during a pandemic lockdown. It's a relatively slim book (about 100 pages) and, thankfully, the essays are more accessible than some of her earlier works. Yet, through reflection on her personal experiences, Smith challenges us to think about time, inequality and privilege, compassion, and isolation. Recommended.
Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive, by Stephanie Land. Land's memoir details how hard it is to make any economic progress when you start out without education, skills, or family connections and have to provide food and shelter for a child. The precariousness of her life--an illness or car malfunction can start a major downward spiral--is heartbreaking, and the portrayal of the way in which the owners of maid services and the consumers of their services treat the actual cleaners is infuriating. Our society needs to address these issues. At the same time, Land makes bad decisions (particularly involving men) and has an irrational belief that if she can only get to Missoula, Montana, things can be better. In fact, they do get better when she enrolls at Montana State, but she could have made the same changes in another location. I know I'm being judgey--but places aren't magical. (Also, she liked The Alchemist--ugh!) Despite my whining, I recommend the book.
Burn the Place, by Iliana Regan. Regan is the chef-owner of the upscale Chicago restaurant Elizabeth (highly recommended by my friend Carolyn) and co-owner of a a bed and breakfast in the UP that is booked solid through 2021 (I checked on their website!). She grew up on a farm in Indiana, struggled with her identity and sexuality, and started drinking early. After moving to Chicago, where she worked at several of the area's most revered restaurants, she continued to struggle with addiction while beginning to develop a business, most notably through sale of her "best in Chicago" pierogis. I love the parts of the book that are about food and Regan's connection to food (I'm a food memoir junkie). While I sympathize with her struggles and admire her eventual recovery from addiction, at this point I have read too many memoirs with an addiction theme to find that part of the book very interesting (yes, I might be heartless). Still, Regan writes well and there's the food, so I recommend the book.
Alone Together: Love, Grief and Comfort in the Time of COVID-19, edited by Jennifer Haupt. Alone Together is a collection of poems, essays, and interviews about the experience of the pandemic and shutdown. A wide range of well-known (and lesser known) authors are represented; a sampling: Pam Houston, Alberto Luis Urrea, Andre Dubus III, Nikki Giovanni, Kwame Alexander, Jean Kwok, Lidia Yuknavitch. The works examine the role of art and story telling in times of crisis, how we are affected by isolation and illness, and the ways in which connections are sustained. I found the book to be both sad and uplifting and recommend it (sales support the Book Industry Charitable Foundation).
Young Adult
Clap When You Land, by Elizabeth Acevedo. In Clap When You Land, Acevedo has produced another sensitive novel in poetic form. When their father is killed in a plane crash, Camino, who lives in the Dominican Republic, and Yahaira, who lives in New York, learn that their beloved Papi had two wives (their mothers), each with a daughter. The book explores how the two come to grips with their new-found relationship while dealing with other challenges that teenagers face. Recommended.
One Crazy Summer, by Rita Williams-Garcia. Delphine, Vonetta, and Fern are three sisters who live in Brooklyn with their dad and grandmother. When Delphine is 11, the girls are sent to Oakland to stay with their mother for the summer--a mother they haven't seen since she left them seven years earlier. Why their father thought this was a good idea is unclear, since their mother clearly did not want them around. She sends them to a Black Panther-run day camp and when they are not at camp, leaves them to fend for themselves. The day camp is a good experience and the girls eventually gain some insight into their mother (or at least Delphine does), but I was so uncomfortable with the way their mother treated them that I couldn't enjoy the book.
On the Come Up, by Angie Thomas. Thomas has a real gift for getting into the heads of teenage girls. Here that girl is Bri, a talented young rapper who is struggling at school due to racism and her own impulsiveness (her psychology major older brother "diagnoses" her with oppositional defiant disorder). She wants desperately to get her music career started, both for her own sake and to help her financially strapped family. When she gets a break with an angry song, however, she is branded as a thug and is pulled into gang disputes. While the ending is somewhat facile, Thomas does a brilliant job depicting how problems of society and an individual's own bad decisions can combine to put teenagers in situations they should not have to face. Recommended.
Life as We Knew It, by Susan Beth Pfeffer. A huge meteor hits the moon, knocking it closer to earth; the resulting tidal waves drown out entire cities, while earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and the cooling climate create massive problems for the survivors. Life as We Knew It is the survival story of high school sophomore Miranda and her family, and it's a story that holds your attention. The ending is a bit week, but I still enjoyed the book, perhaps because the children and their mother are so heroic--a nice antidote in our own dystopian time.
Also Read
- A Stranger in the House, by Shari LaPena. Forgettable, in fact, forgotten.
- Long Bright River, by Liz Moore
- Lost Lake and Shatter the Night, by Emily Littlejohn. Books 3 and 4 in the Gemma Monroe series break from the repetitive pattern of Books 1 and 2 but still aren't great mysteries.
- The 19th Christmas, by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro. A little better than the more recent entries in the Women's Murder Club mysteries.
- Outsider, by Linda Castillo. Decent entry in the Kate Burkholder series.
- Separation Anxiety, by Laura Zigman. Forced zaniness featuring a troubled family and a private school followed by a weird sweet ending.
- The Last Widow, by Karen Slaughter. More Will Trent.
- The Wife Stalker, by Liv Constantine. Totally unbelievable plot.
- What You Wish For, by Katherine Center. This is the second Center book that sounded great in a review/write-up but disappointed upon reading. I found the use of PTSD resulting from a school shooting as a romantic plot devise deeply offensive.
- The Turn of the Key, by Ruth Ware. I was never going to read another Ruth Ware book, but this was available on Overdrive, so . . . Better than her earlier works but not great.
- Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death and Agatha Raisin and the Vicious Vet, by M. C. Beaton. I had never read any Beaton, and these two were pleasant enough diversions. Not sure how much farther I will dip into the very large series.
- You Are Not Alone, by Greer Hendrick & Sarah Pekkanen. Totally unbelievable.
Favorite Passages
Memory sorts and sifts according to the demands made on it
by the rememberer. Do we have access to the algorithm of its priorities?
Probably not. But I would guess that memory prioritises whatever is most useful
to help keep the bearer of those memories going. So there would be a
self-interest in bringing happier memories to the surface first. But again, I’m
only guessing.
Living with joy, even if imperfectly, is a kind of
salvation.
Jean Kwok, in Alone Together
We are hurt and damaged and yearning for our better selves, esperately dreaming of a kinder world in the days to come.
Luis Alberto Urrea in Alone Together
On that small farm, among the bats, wasps, fireflies, and endless clouds, the stage was set for deep imaginings, escaping in daydreams so I didn't have to think. It was as if life happened inside a little box, and I was the marionette as well as the puppeteer. I felt like I knew more things about life than I should have. Like the universe was all those mason jars stacked in our pantry, and the world was just one of them, full of peaches.
Iliana Regan, Burn the Place
No comments:
Post a Comment