Sunday, October 31, 2021

Tricks and Treats of Early Fall Reading

 So it turns out that time spent packing up all your belongings and then unpacking them at your new abode is ideal for listening to audio books, particularly audio books that aren't tremendously serious. Ergo, September and October's reading featured a lot of fluff but a few more serious titles. So here are the best of early fall, along with some that annoyed or disappointed me.

Fiction

Apples Never Fall, by Liane Moriarty. For me, Moriarty may never match the brilliance of Big Little Lies, but Apples Never Fall is far superior to her last offering (Nine Perfect Strangers, which I actively disliked). Stan and Joy Delaney are skilled tennis players who pushed all four of their children to become Australia's next big star--but none of them reached the heights their parents hoped for, and all of them have issues, at least in part prompted by their childhoods. When Joy suddenly disappears after a fight with Stan about a mysterious young woman who showed up at their house one night--and stayed--everyone ends up suspected of something nefarious. The ending is disappointing, but overall the book is entertaining.

The Other Bennet Sister, by Janice Hadlow. Hadlow focuses on Mary, the middle Bennet sister in Pride and Prejudice. The story works within the framework of the original story and even mimics Austen's writing style but gives Mary an authentic life of her own rather than playing her as a pathetic charmless foil for the livelier/lovelier Bennet sisters. It's a good reminder that in fiction, as in life, the people who are the butts of our jokes are still people--possibly interesting, intelligent, motivated people. 

Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout. I'm a big fan of Elizabeth Strout, but didn't really care for My Name is Lucy Barton, the first book in which Lucy appeared (but I loved Anything Is Possible, an Olive Kittredge-style collection of linked stories in which Lucy is mostly an un-present presence). She reemerges here, older and perhaps wiser--or at least more self-aware. Her first husband, William, calls to ask her for help dealing with a family problem; she's somewhat at loose ends, still mourning the death of her second husband, and she agrees to travel to Maine with William to investigate. As is common in Strout's books, Oh William! deals with themes of family, trauma, forgiveness, and grief. It's not my favorite Strout book, but I enjoyed it.

How Beautiful We Were, by Imbolo Mbue. It took me a while to get into How Beautiful We Were, the story of a fictional African village in which an oil company is literally killing the people, through a massacre and environmental degradation. A journalist tries to help by raising awareness of the problem in the United States, but despite years of effort, Americans are actually of little help. I became really engaged with the story when Thula emerged as a major character. A brilliant young woman Thula won a scholarship to study in the US, where she stayed for a decade, all the while supporting the young people in the community who were running a guerrilla operation against the oil company. She was a compelling character who brought the story into focus. How Beautiful We Were is a harsh reminder of the ways in which Western nations and companies have abused African communities in order to profit from the continent's national resources. 

Mystery

I often say I don't really know what qualifies as science fiction, but I'm starting to think the same about the mystery genre. What is mystery as compared to psychological suspense or thriller or even horror? I have seen the two books I've listed here categorized differently, but I'm going with the generic mystery.

No Exit, by Taylor Adams (yes, it takes some courage to re-use one of Sartre's titles), is set along I-70, which is one of the reasons, albeit a fairly dumb one, that I liked this book. During a blizzard in the Rockies, college student Darby attempts to drive from Boulder to Utah to visit her dying mother. Unfortunately, the storm strands her at a rest stop with a small group of highly untrustworthy folks. I actually felt scared while listening, which is pretty unusual for me. 

Girl A, by Abigail Dean isn't exactly a mystery either, although as a reader you are trying to figure out what is happening with Girl A, the oldest daughter of abusive hyper-religious parents. Girl A, Lex,  orchestrated the children's escape from their parents' prison--but not all the siblings have similar feelings about their childhood and thus don't agree with her plan to turn the family home into a center for abused children. The book provides some insight on all of the children's lives following their removal from the home and adoption into different families, all from Lex's perspective. It's dark and sad but also has mysteries embedded.

Poetry

Shocking myself, I read two books of poetry in September and October. Granted, both were pretty slim, but still . . .

Let's Be the Awake Ones, by Meg Hutchinson. Hutchinson is a singer-songwriter, poet, mental health advocate, and chaplain--in other words, something of a Renaissance woman. Her mother is also remarkable--she has written a poem every morning for almost 20 years; during poetry month (April), she issues a daily prompt that folks can use to craft their own poems each day. This book is the product of Meg's efforts from one recent April. She writes about animals--especially her dogs--but also about a wide variety of topics. My favorite one is the title poem, which ends 

Wherever you are right now, find the nearest door
and walk through it

Let's go down to the river
Be gathered up into the grace of it all

Let's be the awake ones. 

Poems to Live by in Uncertain Times, edited by Joan Murray. Murray put this collection together after September 11, 2001, and the same kind of comfort seems equally needed today. Some of the poems are indeed comforting while others, for me at least, deepened feelings of sadness. One of my favorites is "September," by Jennifer Michael Hecht, which captures the beauty and melancholy of autumn: 

Tonight there must be people who are getting what they want.
I let my oars fall into the water.
Good for them. Good form them, getting what they want.

The night is so still that I forget to breathe.
The dark air is getting colder. Birds are leaving.

Tonight there are people getting just what they need.

The air is so still that it seems to stop my heart.
I remember you in a black and white photograph
taken this time of some year. You were leaning against
a half-shed tree, standing in the leaves the tree had lost.

When I finally exhale it takes forever to be over.

Tonight, there are people who are so happy,
that they have forgotten to worry about tomorrow.

Somewhere, people have entirely forgotten about tomorrow.
My hand trails in the water.
I should not have dropped those oars. Such a soft wind.

I also found compelling Seamus Heaney's repeated use of the idea of justice rising up when hope and history rhyme, as in this stanza from "The Cure at Troy":

History says, Don't hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.

Beautiful!

Nonfiction

In Search of the Color Purple, by Salamisha Tillet. A lover of The Color Purple, Tillet essentially writes its biography, from novel to film to Broadway musical. At each stage, she examines a key character, Alice Walker's thinking, and the response to the work in a deeply thoughtful way. While I knew The Color Purple had been controversial, I underestimated the racism and sexism that underlay the criticisms. I found it particularly galling the extent to which black women are expected to protect black men who are acting badly. I understand (at least to the extent a white person can) that black men deal with a ton of horrific treatment from white people and systems, but black women should not be constrained from being honest about their lived experience. And, if you want to explore that issue (as well as misogyny more generally), check out the four-part podcast Tillet co-anchored, "Because of Anita." It's amazing and infuriating.  

Annoyances/Disappointments

Alex Michaelides's first novel, The Silent Patient, was a highly entertaining twisty mystery-thriller. His second, The Maidens, is just dumb, and I particularly found annoying that he slipped in a reference to the mental hospital that played an important part in The Silent Patient. Seems a little early in his writing career to be self-referential.

Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead disappointed me. I loved The Underground Railroad so much that every other Whitehead novel has been a disappointment. This story of a man caught between the straight life and more profitable criminal pursuits in 1960s New York City was a bore to me, although other reviewers found it "dazzling" and "a joy to read." I am about to give up on Whitehead. 

In my ongoing effort to read Pulitzer and National Book Award winners, I've made my way through several titles that made me wonder how the heck they won a major award. A Summons to Memphis, by Peter Taylor has joined that group. Phillip Carver, who lives in New York, receives a call from his two sisters, who are beside themselves because their widowed father is talking about remarrying. They want Phillip to come home to Memphis and straighten things out. There's backstory, but not much happens in the present. So dull. 

Hostage, by Claire Mackintosh. This mystery/thriller is dumb and predictable and has two twists at the end that I found disgusting in two different ways, both related to their depiction of a child. Ugh.

Favorite Passage

That was the problem with coming home: you also had to come home to the self who resided there.

--Abigail Dean, Girl A

I am not invisible no matter how deeply I feel that I am.

--Elizabeth Strout, Oh William!