How can it be November already? Here's a look at how October ended.
Fiction
A friend gave The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell, by Robert Dugoni, a rave review, so I picked it up. Sam "Hell" Hill was born with red eyes--a fact that subjected him to discrimination and bullying as a youngster. The bullies were a classmate and the principal of his Catholic school, a nun with a drinking problem. He finds two friends--Ernie, the only black student in the school and, Mickie, a rebellious girl--who make his life bearable and who continue to be his friend into an adult. As an adult, Sam becomes a tinted-contact-wearing ophthalmologist who takes on the case of his childhood bully's daughter, whom he suspects is being abused. The result is a personal crisis that sends Sam careening away from his friends and the life he has built. I thought the story of Sam's youth was engaging, but I was so annoyed by his interpersonal idiocy in his adult life that I found the adult portions of the story unsatisfying.
This Is How It Always Is, by Laurie Frankel, is the story of a family with five sons, until the youngest son Claude declares he wants to wear a dress and be called Poppy. It's certainly worthwhile to explore how a transitioning child affects all the other members of a family, and I liked the book's treatment of Poppy and her brothers. On the other hand, I often wondered what her parents were thinking and why they were doing things like suddenly moving the family from Madison to Seattle and then trying to keep Poppy's status secret. And the event that seemed to bring the family to some kind of resolution--a medical mission to Thailand, in which the doctor-mom took Poppy along and both had life-changing experiences--seemed quite unrealistic. I wanted to like the book more than I actually did.
I might say the same thing about Lessons in Chemistry, by Bonnie Garmus. Here the central character is a brilliant woman, Elizabeth Zott, trying to succeed as a scientist in the 1950s and 1960s, further handicapped by being a single unmarried mother. The challenges are undoubtedly real, and her efforts to continue her career in unusual ways are admirable if slightly unbelievable. Her gifted daughter Mad is a wonderful character who wants to figure out the mystery of her dead father's family history, with the help of her friend Rev. Wakely, another wonderful character. I enjoyed much about the book, but I sometimes thought that the author was trying for humor in situations that really had no room for humor. For example, Elizabeth was sexually assaulted by her thesis advisor in grad school--not a humorous situation, but the way in which Garmus describes how Elizabeth stabbed him with her pencil is written in a way that seems intended to be funny. Sorry--not funny.
Two of Kate Atkinson's works of historical fiction--Life After Life and A God in Ruins--are among my favorites of the past 20 years. But her new book, Shrines of Gaiety, is a disappointment. Set in the seamy underside of London in the years after World War I, the book features a large cast of characters, three of whom stand out: Gwendolen Kelling, a former combat nurse who has come to London to look for two young girls who have run away from York (and to escape the boredom of her life there); Freda, one of the girls Gwendolen is searching for, who has found London to be rougher than she imagined; and DCI John Frobisher, who is investigating the deaths of young women and to whom Gwendolen turns for help. Other, less interesting characters are the family of nightclub impresario Nellie Coker and two crooked cops trying to steal Nellie's businesses. Bad things happen to almost everyone and then the book ends with a "here's where everyone ends up in the future" tacked on. I guess if you're very curious about the underside of this period, you might find the book interesting, but I did not. Not recommended.
Mysteries
Five Decembers, by James Kestrel, is the most recent winner of the Edgar for Best Mystery Novel and, for once, I think the honor is well-deserved. Indeed, Five Decembers is more than just an excellent mystery--it's an excellent novel. The action begins in Honolulu in November 1941. Police officer Joe McGrady is faced with a challenging case--two young people murdered and found in a barn; one is the nephew of a high-ranking naval officer, putting more pressure on the police. Joe finds clues that lead him across the Pacific, and he heads to Hong Kong in search of the killer. Given the time, you can guess what happens--although what happens to Joe after the attack on Pearl Harbor is far from predictable. I don't want to give the rest of the story away--suffice it to say, I recommend this book.
22 Seconds is the latest entry in the Patterson/Paetro Women's Murder Club series. This one involves violent protests against a new California gun law, as well as gun runners and drug cartels moving goods between Mexico and the United States. Subplots involving anyone other than Lindsay Boxer are underdeveloped--either a total waste or a set-up for something in volume 23. Not great, not horrible.
I did a mini-binge of the first three novels in the Jane Ryland/Jake Brogan series by Hank Phillippi Ryan--The Other Woman, The Wrong Girl, and Truth Be Told, the latter two of which won Agatha awards. Jane is a reporter, Jake is a police officer, they're attracted to each other but can't have a relationship (or at least a public one) because it would be a conflict of interest. They get involved investigating the same crimes, and both seem to go off half-cocked fairly often. Crimes that seem unrelated actually end up being part of one big criminal fiasco. The sexual tension story line gets tedious, but the books are fairly entertaining.
The Housekeeper, by Joy Fielding, is kind of Halloween-appropriate. A daughter hires a housekeeper to help her father care for her disabled mother and the woman goes from being a dream to a nightmare. It's a decent premise, but Fielding foreshadows so much that there's little suspense.
We know from the beginning of Things We Do in the Dark, by Jennifer Hillier, that protagonist Paris Peralta is now who she claims to be. But her current life has plenty of drama--her husband has been murdered and she's a suspect. Then an old friend, who also happens to be a true crime podcaster (that trope is getting tired and it's not used particularly well here), starts to investigate a case that involved her in her earlier life. Soon, her two lives come together. There are some surprises although one is signaled a bit too obviously before it is fully disclosed. Mediocre.
Nonfiction
Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism (second ed.), by bell hooks, is a well-argued discussion of why the situation of black women must be considered as due to both racism and sexism/misogyny. hooks examines how misogyny affected black women in slavery; she also looks at black men's misogyny and the varied ways that this misogyny affects black women. Also of note is the racism of the feminist movement, which rests hard on women of my age, but is supported by the evidence. Recommended.
Poetry
A friend posted enthusiastically about going to a performance by queer poet Andrea Gibson, so I ordered her latest book, You Better Be Lightning. It took me a while to finish the book as it's pretty intense. She writes about relationships, about love and loss, the vulnerability of LGBTQ youth, illness, goosebump moments . . . life. Some of her poems are exceptionally brief but still pack a punch:
No Such Thing as the Innocent Bystander
Silence rides shotgun
wherever hate goes.
Spelling Bee without Stinger
I love myself
is often spelled
g-o-o-d-b-y-e
Some of the poems are quite lengthy, some look like prose. There's a wide array of material here, but every piece conveys emotion, often painful, but sometimes joyful (check out Gibson reading "Acceptance Speech after Setting the World Record in Goosebumps," which reminds us that joy comes in diverse and individual forms: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XK-hb_bjqU). As with any poetry collection, some poems resonant, others don't, but Gibson's work is affecting and I plan to check out more of what she's written.
Favorite passages
The process begins with the individual woman's acceptance that American women, without exception, are socialized to be racist, classist and sexist, in varying degrees, and that labeling ourselves feminists does not change the fact that we must consciously work to rid ourselves of the legacy of negative socialization.
When feminists acknowledge in one breath that black women are victimized and in the same breath emphasize their strength, they imply that though black women are oppressed they manage to circumvent the damaging impact of oppression by being strong--and that is simply not the case. Usually, when people talk about the "strength" of black women they are referring to the way in which they perceive black women coping with oppression. They ignore the reality that to be strong in the face of oppression is not the same as overcoming oppression, that endurance is not to be confused with transformation.
bell hooks, in Ain't I a Woman (and I could pull out a lot of other wisdom as well)
No comments:
Post a Comment