I just recently read Geraldine Brooks's memoir about her husband's death, Memorial Days, and it occurred to me I have read a lot of books about the experience of widowhood, despite the fact that I am long divorced and unlikely to be a widow. So I am contemplating what draws me to these books--perhaps pondering the experience of grief, which I certainly have experienced. I also realized I hadn't read (or at least couldn't remember) any memoirs written by men grieving their wives. When I did some minimal Googling, I found mostly books where men were giving advice to other widowers, rather than deeply exploring the grieving experience (although I haven't read the books so perhaps I am unfairly characterizing them); this doesn't really surprise me given, well, you know. BTW: Brooks does give some tips for other women grieving their husbands at the end of her book, which I thought was a good idea. However, if you're looking for a memoir in this genre, I would recommend Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking or Elizabeth Alexander's The Light of the World. Here If You Need Me by Kate Braestrup is a somewhat different book, being comprised of essays and vignettes, but is also very good. The Brooks book is okay but not my favorite. Joyce Carol Oates's A Widow's Story and Kay Redfield Jamison's Nothing Was the Same would both have been better as essays/articles (in fact, Oates did write a very good article prior to publishing the book).
On a different note (but also on gender relations), I read a YA book recently that included adults telling a tween girl that if a boy picks on/harasses you, it's because he likes you. I know adults do, unfortunately, say that, but I don't think such statements should stand without pushback in a book published in the 21st century (it was published in 2015). Even if the statement is true, that kind of treatment is not acceptable and should have negative consequences. Come on, people, do better!
On to more pleasant things.
Fiction
I usually add books I like to my draft posts as soon as I finish them, but I finished What Kind of Paradise by Janelle Brown a week ago and am, for a variety of reasons, just now getting to writing about it. In part the delay is just due to life, but the farther I got from finishing the book, the more unbelievable some of the plot points seemed (example: a home-schooled teenager with no college education gets hired on sight--no resume, no background check--by a high-tech company during the tech boom of the 1990s). However, I had enjoyed the book while reading it and continued to think it would be a great book club selection--lots to discuss. So here's a super-short description: Jane lives with her father in a remote cabin in Montana. She is home schooled and he produces a 'zine for Luddites and hatches plans for escaping when "the feds come for him." Her father often disappears for days at a time, leaving Jane at home. When he announces he will be going to Seattle, she begs to go with him, and he agrees, drawing her into his plans, which involve a deadly crime. From there, things get really complicated, as Jane tries to figure out who she really is, whether her mother is really dead, and what to do about her father's crimes. The story is framed as her remembering the time after a reporter finds her and asks to interview her about her father's fame 20 years later. It's entertaining and thought-provoking if sometimes far-fetched. Or maybe I'm naive.
The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami could be described as a prison novel, except the imprisoned people have not been convicted or even accused of a crime. Rather, they are being held in a retention center because an algorithm using 200 data points--including dreams--determined they are likely to commit a crime. Following a televised mass shooting during the half-time show at the Super Bowl, the United States passed a crime prevention bill allowing "retention" of people deemed to be potential criminals. Sara Hussein, a historian returning to the US from a conference in the UK, is deemed likely to kill her husband and is retained for the standard 21 days. But very few people actually are released after 21 days, instead having their terms extended repeatedly due to minor infractions. Of course, the retention centers, the algorithm, and the technology that allows dreams to be read are all run by private companies who operate on a profit motive. The narrative describing Sara's experience is interspersed with emails and documents related to these companies, which provide additional context. The Dream Hotel feels all-too-possible; indeed, one can find similarities to actual events in 2025. Worth a read.
Heartwood, by Amity Gaige, is sometimes classified as a thriller, but I think it's much more than that. The story is told from multiple perspectives, with the three primary voices being those of a Maine ranger, a lost hiker, and an elderly woman who has been living her life primarily online. The book is thrilling in its depiction of the search for the lost hiker. But it's also deeply reflective. The ranger, Bev, is single, aging, and has immersed herself in her work at the cost of her family relationships. The hiker, Valerie, is a nurse trying to find "the missing pieces of her heart" after the trauma of the COVID pandemic. And Lena, the elderly woman, is gradually being drawn back into the world by a man at her assisted living and by the search for Valerie. A tense but ultimately life-affirming read for the end of a tough year.
Mysteries
No mysteries that really grabbed me in the second part of fall--that makes me sad. 😞
Nonfiction
Although I am not myself fashionable, I am interested in fashion--I subscribed to In Style for years and have seen every season (even the terrible most recent one) of Project Runway. Also, I'm a Democrat. So it's probably no surprise that I enjoyed The Look, by Michelle Obama with her stylist Meredith Koop. This does not mean I have loved all of her looks, past or present--I haven't (in particular, I never cared for the wide belts over cardigans). However, I appreciated learning about how she and her team thought about fashion as one vehicle for conveying a message of inclusion, opportunity, and feminine power, as well as for normalizing a Black First Family. She has taken some criticism for her discussion of feeling the need to wear her hair straight while in the White House, but IMO those critiques are based on ignorance if not outright racism--a certain former Fox host's unhinged rant makes that clear. The book is expensive (it's essentially a coffee table book with a lot of text), so most people will want to get it from the library. BTW: Both Jill Biden and Melania Trump have had stylists as well, and it's interesting to think what factors in addition to personal taste might have influenced their choices.
Poetry
I just finished two poetry collections, both focusing on how life changes over time, but one from the perspective of a woman in her 40s, the other from a woman nearing 90 when the book was published. How About Now is Kate Baer's fourth collection; she continues to write about the joys and challenges of being a mother and being married, but also looks at how getting older and potentially less healthy affects her and makes friends ever more important. Several poems also address technology's impact on modern life. Her work often has an edge--I love that the poem "Interview with a Male Moderator at a Decorated Literary Event" was written in response to the moderator asking "Do you ever feel that men might feel alienated from your work?" While this is not my favorite among her books, I enjoyed many of the poems. Here are a couple of examples--one about kids growing up and the other about technology.
One Day
One day your baby sits
in a bright red stroller
making wild mammalian sounds,
and the next they're saying
they never liked Dog Man and
no one their age takes bubble baths.
Christmas without a Santa.
Tooth Fairies without a tiny baby tooth.
Now they want this sort of haircut,
to take them to the mall
with other post-pubescent children.
It's not so bad--
but if you're waiting for a hug
or gentle conversation,
I suggest not looking very desperate.
Lie on the floor, get out your book.
Eventually they come.
Meanwhile
At the concert we show our phones our favorite musician.
On vacation we show them the waves, the children playing
in the sand. We say, look phone! And turn it on ourselves.
Look at my face! I'm so old and ratty, we say to our phones.
Now look at the sunset. A four-car pileup. A dog in khaki
pants. You must remember this, we say to our phones.
Have it when we want it. (We will never want it) A gray
heron sails across the sky. Look! we say, pulling our phones
from our back pockets. You don't want to miss this, phone!
It would be a shame if you missed all this.
The second book was Nearing 90 [And other Comedies of Late Life] by Judith Viorst. I've been enjoying Viorst's "decade" books since she started writing them in her 30s (in 1968, I gave her Love Poems for the Very Married as a wedding shower gift for a college friend who got married shockingly young). Viorst's best poems find the humor in life but she can also be sentimental about the very same topics, like her husband Milton (I am sad that she is experiencing much of her 90s without him, as he died in 2022). She's technically not the greatest poet, but she's such an astute observer of life at any age that her poems still touch me. As someone who has spent some time saying which of my mother's behaviors I will never do, I particularly enjoyed this one.
Trading Places
You can't read the menu if you don't bring your glasses.
Nor will your hearing aid work with a dead battery.
I once had these conversations with my mother.
Now my kids are having them with me.
You only should come if you want to come--no pressure.
You've got your own life to live. Go live it! Have fun!
That's how my mother used to get me to visit.
I can't believe that's what I just said to my son.
And then there's the lovely little book Washing My Mother's Body: A Ceremony for Grief, which features a single poem by Joy Harjo and is beautifully illustrated by Dana Tiger. The poem begins "I never got to wash my mother's body when she died./I return to take care of her in memory." Harjo goes on to describe the ritual of washing her mother's body while remembering their lives together and reflecting on her mother's beauty and strength. It sounds somewhat macabre, but it definitely is not. And the illustrations are exquisite.
Finally, I completed (a few days early) two poem-a-day collections, one generally serious, one generally humorous: 365 Poems for Life, compiled by Allie Esiri, and Days Like These, by Brian Bilston. Most readers, like me, will find many poems that move or amuse and others that miss the mark. I'll include one that appears in both books:
Serenity Prayer
by Brian Bilston
Send me a slow news day,
a quiet, subdued day,
in which nothing much happens of note,
just the passing of time,
the consumption of wine,
and a re-run of Murder, She Wrote.
Grant me a no news day,
a spare-my-your-views day,
in which nothing much happens at all--
a few hours together,
some regional weather,
a day we can barely recall.
