A couple months ago, I decided I should start paying attention to Booktok/Bookstagram since content creators who are part of those "communities" are allegedly having a big influence on what people are reading. So, I did and, I'm sorry, but the content is generally substance-free. Even the comments from the dude who purports to have a PhD and have taught AP literature for 20 years are inane ("It didn't do it for me"); he's also fond of stereotyping people who like particular books (if you like To Kill a Mockingbird, you're an overachieving eldest daughter). There are common tropes (maybe not the right word but the best I can think of) like "Yes/No/Maybe" or "Overhyped/Underhyped" or "Books that Changed My Brain" (all with virtually no useful explanation for why books are liked/not liked/brain-changing) and even standard ways in which the books are displayed visually. Books mentioned lean heavily toward fantasy and romance, although some posters deal with a broader selection of literature--but never in any real depth. So far, I am uninfluenced by any of the folks I've come across. If you like Booktok/Bookstagram, what am I missing?
On to good books read in March and April (no mysteries!!).
Fiction
Most of Peter Heller's books are muscular tales about people (generally men) in peril. The Orchard is definitely not that; it is a gentle and sad story narrated by 30-ish professor Frith, who in the early stages of pregnancy has retreated to the cabin in the Green Mountains where her mother Hayley raised Frith after her retreat from a beloved but drug-addicted husband and from academia. As Frith reads her mother's work--she was a respected translator of Chinese women poets--she reflects on her childhood. (The poems, which are lovely, were written by Heller, which somehow bothered me a bit.) Frith and Hayley lived on the edge economically, but they loved each other and their home--and they had friends, particularly Rosie, who brought color and adventure to their lives, and the biker Sci-Fi, who brought them food. As she reflects, Frith considers how and where she will raise her child; the father wants to be involved/in a relationship, but she's not sure that's what she wants. The book is about love--of family and friends, of nature/place, of language. It's beautifully written, but, despite things happening, it felt more like a series of moments in time than a novel with a plot. So overall, my response was mixed, but it sparked an interesting discussion about translation with my literary son, and I'm still thinking about it, so maybe that tells me something.
Another book about which I had mixed feelings was How to Read a Book, by Monica Wood, which was a selection of my online book group. The book features three main characters. Violet is a young woman recently released from prison, where she was serving a sentence for killing a woman in a drunk-driving incident. Her family has rejected her, and she feels alone and frightened. She then runs into Harriet at a bookstore; Harriet is a retired teacher who ran a book group at the prison. They forge a friendship that helps Violet a job at a lab researching parrots. At the bookstore, they run into Frank, the widower of the woman Violet killed. Despite a rocky start, the three become supportive friends. The book is about friendship, forgiveness, books, and defining what matters in your life. While reading the book, I kept thinking it was all a bit facile; when Violet gets involved in a relationship with her married boss, I felt it was an unnecessary plot development that wasn't handled well (and I didn't think Wood convincingly defended it in an author talk with book groups--she argued it was necessary as a way for Violet to recognize her beauty and power--what?). At the same time, I enjoyed the way Wood wove books and the function of story into the narrative. So qualified recommendation.
Tracing the friendship of a group of women over the course of years is a common trope in fiction, sometimes done well, sometimes offering little to the reader. Happily, The Wilderness, by Angela Flournoy, is the former. The book tells the stories (not chronologically) of four African American women, from their 20s to their 40s. Desiree, doesn't seem to have a direction in life, although she has spent years taking care of her aging grandfather, who raised her and her sister Danielle after their father left and their mother died. In fact, when we meet Desiree, she is taking her grandfather to Europe so he can have a medically assisted suicide, a trip that contributes to estrangement between the sisters when Danielle finds out about it. Nakia is a lesbian, socially conscious chef who eventually becomes quite successful. January is a graphic designer who seems always in the process of leaving her boyfriend/husband while having two children. Monique is a former librarian whom we meet primarily through blog postings that are part of her effort to turn herself into an influencer; consequently, we don't really know her as well as the other women (guessing that is Flournoy's point). The women move back and forth between New York and Los Angeles as their relationships and careers evolve; in the process, they deal not only with the complexities of friendship, family, and romantic relationships but such contemporary issues/events as police brutality and climate change. I became a bit confused in the book's third section, which shifts from third person to first and is less direct about identifying which character is speaking--but the confusion seems appropriate to the events occurring late in the story (no spoilers)! Definitely worth reading.
Bog Queen, by Anna North, is like no other book I've ever read. First, moss is one of the narrators, beginning and ending the book, with a number of short sections interspersed throughout. Of course, North hastens to tell us at the beginning of each of these sections that a colony of moss does not speak or think like humans, but if it did, it would have some wise insights. Second, while the moss sections are narrated in first person plural, the modern human section of the book, which features a forensic anthropologist named Agnes who is trying to discover the cause of death of a 2000-year-old corpse found in the peat bog, is in third person. But wait, there's another point of view, told in first person singular--that person is a young druid, a 15-year-old woman who is trying to bring her small community forward by aligning with the Romans. Somehow, North manages to make these sections sound almost like a fable, though we suspect early on that they are connected to the modern-day mystery in the bog. To further complicate matters, the bog where the body was found is the subject of controversy--environmentalists want to save it, developers want to pave over it, and a woman whose aunt disappeared 50 years ago wants it excavated in hopes of finding her aunt's body. Plus Agnes is dealing with her own insecurities, an overprotective father begging her to return to the United States, and the teenage daughter of one of her colleagues who struggles with insecurity and seems to relate well to Agnes. There's a lot going on--perhaps a bit too much--but I really enjoyed the book for its interesting content and lovely writing.
Some Bright Nowhere by Ann Packer is full of pain but also love. The book opens at Claire's last appointment with her oncologist--treatment has failed and she is entering hospice care. Her husband Eliot, from whose perspective the story is told, is shocked when, shortly thereafter, Claire asks him to move out so she can be cared for by two of her friends. He complies, but the decision causes him to question the foundations of their marriage and his subsequent loneliness--he's not even sure how often he's welcome to visit--and hurt feelings cause him to make some decisions he later regrets (eavesdropping on Claire and her friends from the garage of their home) and eventually to rebel. While you may question the actions of the characters, Packer presents the situation with such insight, you empathize with what they are going through.
Nonfiction
As a young adult, I occasionally watched Firing Line featuring William F. Buckley. While his conservative views did not appeal to me, his urbane surface presentation and prodigious vocabulary combined with his bitchy wit were entertaining. When my dad died in 1975, I took some of his books--including several by Buckley--home with me and did try reading one of Buckley's, but didn't find it either convincing or interesting. Still, I thought of him as a rich but harmless East Coast conservative intellectual. Now, thanks to Sam Tanenhaus's Buckley: The Life and the Revolution that Changed America, I realize how wrong I was. He wasn't rich--for most of his life he lived largely off family money, his and his wife's. He wasn't truly Eastern--he had deep Southern roots and a Southern attitude toward race. He wasn't an intellectual--he was intellectually lazy, rarely doing the reading and thinking that would back up his thinking and, indeed, had few original ideas. He had no journalistic ethics--he once drew heavily on a piece by Garry Wills before that piece was published, making it look like Wills had pulled from his work; he accepted a position in the Nixon administration that was a clear conflict of interest; he masterminded a "prank" that involved publishing fake documents in the National Review, claiming they had been omitted from the Pentagon Papers. In point of fact, he was an advocate posing as a journalist. While known as a skilled debater who was friendly to his adversaries on Firing Line, his debating often relied on ad hominem attacks and he was astonished if bested by an opponent's superior reasoning and oratory. He was racist, anti-Semitic, and homophobic. The author suggests he mellowed somewhat with age, but even in his advancing years, he refused to hire a Jewish journalist (David Brooks) to edit NR. I could go on, but I will stop now, concluding by saying the book opened my eyes and reminded me that I was fairly gullible when young (hope I'm less so now).
Historian Jill LePore spent several years directing a project to create as complete a data base as possible of all the constitutional amendments ratified, proposed, included in party platforms, and advocated for in other ways (https://amendmentsproject.org/). She drew on this work, in addition to other historical scholarship, to write We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution. Looking at amendments--successful and unsuccessful--and the people who supported and opposed them is an interesting take on the history of a document intended to be amended (see Article 5). I was particularly taken by learning of the role Birch Bayh played in achieving some critical amendments. Alarmingly, LePore thinks polarization has made the Constitution virtually unamendable since the 1970s. This has, undoubtedly unintentionally, given the Courts more power in "changing" the meaning of the Constitution. She picks apart the originalists' approach, noting that the justices might do well to pay more attention to the work of historians, who, for example, know that Madison's notes are not the be-all they were once believed to be because he tailored them to support his own views. Are we now hamstrung by an unamendable document written more than 200 years ago when much about today's world could not be imagined? That is a question worth reflecting on.
I think any divorced person (probably some married ones as well) reading Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage would reflect on their own marriage as they read Belle Burden's memoir. I certainly understand how falling in love blinds you to the red flags your prospective husband is waving madly at you. But it is harder for me to understand being so besotted you think your marriage is happy until you learn your husband is having an affair and is leaving you. As Burden relates the story of her marriage, it is clear her husband was not fully engaged (while still being controlling) and was taking advantage of her financially, despite the fact that he was earning a huge salary; I guess it's a good reminder of how blind we can be. Not realizing there were problems made the separation even more painful for her than it might have been. Adding to her pain, her husband James showed little interest in their children following the separation (again, I can relate to this) and many of their friends and acquaintances seemed to blame her. And yet, she still feels a yearning for him when she sees him. It's a painful story, although Burden eventually reaches some level of stability if not actual happiness. For those who are happily married, perhaps the book will help build empathy (and hopefully not scare them) for people who are divorced but still need friends; for those unhappily married or divorced, it may prompt some useful reflection.
I didn't love Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers, by Caroline Fraser, but it's so strange that I decided to include it. The author's main thesis is that the surge in serial killings in the 1970s and 1980s is linked to the killers' exposure to lead in childhood. She is particularly focused on the Pacific Northwest, but also includes other killers in areas where there is a high level of pollution with lead, arsenic, and other heavy metals, including sites in Kansas, Idaho, Texas, and British Columbia. She traces the childhoods of several serial killers, as well as detailing their crimes; most attention is devoted to Ted Bundy. There's certainly research showing adverse effects of heavy metal exposure but whether this can be causally linked to becoming a serial killer, I'm unsure. Nonetheless, with the rollback of environmental regulations by the Trump Administration, any possible negative effects are concerning. But back to the book--Fraser also includes a running narrative about the many disastrous bridge projects involving Mercer Island, as well as memoir-style writing about her own rather strange childhood (as an eight-year-old, she plotted--in some detail--how she could kill her father, a cruel and controlling Christian Scientist). I found it difficult to put all these pieces together, especially since there some considerable jumping around from killer to killer, location to location. But Murderland is not like any other book I've read lately so it seemed worth including.
Favorite Passages
Safe. To be held. To be protected. To feel Hayley's chin on the top of my head, rubbing as she read the book. To feel her strong arms encircling. To feel the breath in her chest pressing my thin back. I would listen, feel, and try to keep my inhales steady and anticipate the moment our breaths would coincide. A quiet joy in all of it.
--Peter Heller, The Orchard
A breeze in the trees; a far-off argument of thrushes. She never would have guessed, before she left her home, how strange and huge the world is, what surprises it contains.
What is the body like? She is like an armload of driftwood, Agnes could say, rubbed clean and silvery by the sea and sand. She is like a dried flower. she is like a pearl. She is someone at rest in a final state, as final as is possible on this turning Earth, whose cycles are ushering us ever into wondrous new forms.
--Anna North, Bog Queen
What was caretaking, anyway? Could you separate caretaking as a whole from the sum of its parts? Helping, soothing, driving, phoning, cooking, listening, tending, waiting, learning, remembering, deciding, forgoing. A lot of forgoing.
--Ann Packer, Some Bright Nowhere
