Talking to Strangers, The Dutch House, and Feelings of Inadequacy

This week I definitely felt my inadequacy as a reader. First, the finalists for the National Book Award came out--and I haven't read any of them, in any of the categories! And I read a lot!

Then I read a couple of very good books that I struggled with for various reasons.

Talking to Strangers

Malcolm Gladwell has such a genius for synthesizing cases and research that I always feel somewhat dense when I read his work. His new book, Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don't Know, started with concern about the Sandra Bland case. In case you don't remember, Bland was the African American woman who was stopped for a minor traffic offense, was arrested after her interaction with an overzealous police officer escalated, and committed suicide in her jail cell a few days later. Something I had not known about her was that she had a history of depression and had recently suffered a grievous loss.

Gladwell's interest in the case led him to ask: Why do we so often go wrong in our interactions with people we don't know? This is not the question I would have asked if I were looking into the case--mine would have been more focused on how we can improve policing. But it's an interesting question, and Gladwell brings a large variety of cases to bear on the question, from a Cuban spy who goes undetected in the Defense Intelligence Agency for years, to Bernie Madoff, Friends, Amanda Knox, the creators of "enhanced interrogation" techniques, Sylvia Plath, judges who grant bail, convicted sex abusers Jerry Sandusky and Larry Nasser, stop and frisk (or pretextual police stops), and more. From his examination of these cases and related research, he teases out three explanations for why we are so bad at understanding strangers:

--In general, we default to truth--that is, we tend to believe people are telling the truth.
--People are not transparent--their exterior does not always match their thoughts. Even so-called experts in reading facial expressions are often wrong. This problem can be exacerbated by cultural differences.
--People's actions are often closely coupled with place/context (e.g., suicides in Britain went way down when the way in which gas was delivered to homes changed, indicating that people's suicidality was tied to the availability of a particular method).

His analysis clearly indicates that people continue to cling to their misconceptions even in the face of evidence (this is in line with brain/learning research that we have known about in education for some time). He also points out that much of police training is based on misconceptions.

It's when Gladwell brings everything together to apply it to the Sandra Bland case that I don't follow, as it seems in this case many of the above general rules don't really have a lot of explanatory power. And he doesn't deal at all with the question that plagues society with respect to the many tragic police-citizen interactions in the past few years: racism. In the end, he sums up the police officer's mistake in dealing with Ms. Bland as "blaming the other person." Sorry, that seems to me to abandon all that has come before--but I respect Gladwell enough to wonder if I've somehow missed the point.

The Dutch House

I like Ann Patchett's work, and I particularly appreciated her prior novel Commonwealth, which was an autobiographical work based on Patchett's own complicated family. The Dutch House continues some of the themes from that work--children abandoned by their mothers, the cobbling together of family, memory and how it shapes people. The Dutch House is less complicated, however--two children are at the core: Danny, the narrator, and his older sister/surrogate mother Maeve. The title refers to the huge house that their father Cyril, a real estate developer and landlord, bought for their mother, a woman who was planning to be a nun before she met and married Cyril. Unsurprisingly, she hates the house and eventually abandons it and her family to serve the poor in India.

The children (3 and 10 at the time) are devastated, particularly Maeve, who has no one to be a substitute mother. She longs for her mother while Danny, over the years, becomes increasingly angry at her abandonment. When their father marries a younger woman with two daughters, the ultimate result is the children's banishment from the house, which haunts them as they become adults. Over the years, they spend a lot of their time together parked in a car outside the house reminiscing.  In the end, redemption, forgiveness, and (so the ending is not entirely happy and fluffy) grief.

The characters in this book are not as deeply drawn as in some other Patchett works and I think that relates to my feelings of inadequacy. I heard Patchett being interviewed on NPR (can't remember who was interviewing her), and she said The Dutch House was Maeve's story as told by Danny. But as a reader, I didn't see that at all--to me, it was Danny's story, often Danny's story of being manipulated by Maeve. Now I know this doesn't really matter, especially in reader response theory, but when you hear the author say the book is one thing and you can't figure out what she was thinking, you don't feel really insightful.

I liked The Dutch House, even though I don't think it was Maeve's story, but I have liked other Patchett works more.

Favorite passage:

But we overlay the present onto the past. We look back through the lens of what we know now, so we're not seeing it as the people we were, we're seeing it as the people we are, and that means the past has been radically altered.

Ann Patchett, The Dutch House 

Reading around the Edges of a Mystery Binge

I've been on a bit of a mystery binge (a sadly disappointing mystery binge), but have read a few other books worth  mentioning in September (and how can it be nearly October already?). After drafting this post, I realized that my reading in the latter half of September was pretty depressing!

Nonfiction

My book club started up again for the fall, and Educated by Tara Westover was our first book for the year. I thought I was the only person left in the Western United States who hadn't read this memoir of a young woman's upbringing in an "off-the-grid" (but not really family) in Idaho, but it turns out that wasn't true. The story is amazing, in that Ms. Westover managed to get away from her crazy family and gain an education, including a Ph.D. from Cambridge. However, it's also infuriating in that the Westover children were horribly mistreated by their father (Tara was also mentally and physically abused by one of her brothers), not defended by their mother or anyone in the community, and  completely uneducated (the parents claimed to be home-schooling them but in truth they were unschooled). There is much that a person who grew up in a "normal" situation simply cannot comprehend, but when I finished the book I wasn't sure that Tara herself has even now completely processed her experience, but maybe that's not possible either. The book did cause me to consider the line between mental illness and evil and to what extent someone's mental illness should excuse their abusive behavior; that question remains unresolved but I appreciate being prompted to think about it.

Grace Will Lead Us Home, by Jennifer Berry Hawes, was another thought-provoking read that leaves one with more questions than answers. Hawes documents the horrific 2015 shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Charleston, SC, and the aftermath for the survivors and the families of the victims. It was upsetting to learn that the survivors were badly let down by the church and their pastors in the aftermath--very little spiritual assistance was provided and funds sent to the church but intended for the survivors and victims' families were taken by the church. The depth of the indifference shown these good people is literally shocking. Many of the survivors and members of victims' families were admirable in the strength and forgiveness they showed following the tragedy; as one might expect, other families experienced conflict and ultimately estrangement, compounding their losses. The story of the perpetrator is difficult to take in. Though his childhood and young adulthood seem to have been rather chaotic, he was not explicitly raised to be a racist; his radicalization seems to have occurred largely online, which is a frightening reinforcement of other stories we've all read. And, while some progress in race relations in Charleston are documented, much remains to be accomplished there and elsewhere. The book offers moments of uplift, but it's mostly terribly sad.

Fiction

Idaho, by Emily Ruskovich, might almost fit into my mystery binge, but the author definitely had more complex motivations than simply to entertain. The book has multiple narrators and jumps back and forth in time. In the present, Ann and Wade are married, and Wade is suffering from early onset dementia. One of Wade's daughters, May, is dead, and his first wife Jenny was convicted of killing her; his other daughter, June, disappeared on the day May died. Without being able to discuss the events with Wade, Ann tries to find her way to the truth of what happened and why it happened. Meanwhile, Jenny is in prison, where she has one friend, a woman who killed two people but is eager to learn.  The book is beautifully written and the characters come alive in Ruskovich's prose. I definitely recommend it--but only if you don't need everything neatly wrapped up.

The Immortalists, by Chloe Benjamin, got a lot of positive reviews and landed on a several "Best of" lists, but I actively hated the story of four siblings who at very tender ages go to see a psychic who tells them when they will die. This, not surprisingly, screws them up rather thoroughly. Who would predict children's deaths? How did no responsible adult in their life never find out and help them deal with the predictions? I found the entire scenario so disgusting I could not enjoy any of the deep points other reviewers thought Benjamin was making. Not recommended.

Classic

Unlike House of Mirth and The Age of Innocence, Ethan Frome is not set among the upper class denizens of New York. Rather, Edith Wharton sets this "tale" (as she called it) in rural Massachusetts among struggling farmers, of which the title character is one. Ethan had gone off to college but been forced to return home to care for his ailing mother; he was so grateful to his lively cousin Zenobia for helping in his mother's illness that he married her. Shortly thereafter, Zeena transformed into a dour invalid. Then her cousin Mattie came to stay with them, and the situation between Ethan and the two women became complicated and ultimately sad (I won't say more to avoid ruining the twist at the end of the book). Wharton frames Ethan's story as being told by a visitor to the area 20 years after the end of the story took place; I didn't find this framing added anything (but in general I dislike such frames), but I found the tale interesting. Of course, Wharton's prose is admirable.

The Binge

• Blood Oath, by Linda Fairstein -- possibly her last book, since she has lost her publisher due to her role in the Central Park Five case (as portrayed in Ava Duvernay's Netflix series). Surprisingly, I thought this book was better than a lot of the previous Alex Cooper series.
• A Better Man, by Louise Penny -- Inspector Gamache, Jean-Guy, Three Pines, blah, blah, blah.
• In Her Bones, by Kate Moretti -- Daughter of a female serial killer becomes obsessed with survivors of her mother's crimes and then is suspected of killing one. Interesting premise, not that great in execution. 
• Whistle in the Dark, by Emma Healey -- What do you do when your daughter returns from four days being missing and won't tell what happened to her? Again, better premise than book. 
• The Wife Between Us, Greer Hendricks & Sarah Pekkanen -- A controlling husband and the women who fall for him and then must escape -- ugh. 
• The Last House Guest, by Megan Miranda -- rich friend, poor friend, mysterious death -- again ugh.
• Sins of the Fathers, by J.A. Jance -- I have always liked Jance's character J.P. Beaumont, but this isn't really much of a mystery. More of a dip into Beau's drunken past -- definitely not the strongest entry in the series.

Favorite Passages:

Guilt is the fear of one's own wretchedness.

     Tara Westover, Educated

How quickly someone else's life can enter through the cracks we don't know are there until this foreign thing is inside of us. We are more porous than we know.

Theirs is a devotion that is possible only because of their equal disappointments in each other and the knowledge they share that at one time, to the one who mattered, they were each separately enough. 

     Emily Ruskovich, Idaho

Reading OBOB Authors: Recursion and The River

One Book One Broomfield has introduced me to some authors I might never have encountered otherwise; two of these are Blake Crouch and Peter Heller, both of whom have new books out. The two books are both engaging, although in totally different ways.

Recursion 

Crouch's Recursion is a time travel tale but different than other such books I have read (and I have to admit, I haven't read that many) because people in this story travel only backward, have different lives when they travel, and, at some point in the future, can remember all of the lives. Aside from those who have created the time travel apparatus, people do not understand what has happened to create the conflicting memories--indeed, they think they have something called False Memory Syndrome (FMS)--and a suicide epidemic results.

The narrative is told from the viewpoints of two characters. New York police officer Barry Sutton  starts investigating FMS when he fails to prevent the suicide of a woman who is tormented by her memories of another life. Barry has also experienced tragedy--his teenage daughter was killed in a car accident and his marriage subsequently fell apart--and is open to return to the day of her death to prevent the accident. When he is afforded that opportunity, he enjoys his altered life until the day his wife and daughter remember the other life. At that point, his thinking about time travel changes.

The second protagonist is scientist Dr. Helena Smith, who is working on a device that will help people with Alzheimer's (including her mother) recover some of their memories. When a wealthy investor offers to underwrite her work, she is delighted until . . . no spoilers here.

Recursion bears some similarities to our 2017 OBOB selection by Crouch, Dark Matter. People have alternative lives--clearly a fascination for Crouch--but the focus is somewhat different, in that Recursion explores the functions of memory while Dark Matter looked at how the smallest decisions can change a person's life. Each book contains a device whose function is somewhat magical to this reader and which some more scientifically picky readers will likely find infeasible. And each book contains some violent scenes that I could have done without; I can't help wondering if Crouch was thinking about the TV/movie adaptation when he wrote those scenes.

In the midst of Recursion, I sometimes struggled to figure out what life someone was in (and why) but then remembered what my friend Suzy advised me when I was reading The Time-Traveler's Wife:  "Don't worry about the details; just let it flow." Hardline sci-fi people might have difficulty with that approach, but it allowed me to enjoy this book.

The River

Peter Heller wrote two books between our OBOB selection The Dog Stars and his latest release The River.  I was not overly fond of either The Painter or Celine, but The River lives up to that earlier work. Although The River is not set in a post-apocalyptic world as The Dog Stars was, it features men surviving in the outdoors as they battle nature and their fellow humans--and Heller writes about these themes exceedingly well.

Dartmouth roommates Jack and Wynn decide to take a canoe trip on the Maskwa River in northern Canada before they return to school in the fall. The two young men are different--tough guy Jack grew up on a ranch near Granby, Colorado, where his  mother was killed in a fall when he was a boy; Vermonter Wynn, while bigger, is more tender, perhaps because he grew up in an intact family that included a sister with cerebral palsy--but they share a love for the outdoors, fishing, and literature. The trip starts out as the idyllic trip they had imagined, but then it goes all Deliverance on them (that book/film is referenced more than once) as they encounter wildfire, a pair of drunk Texans, and a badly injured woman.

I can't say much more without veering into spoiler territory, so let me conclude by saying that The River is riveting.

Favorite Passages

Life with a cheat code isn't life. Our existence isn't something to be engineered or optimized for the avoidance of pain. That's what it is to be human--the beauty and the pain, each meaningless without the other.

Blake Crouch, Recursion


He heard a loon call, piercing and forlorn, and it poured into his spirit like cool water. It was a sad cry and he realized as he listened how barren the river had felt in the days without it. Why was a wail that
seemed so lost and lonely so . . . what? Essential and lovely.

There's always relief in committing to a decision, even when there's no choice.

The implacability and violence of nature always awed him. That it could be entirely heedless and yet so beautiful. That awed him. But also its intricate intelligence. Its balancings. Its quiet compensations. I twas like some unnamed justice permeated everything. He would not go further than that. Still, the workings of nature made the voracious, self-satiating intelligence of humans seem of the lowest order, not the highest.

Peter Heller, The River

One Book One Broomfield 2019: Beautiful Boy

This year's One Book One Broomfield pick is Beautiful Boy, by David Sheff. The memoir of the author's journey through his son Nic's meth addiction has a new Afterword added in 2018, ten years after the book was initially published. His descriptions of the pain Nic's addiction--and his behavior while using--caused are raw and heart-rending: the worry about the child; the feelings of guilt and powerlessness; the difficulty of figuring out what, if anything, can be done to help the child, particularly given the varying advice given by different professionals, not to mention friends, family, and others with addiction experience; the sometimes delusional hope; the concern about how the addiction is affecting younger siblings and the parents' marriage. It's overwhelming--especially (for me at least) when I think about Sheff's wife (Nic's stepmom) and two younger children, whose pain and steadfastness bring tears to my eyes as I write this.

Sheff, who is journalist, also did voluminous research on addiction, particularly meth addiction, and shares that information in an understandable form. This information is one reason that the book feels like more than a memoir to me. The other is Sheff's obvious intent to help others by telling his family's story. I don't always perceive that same intent when I read other memoirs.

It is interesting that the meth epidemic has faded from the public consciousness as concern about the opioid epidemic has grown. But meth is still a problem, and a quick Google search reveals that it is growing. If you're interested, here's an informative piece from Kaiser Health News, written in May of this year: https://khn.org/news/meth-vs-opioids-america-has-two-drug-epidemics-but-focuses-on-one/.

Back to Beautiful Boy, note that the film of the same title is based not only on this book but also on Nic's book Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines.  I'm thinking I should read this book too before the author's appearance in Broomfield on November 8.

Favorite passages:

When we talk, in fact, I realize that Nic has discovered the bitterest irony of early sobriety. Your reward for your hard work in recovery is that you come headlong into the pain that you were trying to get away from with drugs.

. . .  in mortal combat with addiction, a parent wishes for a catastrophe to befall his son. I wish for a catastrophe, but one that is contained. It must be harsh enough to bring him to his knees, to humble him, but mild enough so that he can, with heroic effort and the good that I know is inside him, recover, because anything short of that will not be enough for him to save himself.

How innocent we are of our mistakes and how responsible we are for them.

Reading Prize Winners: The Known World and Independence Day

I didn't have much paying work this month (the bane and blessing of being a freelancer), so I read a lot . . . 20 books (plus various magazines, short pieces from Audible, etc.). I actually made some progress on my very long-term project of trying to read all the Pulitzer and National Book Award fiction winners.

BTW, if you love audiobooks or, alternatively, think listening to books is somehow cheating, you might find this small study interesting. It suggests that our brains react the same way to both forms of text:  http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2019/08/22/reading-listening-activate-same-brain-regions/

Prize Winners

When I began this project back in 2015, I chose these two prizes because, I guess, they were so well-established. I had not been enamored with most of the Booker Prize winners I had read, so I steered away from that one, and none of the others I knew about had as much history. My goal was basically to push myself to read things I wouldn't pick up on my own--and, while I had read many of the books when I started, I have definitely read some things I would not have otherwise chosen.

The project has led me to some books that I really admired (e.g., The Sympathizer, The Road) and some I thought were total dogs (e.g., A Confederacy of Dunces, Tree of Smoke). And, of course, confirmed my good taste when I found that books I already loved were winners or became winners (e.g., Empire Falls, March, Underground Railroad, The Overstory). To date, Lonesome Dove is the only one that has completely defeated me, but I will return to it some day...when I'm out of books and bored.

So this month, I read two Pulitzer winners, The Known World by Edward P. Jones and Independence Day by Richard Ford (plus The Sportswriter, which introduced the protagonist of Ford's "quartet" about Frank Bascombe).  The setting of The Known World is a Virginia farm owned by an African American slaveholder, William Townsend. When he dies, things on the farm begin to fall apart, and we see the effects on the enslaved people; on whites in the community, including his mentor, a white man from whom William's father bought their family's freedom; and on the Townsend family. Aside from learning that there were black slaveholders, I didn't find the book cast much light on slavery or race relations in the time period. I feel guilty about it, but I was occasionally bored as I listened. Perhaps it is a symptom of white privilege to be bored by a book about slavery -- or perhaps the book is overrated.  (The experience wasn't enhanced by the fact that I could frequently hear the narrator swallowing.)

Ford's books focus on a middle-aged man trying to make sense of his life. Although he has changed careers, from sportswriter to real estate agent, and a number of years have passed between the events covered in the two books, Bascombe is struggling with similar issues in both--his relationship with his ex-wife and his two children (both relationships are shadowed by the death of his oldest child); his attempts to relate to other people, whether his current girlfriend, a disabled sports hero he interviews as a sportswriter, a member of his divorced men's group who is struggling with his sexuality, real estate clients, or the tenants in two rental properties he owns; and how he should try (if at all) to shape his future. Each novel takes place over a short period of time (Easter week or the Fourth of July weekend); my favorite section of the two books is the trip Frank takes with his son to the basketball and baseball halls of fame in Independence Day. His son has gotten into some trouble and the short trip is supposed to be a time for father and son to bond, perhaps as a first step in the son's eventually coming to live with Frank. Their attempts to make contact with each other are painful and the result is not good.  Much of our time as readers is spent in Frank's head, a place I eventually became rather tired of.  The books remind me of John Updike's Rabbit Run (I haven't yet read the others in the series) although Rabbit is younger than Frank and, while Ford is a good writer, Updike is a master. I'm glad I read The Sportswriter and Independence Day but probably not glad enough to pick up the other two books in the quartet (The Lay of the Land and Let Me Be Frank with You).

Other Fiction

The Most Fun We Ever Had, by Claire Lombardo. The Most Fun We Ever Had is the phrase an exhausted Marilyn Sorensen says in answer to a question along the lines of "How is it having two babies in diapers?" asked by an academic at a faculty party. Marilyn is a college drop-out whose husband David is in medical school, and her life at the time is challenging. But the phrase becomes a catch phrase for the couple who love each other through raising four daughters and a variety of real-life challenges. The most interesting thing about this book is that the Sorensens are good parents who love each other, yet their four daughters are pretty impressively screwed up--definitely not the usual fictional "bad parents/screwed-up kids" scenario. Lombardo weaves stories from the family's earlier years--presented in chronological order, working up to the present--with stories of what is happening in the present. Because the author gives every character their own sections, she sometimes leaves us wanting to know more about particular family members. Nonetheless, the book is a rewarding read.

Chances Are, by Richard Russo. Three college friends in their 60s, having created very different lives for themselves, reunite at the site of the last college weekend they spent together, the same weekend when the only female member of their foursome, with whom they were all somewhat in love, disappeared. For the first half or two-thirds of the book, I thought Russo was taking this tired trope and making it work (much like Philip Roth did for the class reunion trope in American Pastoral); but then he gives it up and has one of the characters explain everything to the other two--and somehow they are all more or less redeemed. Disappointing--but still worth reading.

Ask Again, Yes, by Mary Beth Keane. As she handed me this book, my friend Lynn said, "I really didn't like this." Not a great thought to start reading with, but I pretty much agreed with her. Ask Again, Yes, is about trauma and friendship that occurs between neighboring families; both families are Irish and the fathers in both families are police officers. Ultimately, the story is about redemption and rising above, but it feels like we've read it before.

I'm Fine and Neither Are You, by Camille Pagan. I did not care for this story of a married couple trying to revitalize their marriage after the wife's best friend dies of an opiod overdose (yes, the author is working in current issues--how admirable). It's gotten a lot of positive reviews on Amazon so maybe it's an age thing (i.e., I'm too old for this book).

The Bookshop, by Penelope Fitzgerald. The Bookshop is a very sad little book about a middle-aged woman who tries to start a bookshop in a small English town. The year is 1959 and the town is full of close-minded people and those who don't want their self-perceived cultural superiority challenged. I don't have much more to say about it but I do recommend it.

Fleishman Is in Trouble, by Taffy Brodesser-Akner.  I found this book to be quite strange. It appears to be the story of Toby Fleishman, a short 41-year-old doctor who spends a lot of time on dating apps and porn sites. Then his soon-to-be-ex-wife fails to pick up their children at the appointed time, throwing his life into chaos. The book is narrated by his college friend, Libby, although this was not at first clear to me because some sections of the book are in third person (Libby telling Toby's story) and others in first person (Libby telling her own story). As the book progresses, Brodesser-Akner shifts the emphasis from mostly third person to mostly first person, eventually taking a "meta" turn that I won't go into because it might ruin the book for those who want to read it. I didn't hate the book, but I wouldn't recommend it.

Natalie Tan's Book of Luck and Fortune, by Roselle Lim. I had high hopes for this book about an aspiring chef who inherits her grandmother's restaurant, but the magical realism (her cooking cures her neighbors and restores their street in Chinatown to prosperity) and the simplistic romance just didn't work for me.

Mysteries

The Cold Dish, Craig Johnson. This is the first Longmire novel and, after having read a few of the later books, seen the TV series, and heard Johnson speak (hilarious--highly recommend you go listen to him if you have the chance), it was interesting to see how he introduced the characters in the series.

The Couple Next Door, by Shari La Pena. A couple leaves their child unattended while they have dinner next door and the child disappears. Subsequent events reveal every character to be unlikable or worse, and La Pena's wooden writing does not save the book.

Shell Game, by Sara Paretsky. I couldn't finish Sara Paretsky's last V.I. Warshawsky book, Fallout, because I thought her depiction of Lawrence, KS, was so off base and dated I just couldn't deal. In Shell Game, she sticks with V.I.'s home turf--Chicago--and it's a better read. The case with which V.I. is involved is complicated, involving stolen antiquities, the Russian mob, U.S. immigration policy, and her ex-husband. Although the book was okay, V.I. and her friends are becoming old-hat.

Behind Her Eyes, by Sarah Pinborough. Single mother Louise starts an affair with her boss David while simultaneously embarking on a secret friendship with his wife Adele. Both appear to the reader to be using her, and Louise (who seems to be something of an idiot) cannot figure out what to make of their marriage from the information they give her. I found the book interesting until the author introduced a supernatural element (not sure that's the right word), which rendered it totally ridiculous.

Paradise Valley, by C.J. Box. I gave up on C.J. Box's Joe Pickett series because it had become too dark and too violent. However, Paradise Valley is part of a different series featuring Cassie Dewell, and I enjoyed it--although it's also quite dark. Cassie is trying to trap a serial killer who is known to be a long-haul trucker (evidently introduced in an earlier book, but reading that book is not necessary to understanding this one); the trap goes badly, ending with several police officers dead, including Cassie's fiance. Fired from her job, she continues the search for the so-called "Lizard King," whom she believes has kidnapped her son's friend Kyle. The Lizard King is a an appropriately horrible villain, and Cassie and Kyle relatable heroes.

YA 

The Opposite of Always, by Justin A. Reynolds.  My 12-year-old granddaughter absolutely loved this book, which has a "Groundhog Day" structure. High school senior Jack and college freshman Kate meet at a party and bond immediately. But Kate is deathly sick, and Jack determines to save her, as he repeats the few months between the party and her final illness over and over, affecting his other relationships and his and his friends' futures with the decisions he makes. Very engaging, funny, and touching.

Everything Beautiful Is Not Ruined, by Danielle Younge-Ullman. When Ingrid's opera-singer mother loses her voice, their lives change drastically, in ways that challenge both mother and daughter. The narrative weaves together stories from their lives post-fame and from Ingrid's experience on a very challenging "Outward Bound" type camp, which her mother has told her she must complete in order to head off to a special school for the musically talented. Both stories are engaging and the book ends with a twist. I really enjoyed the book and want to recommend it to my granddaughter, but it might be a little too mature--maybe in ninth grade.

Nonfiction

50 Things That Are Not My Fault, by Cathy Guisewite.  This collection of essays is what you'd expect from the creator of the cartoon "Cathy." The best selections are about her parents and daughter. Pleasant but not eye-opening.

A World Without "Whom," by Emmy J. Favilla. It took me two years to finish this book because, while I agree with many of the author's points about the evolution of language, her snarky self-satisfied tone made it hard to read more than a few pages at a time. And some of her claims just seem ridiculous: for example, she describes emojis as "the most evolved form of punctuation we have at our disposal"--while simultaneously endorsing the use of no punctuation as an effective way to convey excitement. Sorry, not using punctuation conveys an inability to communicate!  I am sure Favilla, the chief copy editor at BuzzFeed, would dismiss me as an old, hidebound traditionalist because I don't agree with all of her points, but I can live with that. Interesting but also annoying.

We Are Never Meeting in Real Life: Essays, by Samantha Irby.  I guess I'm too old to enjoy Irby's essays about her dating/sex life, but I found essays on other topics both funny and informative. My favorite was written as a job application, detailing her experiences working the front desk at a veterinary practice. It was laugh-out-loud funny and gave me an appreciation for the complexity of jobs that often seem basic when you're on the other side of the desk. It ought to be a slap in the face to idiot pet owners and people rude to workers who are only trying to help them (not that they would recognize themselves). Pick and choose among the essays and you'll likely find something to amuse.

Favorite Passages

She ought to go down to the beach. It was Thursday, early closing, and it seemed ungrateful to live so close to the sea and never look at it for weeks on end.  [how I feel about ignoring the mountains]

Penelope Fitzgerald, The Bookshop

The distance grew between us, thickening like an all-day fog, until we were both so well versed in our new roles as people who didn't matter to each other that it was impossible to break through.

Danielle Younge-Ullman, Everything Beautiful Is Not Ruined

And he realized, then, how silly it seemed that you could ever know another person--really know her--and how silly it was to think that he had any idea what it was like to be her, day after day.

Claire Lombardo, The Most Fun We Ever Had

Dog Days Diversions and A Few More Serious Works

It may not quite be the dog days of summer yet, but lately it has felt like it--and I amused myself with the alliteration. After all the nonfiction I was reading earlier this summer, I decided to go for some fluff--mostly but not entirely mysteries (the mysteries ran to the very dark with a strong dysfunctional marriage theme, so not as fluffy as I might have hoped). And I read a few nonfiction books, too (what is happening to me?).

Fluff

Lady in the Lake, by Laura Lippman. This Lippman stand-alone is the story of two Baltimore women in the 1960s. Madeline Schwartz is white, wealthy (until she leaves her husband), and trying to find herself by becoming a newspaper reporter. Cleo Sherwood is black, scraping by, and trying to find a man who can fulfill her. Along with these differences, Madeline is alive, and Cleo announces her own death early in the book. We get to know both Maddie and Cleo well, but we also hear from numerous other characters whose lives intersect with Maddie's as she tries to establish herself and determine who is responsible for Cleo's death--a story that is of little interest to the editors at her paper. The racism and sexism of the time are clear in the challenges that Maddie deals with and Cleo had to face in her brief life. There's one spot near the end that I thought was a weak way to do some explicating, but otherwise I really enjoyed this book.

The Chain, by Adrian McKinty. This book, which has gotten a lot of positive ink, has a very disturbing premise: A child is kidnapped. The parents are told that to get their child back, they must pay a ransom and kidnap another child, who they hold until the parents of that child pay a ransom and kidnap another child, and on and on. They do get their children back, but sometimes they may be required to do additional "jobs" for the operators of The Chain and risk their families being annihilated if they refuse or tell anyone. While reading the book, one cannot help asking oneself: What would you do to get your child back? The answer for the protagonist, a recently divorced woman just out of treatment for cancer, is completely transform herself into a ruthless person. I can't say I exactly enjoyed the book, but it held my interest.

Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors, by Sonali Dev. This is not a mystery, but it is rather delightful fluff. It's a retelling of Pride and Prejudice, set in an Indian-American community in Northern California with the gender roles reversed--the female protagonist is a neuro-surgeon from a wealthy, well-educated family, whose oldest child is running for governor, while the male character is a chef with a desperately ill artist-sister who paints vaginas. It's utterly predictable but still fun--and perhaps the only book I've read in which eating is depicted as an orgasmic experience.

Big Sky, by Kate Atkinson. Atkinson is a serious writer, but her Jackson Brodie mystery series, of which this title is a part, is up and down. Big Sky was more down than up--there are a lot of characters (not unusual for an Atkinson book), many of whom are unlikable and seem to have little to do with each other. Most of them come together at the end as Jackson solves years-old and current child trafficking cases. Unfortunately, by then I didn't much care--but Atkinson is always merits a few sentences. Maybe Jackson should retire and the writer should focus on her more serious writing, which has produced some exemplary work.

Not worth a complete sentence:

The Tale Teller, by Anne Hillerman -- A decent entry in Hillerman's continuation of her father's series.
The Silent Wife, by A.S.A. Harriss -- Shame on Kate Atkinson for giving this a glowing blurb.
Since We Fell, by Dennis Lehane -- Shares with The Silent Wife a really dysfunctional marriage.
Blood Orange, by Harriet Tyce -- See comment on Since We Fell.
Watch Me Disappear, by Janelle Brown -- Ditto.
My Lovely Wife, by Samantha Downing -- Is a lovely couple who kidnaps and kills women together by definition dysfunctional? Hmmm. (Sorry that was a complete sentence.)
The Sleeping Beauty Killer, by Mary Higgins Clark and Alafair Burke -- Dumb and predictable.
The King Tides, by James Swain -- Nonsensical.
Crosstalk, by Connie Willis -- Indefensibly long (and so silly).

Non-Fluff

If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face? by Alan Alda. Alda, a truly remarkable human being, discusses the need for better communication in general and in science and medicine particularly. He also shares  research on communication and looks at how acting exercises (particularly improv) can be useful in developing communication skills. He also describes the work he and others have done at the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University. It's fascinating and well-communicated--and the audio version is read by Alda, who charms as he communicates.

Shout, by Laurie Halse Anderson. Shout is a memoir that examines the traumas of Anderson's youth--she was raped at 13 and lived in a home with alcoholic parents (her father also had PTSD). A year in Denmark as an exchange student may well have saved Anderson's life. She built a family and a successful writing career. Because her best-selling YA novel Speak dealt with teen rape, she is a frequent speaker at schools. Shout recounts one experience when a school principal pulled the fire alarm to prevent her from speaking to a second group of students after he heard her first presentation--denial that allows rape culture to continue is alive and well! Some of the short poems that comprise the book are moving, some less so--but the book is well worth reading. 

Working, by Robert Caro. Caro's career has been dedicated to documenting the lives of Robert Moses and Lyndon Johnson (he is still working on the fifth volume on Johnson). This book allows him to insert himself into that work, something he normally tries not to do. He does this by documenting how he conducted the research on the biographies and how he responded to what he learned. One of the most compelling stories he tells is about an interview with Lady Bird Johnson in which he asked her about a woman named Alice Glass, who was not only LBJ's lover but had enormous influence on the man; Caro recounts being unable to look at Lady Bird as he asked questions and she responded. What he makes clear about Johnson is what a complex and flawed man he was--he stole at least one election, manipulated people cruelly, exacerbated the mess in Vietnam, and yet his accomplishments domestically were unparalleled. Caro, like me, finds Johnson's civil rights speech one of the greatest presidential speeches ever--it's tragic that the "better angels" of his nature could not prevail over his other side.

Favorite Passages

untreated pain
is a cancer of the soul
that can kill you

Sisters, drop
everything. Walk
away from the lake, leaning
on each other's shoulders
when you need
the support. Feel the contractions
of another truth ready
to be born: shame
turned
inside out
is rage.

Shout, by Laurie Halse Anderson

What happened in Selma is part of a far larger movement which reaches into every section and State of America. It is the effort of American Negroes to secure for themselves the full blessings of American life.

Their cause must be our cause too. Because it is not just Negroes, but really it is all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice.

And we shall overcome.

Lyndon B. Johnson, quoted by Robert Caro in Working

"Creative" Plot Devices: What Makes Them Work or Not?

Two books that I just finished have set me to thinking about "creative" plot devices and why some work and others don't (though they seem like good ideas).

Given the current popularity of podcasts, it's not surprising that they are showing up as plot devices in novels. I had read at least two other novels that used fictional podcasts as a source of text for a novel before reading Conviction, by Denise Mina. In the latest title from mystery-writer Mina, on the morning that Anna McDonald learns her partner is leaving her for her best friend, she has just started listening to a true-crime podcast (she's an aficionado). To her surprise, the podcast is about the death of someone she knew a decade ago, a man named Leon Parker. She decides the conclusion reached in the podcast can't be right and sets off on a madcap road trip with her former best friend's husband Fin (an anorexic over-the-hill rock star). As they investigate Leon's case, they are also pursued by hit men from Anna's past, who believed her to be dead but are alerted they were wrong about that by a picture posted on social media. Fin decides they should start their own podcast about the case, which only leads to more trouble.

Conviction has gotten some very positive reviews, but I found it to strain credulity. Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems unlikely someone who has been trying to stay anonymous for a decade would, on the day her partner left her, set out on a crazy investigative road trip (with someone she barely knows) that is bound to stir the beehive. And the links between Leon's case and the trouble in Anna's past are also rather difficult to swallow. In this case, the podcast just seems like a way to get out a lot of information about the case--and it's not particularly effective. I didn't hate Conviction, but I don't think the rave reviews were justified. 

Lorna Landvik, in Chronicles of a Radical Hag (with Recipes), uses an analog device that might seem dated in today's digital news environment. but I found it much more effective. Haze Evans has written a newspaper column for 50 years. When she suffers a stroke and lapses into a coma, the newspaper's editor Susan decides to republish selected columns and reader responses from Haze's long career. She enlists her teenage son Sam to assist with the job, and the process turns out to be transformative for Sam--and for others in the community. It's a little bit corny but also funny and moving. The newspaper columns are an effective device because they create a distinct voice that makes a nice counterpoint to Susan and Sam's perspectives. And they offer Landvik the opportunity to comment on virtually anything that has happened in the past 50 years that she wants to opine about.

So what's my conclusion about why some "creative" plot devices work and some don't? I guess the main (and perhaps obvious) reason is that if a book has other flaws that cause you to discount it, a clever device is not likely to redeem it. In addition, if the device doesn't serve a particular purpose for which it is uniquely well-suited, then it's not really functional and not likely to be engaging. But I could be wrong!