Crossroads, The Anomaly, and Some Great Feminist Poetry

Some good stuff so far in March--and poetry month is coming! Woot, woot!!

Fiction

I thought the premise of Our Country Friends by Gary Shteyngart had promise: a group of friends--plus "The Actor" (never named) who is working on a project with the host--gather at a country place in the early days of the pandemic, planning to ride out the pandemic there (remember: we didn't think it would still be going two years later). Of course, there are numerous complications:  One old friend, dying of lung cancer, harbors a long-burning love for another. He is also searching for the manuscript for a novel he wrote (and was advised not to try to publish) by the host, not coincidentally a writer as well. Two of the women, one married to the host, have designs on The Actor. Meanwhile, the host's daughter, who appears to be on the spectrum, takes a liking to another of the women, making her mother jealous. At first it's an interesting and sometimes funny look at relationships and what might happen if stuck together in the country. But then the book devolves into the surreal--the author recounts too many of the characters' dreams--sleeping and fever--and I lost interest. Not recommended.

The "sticker" on the front of The Anomaly by Herve Le Tellier says it was a NYT "best thriller of the year." I wouldn't call it a thriller exactly--closer to science fiction in my book. But regardless of how you classify it, it's worth reading. The premise reminded me a bit of the TV show Manifest: a plane goes through a terrible storm and something weird happens.  The book does get off to a somewhat slow start, as we are introduced to a large number of characters without knowing exactly what is happening. When the "something weird" is revealed, the book really picks up, as we learn how the government responded, the various hypotheses developed to explain what happened, and how the people affected cope. Don't want to ruin the read by saying too much more, but I really enjoyed The Anomaly (even though I didn't understand every single thing!). 

The Idiot by Elif Batuman is essentially a fictional diary of a young Turkish American woman's freshman year at Harvard, followed by a summer teaching English in Hungary (prompted by a crush on a senior, Ivan, who happens to be from Hungary). Some of Selin's experiences (which seem likely to be Batuman's experiences, since much about the author and character is similar) are amusing, but I may be too old to truly enjoy this book. Batuman has written a sequel but I won't be picking it up. 

The Wrong End of the Telescope, by Rabih Alameddine, is a complex book that occasionally feels like it's about too many things. The narrator is Mina, a transgender doctor who is originally from Lebanon but has lived in the United States since college. She travels to Lesbos, Greece, when her friend, a nurse named Emma, asks her to come and help provide medical services to Syrian refugees arriving on boats. When she gets there, there are at first no new arrivals because of the weather. Eventually, however, Mina becomes involved with a critically ill Syrian mother, who is afraid her family will be sent back if the dire situation with her health is revealed. Sumaiya's story is probably the most engaging, but Mina also narrates the stories of other migrants--and also describes disturbing behavior on the part of journalists and volunteers who ostensibly come to help the refugees but have less pure/more selfish motives. That may not sound like too much--but Mina also tells two other stories. The first is her own--her estrangement from her family (except for one brother who joins her in Lesbos) and her life in Chicago with her wife Francine. The second is the story of the writer to whom she is addressing the entire book (who resembles Alameddine himself), who freaked out in his own attempt to help refugees, holing up in a hotel room; his attempts to write about the experience have failed, so he has urged Mina to tell the story. Occasionally I felt like Alameddine was doing too much, but I'm still glad I read the book. 

I'm not one of the people who greets every Jonathan Franzen novel with cries of "This is the great American novel." So I almost feel weird saying I loved Crossroads. Crossroads (which I learned from an author interview at the end of the audiobook is the first volume in a trilogy) is set in the early 1970s, and the Vietnam War, the folk music scene, the penetration of illicit drugs to the suburbs, and a church youth group more like an encounter group are all important elements of the story. The book has multiple narrators, all members of the Hildebrandt family. Russ, the father, is a frustrated assistant pastor at a suburban Chicago church, eager to cheat on his wife with a recently widowed parishioner. Russ believes himself to be an enlightened helper of the less fortunate but in reality he's a selfish sad sack. Marion, the mother, is keeping a lot of secrets, most notably that in her twenties she was hospitalized for a mental illness, which she now fears she has passed along to her son Perry. Their three older children--Clem, Becky, and Perry, all grappling with who they are and how they want to live--are the other narrators. (Hopefully, the youngest child will get his due in the next volume.) The book is an extended character study within the context of the times, the family, and each member's evolving religious or ethical beliefs. There's humor but there's also despair--it adds up to a potent mix. Highly recommended. 

Short Stories

The story of Anthony Veasna So, author of Afterparties: Stories, is a sad one--he died in 2020 from an accidental drug overdose before his first book was published. As a young gay Cambodian American, the child of refugees who fled the Khmer Rouge genocide, So brought an unusual voice to the table. And his stories clearly impressed the critics, as his book was on 12 "best of 2021" lists. Although moments in some of the stories grabbed me, generally the stories did not resonate with me--I may be too old, too cis, too white. I'm willing to grant that the stories are well-done--they just weren't for me. 

Mysteries/Thrillers

Madness of Sunshine, by Nalini Singh, was sitting on my nightstand for a few years; I started it a couple of times but couldn't really get into it. This month, I finally finished it. It's a mystery set in New Zealand, and the descriptions of the landscape are lovely, but that's about the only thing I liked. Every character is incredibly damaged, and the story drags--a young woman goes missing and everyone in town looks for her and looks for her and searches some more. Then suddenly the perpetrator of an older crime is discovered. And the person who is responsible for the woman's disappearance is apprehended, though how the police officer in the town and his sidekick (a pianist recently returned to her home town because, you know, pianists are the best detectives) settled on the guilty party wasn't clear to me. And some of the writing, in an attempt to be poetic, is just bad: "Hanging up, Will began the nearly four-hour drive toward the hopeless scent of a beautiful young woman's death." What? 

In Nothing to Lose, by J.A. Jance, J.P. Beaumont, the retired Seattle cop who anchors one of Jance's four series, heads to Alaska looking for his former (and dead) partner's long-missing son. He solves cold and hot cases in his visit the Last Frontier. It's fairly standard fare, but Beaumont is one of the better characters in series mysteries and Jance's work on her other series seems to keep this one fresh.

I'm not really sure where The Dilemma by B.A. Paris fits, but I guess it's supposed to be a psychological thriller.  Adam and Livia are a married couple planning her 40th birthday party, over which she has been obsessing her entire adult life (ostensibly because she didn't get the big wedding she wanted--seriously??). They each have a secret about their daughter that they don't want to tell the other until after the party. If it sounds like a stupid premise, then you understand the book. Not recommended.

A Good Day for Chardonnay was my second Sunshine Vicram book by Darynda Jones--and it will be my last. Sunshine seems like an imitation Stephanie Plum in a different setting (small-town New Mexico) with more explicit sex. Also, Sunshine's love interest is part of a family of moonshiners turned whiskey entrepreneurs that could be right out of a Deborah Knott novel by Margaret Maron (and would fit better in North Carolina). Jones is trying too hard to be funny and just isn't. 

Poetry

It's almost poetry month, when I go a little crazy posting poems on FB. So when I heard Kate Bowler's interview with poet Kate Baer and thought her work sounded interesting, I immediately ordered both of her books. I liked her first book, What Kind of Woman, a collection of poems about being a woman, a wife, a mother, a friend, a human. And I loved I Hope This Finds You Well: Poems. Baer started her writing life posting feminist short stories and essays on a blog. One day as she was reading an unfriendly response to one of her posts, she saw new potential in the response--she printed it and began blacking out words, ultimately creating an erasure poem. After that, she says, she saw poetry potential everywhere. The result is this book, which includes poems she has created from nasty responses on social media, fan letters, promotional emails, congressional testimony--in other words, a wide array of sources. She publishes each poem next to its source material. Some of the poems flip the original material's message, while others intensify the original message by distilling it to fewer words. Some of Baer's poems are very funny. Others pack an emotional punch. You really need to see them to appreciate them. If we're friends on FB, you'll get some samples there during April.

Favorite Passages

. . . it would take only one of his sentences being more intelligent than he is for this miracle to make a writer of him.

The direct route hates a pothole, and the obscure professes hatred of the inexplicable.

. . . freedom of thought on the internet is all the more complete now that it's clear that people have stopped thinking.

Herve Le Tellier, in The Anomaly

It's like there are these words, they're out in the world, and you start wondering what it would be like to say them. Words have their own power--they create the feeling, just by the fact of your saying them.

Jonathan Franzen, in Crossroads

. . . There are many poems 

about the seasons, less about the time it takes 

to bury another child. It's true--

Kate Baer, "Social Studies," in What Kind of Woman

Read Until You Understand and Other February Reading

 February is a short month and I had a lot of work to do, so my reading slowed down a little. 

Fiction

In Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro returns to the kind of dystopic near-future he explored so effectively in Never Let Me Go. Here, rather than clones, we have Artificial Friends, advanced robots who serve as companions for children who have been "lifted." Exactly what lifting is was not clear to me, but children who are lifted stop going to school and learn at home on "oblongs" to get a competitive advantage in college and, subsequently, adult life. Lifting also puts the children's health in jeopardy. The novel's narrator, AF Klara, is purchased as a companion for Josie, who has been lifted and is quite seriously ill. Josie's neighbor and friend, Rick, is a bright boy who has not been lifted; through Rick, we see how a class system emerges around this choice made by parents. Klara runs on solar power and thus believes the sun has healing powers that could help Josie. As he often does, Ishiguro writes in a somewhat flat tone--appropriate for a robot narrator--that still manages to convey deep emotion. I'm not doing a good job conveying any sense of the book, but I did enjoy it and found it, again as Ishiguro's novels generally do, prompted me to reflect on what it means to be human.

Chang-Rae Lee is an author whose work I have enjoyed, but his most recent--My Year Abroad--disappointed. The novel's protagonist is Tiller, a 20-year-old college student from New Jersey, who is living with an older woman Val and her eight-year-old son Victor Jr. who is a gifted chef. Val is in witness protection because she ratted out her husband, a minor gangster. Tiller is concerned that Val will kill herself; meanwhile, he is working through his own traumas from his motherless childhood and his year in Asia, when he was supposed to be studying abroad but somehow got caught up in a of a frozen yogurt king who is trying to sell healthy smoothies to the Asian market. Mostly the book added up to nothing for me, but I did enjoy some of the descriptions of the dishes Vic Jr. was creating! 

Mystery/Thriller

I am about to conclude that I have read too many mysteries, as lately I am finding mysteries either too predictable (When You Are Mine, by Michael Robotham), too reliant on coincidence (City of the Dead, by Jonathan Kellerman), or gratuitously violent in a way not really needed to move the plot (Every Last Fear, by Alex Finlay). So why don't I just stop reading mysteries? I can only conclude I need extended periods of mindlessness. Indeed, right now, I'm listening to one mystery and reading another in print. Perhaps I need a reading therapist.

Science Fiction

A few years ago, my son Kevin convinced me to read Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age. I liked it a lot and followed up with Anathem, which I also liked. Then I read a couple more that I wasn't so fond of (Cryptonomicon and Snow Crash). Now along comes Termination Shock, which has convinced me I'm through with Stephenson. Termination Shock is set in the near future when climate change has become worse. A Texas oilman has come up with a plan to combat climate change by shooting sulfur into the atmosphere. He draws together powerful people from low-lying countries/cities for a demonstration, in hopes of garnering their support (he is unconcerned that his plan will have negative impacts on other areas. Also in play are a hunter of feral pigs and a Sikh Canadian martial artist. While Stephenson may have serious points (and they may be bad, if he is suggesting that Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos might solve the problem of climate change with a large-scale project undertaken on their own), but the characters and their interactions are so farcical that when I fell asleep while listening, I couldn't bring myself to go back and listen to the minutes I slept through. 

Nonfiction

Read Until You Understand: The Profound Wisdom of Black Life and Literature, by Farah Jasmine Griffin is a memoir cum literary analysis (and I love the title). Griffin is a professor who teaches courses on African American literature so her knowledge is both deep and wide. Her own life has clearly and understandably been shaped by the experience of losing her father due to bigotry-motivated mistreatment of her father by the police. She connects her early experiences learning from her father, his death, the way the community rallied around her and her mother afterwards, and other family stories to the themes of great work by black authors: death, mercy, love, Black freedom and the ideal of America, justice, rage and resistance, joy, and beauty. I found both Griffin's personal story and literary analysis interesting, although her certitude made me wonder what it might be like to be a student who disagreed with her. I did have some quarrels with her take-down of President Obama's "More Perfect Union" speech, which I believe is one of the all-time great speeches--but her critique did cause me to think, which isn't a bad thing. 

Favorite Passages

This is the power of literature: to use language to remind us of another's humanity by touching our own. 

    --  Farah Jasmine Griffin, in Read Until You Understand

Until recently, I didn't think that humans could choose loneliness. That there were sometimes forces more powerful than the wish to avoid loneliness.

    --  Kazuo Ishiguro, Klara and the Sun

Festival Days, All In, and Other Early February Reading

 This month's reading (so far) has demonstrated the benefits of branching out, as I likely wouldn't have picked up Festival Days or All In if they hadn't been on several "best of 2021" lists--and both were rewarding reads. Of course, such lists also lead you to some titles you end up not caring for, but it's a tradeoff, right? 

Fiction

The Prophets, by Robert Jones, Jr.,  is the story of two young enslaved men who are in love. They are accepted by the enslaved community until two things happen: a man who wants to curry favor with the white plantation owners begins to preach a narrow-minded Christianity and the gay son of the plantation owner comes home and rapes one of the young men. After very little seems to happen in the first part of the book, all hell essentially breaks loose. I didn't really care for this book although it was beautifully written. I realize that sexual abuse and tearing apart of families were typical of slaveowners and that we too often neglect stories that affirm the humanity of enslaved people (i.e., they were sexual beings), but the emphasis on this part of the story felt like it neglected too much of the torture that was the chattel slavery system. 

The Rib King, by LaDee Hubbard, is a story with two distinct parts. The first, set in 1914, is told from the perspective of Mr. Sitwell, the African American groundskeeper for a once-wealthy white family that is struggling to stay afloat financially. Sitwell generally tries to make himself essential to all aspects of the running of the house (he hopes to become the butler). But then he makes some bad decisions, including signing on to a business deal with his employer that will screw other members of the household staff and things spiral out of control. In the second part of the book, which takes place 10 years later, the narrator is Jenny Williams, a young woman who worked in the same house as Sitwell. She has become a successful entrepreneur, the owner of a beauty salon who is about to sell her skin care product to a huge distributor. But her past association with Sitwell, who has become an embarrassing and yet popular promoter of barbeque sauce (he is seen as engaging in minstrelsy), threatens her success and pulls her into a morass of conspiracies and misdeeds, some seeking profit, some revenge. The book has a lot to say about race, class, and ethics, and I mostly enjoyed it--but the ending was not good.

Early Morning Riser, by Katherine Heiny is an Anne Tyler-esque story of a teacher (Jane) who falls in love with and marries a man (Duncan) who has slept with nearly every woman in Boyle City, MI, where they live. Her life becomes entangled with his ex-wife and her very strange husband, his employee Jimmy (who seems to be slightly mentally challenged), and essentially the entire town. It's funny and touching in the "we create our own families" way. I enjoyed it.

The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek, by Kim Michele Richardson, is my book group's selection for February. Its protagonist is Cussie, one of Kentucky's "blue" people (this is an actual thing, which I did not know--caused by a blood condition called methemoglobinemia), who served as a packhorse librarian during the Depression. There's a lot of interesting stuff in the book about coal miners, the traveling librarians, the horrendous poverty among the mountain people, mountain customs, and discrimination. I enjoyed learning about that, but as a novel, I just didn't think the book held together. 

Short Stories

Festival Days, by JoAnn Beard, is a collection of short stories that I really enjoyed (and, as the three regular readers of my blog know, I am not a big short story fan). Many of the stories feature animals in ways that highlight the deep human-animal connection.. For example, in "Last Night," a woman comes to the painful realization that it's time to let her dog go; in "Werner," an artist who is trapped in a burning building jumps out of his apartment into a neighboring building (!) and survives but is devastated by the fact that he dropped his cat in the jump. I found the story "Cheri" particularly moving; it describes a woman dying of breast cancer who travels to Michigan to get help from Dr. Kevorkian. Perhaps the stories sound grim, but they also have a redemptive quality. One minor nit to pick: it's not believable that someone was the only Jewish student in their class in Champaign, IL, home of the U of I. Seriously. Anyway, these stories helped me articulate what makes a short story work for me: it features at least one interesting character well enough drawn so you have some insight into or curiosity about their actions, there's a "slice of life" feeling that gives you a strong sense of time and place, and something happens that at least makes some sense. I think when I end up scratching my head when I finish a story, it's because nothing happened or what happened seems completely random or pointless. 

I also enjoyed some of the stories in Land of Big Numbers, a collection by Te-Ping Chen. Many of the stories are set in China and provide insight into day-to-day life and the conflicts among individuals, communities, and the state in China. Others feature Chinese immigrants in the United States. Some have surreal aspects, which my favorite story in the collection did. In "Gubeikou Spirit," Pan is one of a group of commuters rushing to catch a train when they somehow are trapped in the station--for months!--while the rest of the world (and the trains) continue as though there was nothing odd about their situation--people outside send them food and they are celebrated on state media. They build a community that is both supportive and oppressive. It's weirdly compelling, as is another surreal story, "New Fruit," in which season of a newly developed fruit produces different emotional responses in those who eat it. I didn't love all the stories in the collection, but it's definitely worth reading. 

Mysteries/Thrillers

The Dark Hours, by Michael Connolly, is the latest entry in the Renee Ballard series. Ballard can't get any support within LAPD, so she has to go back to Harry Bosch, who is no longer working, for help in solving the two crimes on her docket, one of which is a very creepy male revenge story. I thought the book was entertaining but not great. I was amused to see how many Amazon reviewers dinged Connolly for "virtue signaling" about COVID prevention practices--good grief, people.

Women violently defending themselves is Taylor Adams' thing, and there is no shortage of female violence in Hairpin Bridge, the story of a woman trying to figure out how her twin sister died. At first I was finding it mildly interesting, but after the fifth false resolution . . . ugh. 

The Outsider, by Stephen King, starts out as if it were a regular murder mystery--a child is murdered in a way described as veteran police officers describe as the worst they have ever seen, and all the evidence points to a local high school teacher. The police opt to arrest him in a very public situation--a baseball game he is coaching. But then equally compelling evidence indicates that he was somewhere else at the time of the killing. Soon another case with similar conflicting evidence surfaces and things just keep getting weirder. Entertaining (although not at all believable to this skeptic). 

Autobiography/Memoir

I always admired Billie Jean King and followed her career, so I was surprised at how much I learned about her work, not just as a tennis player but as an advocate for women, in sports and beyond, from All In. The insights into her personal life and its intersection with her professional life were fascinating. She was married to Larry King for more than two decades; he played a major positive role in many aspects of her career, but also made decisions that damaged her reputation and her financial standing. They lived essentially separate lives for years after she came out to Larry but he "refused" a divorce. She announced several times that she was retiring, but she came back to competition because she needed the money (and because she was a competitive person). She was more argumentative/angry on the court than I remembered. She had an eating disorder. And she had the same job in college that I had--handing out towels and equipment in the gym! She still clearly has some difficulty writing about her sexuality (or it seems so to me) but has become an outspoken advocate for the LGBTQ+ community. I guess if I had to summarize, I'd say that, as I read the book, she became a real person to me rather than simply an icon.  

I didn't know who Allison Bechdel was (a MacArthur genius award-winning cartoonist) when I picked up her graphic memoir, The Secret to Superhuman Strength. Other than graphic novels read with my grandson, this was my first graphic book (I can't bear to call a memoir a "graphic novel" although all graphic books seem to be classified as novels). Its breadth of content was surprising; while it is ostensibly the story of Bechdel's many fitness obsessions (a sign in one illustration advertises an "Advanced Scything Workout"), she references everything from the Romantics, Transcendentalists, and Beats (she has a few fixations) to the Lowell Mills, The Sound of Music, Janis Joplin, the monk Suzuki, and even Richard Nixon. We also track her love life and her relationships with her family. It's funny, thought-provoking, and maybe just a bit too long. 

Somebody's Daughter, by Ashley Ford is a well-written memoir about the early life of an African American woman whose father was in prison; the mother caring for her was harsh but her grandmother provided a Although she didn't really know her father, she clung desperately to the idea that they loved each other. Her life was challenging, but I would have found the book more meaningful if, rather than simply being honest (something she talks about in an interview included on the audio version of the book), she actually explained how she dealt with the challenges--for example, how, as a rape survivor, she processed the disclosure that father had been convicted of rape (somehow her family kept this from her for years). 

Favorite Passages

We're a nation of giant toddlers, dragging our blankets and bottles everywhere we go!

    --Allison Bechdel, The Secret to Superhuman Strength

Four Hundred Souls: A Community History, 1619-2019

 I have more than usual to say about Four Hundred Souls, so I thought I'd go ahead and do an individual post rather than make my next bimonthly post extra long. 

Four Hundred Souls is a uniquely organized history book that I think people who don't enjoy reading long narrative histories that remind them of their high school history texts might find more pleasurable. And it is definitely thought-provoking and informative. 

The editors of Four Hundred Souls asked 90 people to each contribute a relatively brief piece on a five-year period of  American history, with a focus on African Americans in that period. Every 40 years, they include a poem. The book starts with journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones writing about the arrival of Africans to North America in 1619 and ends with activist Alicia Garza discussing the Black Lives Matter movement. In between are contributions from other journalists and activists as well as numerous historians plus a few philosophers, memoirists, anthropologists, novelists, and political operatives. 

The essays focus on individuals, events, and movements. Some are familiar to anyone with a passing knowledge of U.S. history: Anita Hill, Booker T. Washington, Frederick Douglass, Dred Scott, Jack Johnson, lynching, Plessy v. Ferguson, the Middle Passage, etc. But they provide new insight or deeper background than you might have gained in a survey course or even from watching the news about an event. For example, Hurricane Katrina is examined from the perspective of black women's "depresenceing" in the aftermath. Blair L.M. Kelley's essay on Plessy v. Ferguson puts this test case mounted by the Citizens Committee in the context of black life in New Orleans (and also reveals that the pictures of Homer Plessy that appear in texts and pop up when you google his name are not of the defendant in the case). 

Other essays are about lesser-known people and events--the Virginia Law on Baptism, Lucy Terry Prince, Elizabeth Keye, the black press at various points in history, the Combahee River Collective to name a few. One story that everyone should know is that of Eddie Lee Holloway, Jr., who moved from Illinois to Wisconsin, took his documents  to get the ID needed to register to vote in the state, and was unable to do so because of an error on his birth certificate (which had not prevented his voting in Illinois). After investing $200 (and numerous visits to government offices) in trying to straighten the situation out, he was still unable to vote and eventually moved back to Illinois in frustration. This happened not in the Jim Crow era, but in 2016! In formerly progressive Wisconsin!

Many of the authors draw explicit connections between the history they write about and subsequent historical and contemporary developments. Among the themes that emerge are inhuman oppression, resistance, struggle, creativity, and achievement. But the unique way the book is put together also makes clear that African American history is not one story but innumerable stories. 

I hope that others will consider constructing histories of other groups or developments in this way. Meanwhile, I highly recommend Four Hundred Souls.

Favorite passages:

Who we are and who belongs is the most fundamental question that we have ever asked or can ever ask. We are still struggling to get the answer to this question right. We are still coming up short.
    --John A. Powell in an essay on Dred Scott

No war is civil.
    --Michael Harriot in an essay on the Civil War (which he also calls the War on White Tears, War for           White Supremacy, War for Slaveholders' Rights, and Conflict for Future Racist Monuments)

Change does not occur without backlash, at least any change worth having. And that backlash is an indicator that the change is so powerful that the opposing forces resist that change with everything they have.
    --Alicia Garza in an essay on Black Lives Matter 

The Guncle, Bewilderment, and Dead Mothers

 I've written before (https://novelconversations.blogspot.com/search?q=dead+parents) about why a dead parent (particularly a dead mother) is apparently such a good context for children's/YA literature. This month a dead mother seemed to be a convenient set-up for adult fiction--I guess it's a life event with a lot of dramatic consequences that make for good stories, but I'm hoping for a different "trend" in February's reading. 

Fiction

When I finished Milk Fed, by Melissa Broder, my notes read "What is this book about? Judaism, gay sex, eating disorders, nothing?" At first, I was interested in the protagonist's disordered eating, but then  suddenly she was in a relationship with a "zaftig" woman and the eating disorder seemed to magically disappear (yeah, like that happens) as a problem and a plot point. Milk Fed made several "best of 2021" lists, but it wouldn't have made my best of the week list--any week.

Infinite Country, by Patricia Engel, joins the fairly large store of novels that tell the stories of immigrants. In Colombia, a girl escapes from a reform school and sets out to get back to her father's home. Her father was deported after living in the United States with his wife and three children; the wife decides to stay without her husband, believing that, despite its hardships, life in the U.S. will be better than it would be back in Colombia. However, she decides to send her youngest child back to Colombia to live with her grandmother. Over time, we learn that the reform school escapee is that younger daughter; even later, we learn the narrator is her older sister. Colombian myths are woven into the narrative. If my description sounds confusing, it's because I was a tad confused. This is certainly not the greatest book on immigration, but thinking about the challenges facing divided and mixed status families was worthwhile.

Our January book club choice was The Stationery Shop, by Marjan Kamali. It's the story of teenage lovers Roya and Bahman in Iran in 1953. While planning their wedding, Bahman suddenly disappears. They exchange letters through the owner of the stationery shop where they met, but Bahman does not explain where he has gone--or why. Finally, he sends Roya a letter telling her to meet him in one of Tehran's square on a given date and time--but he's not there and revolution is breaking out. When he then breaks up with her via letter, she and her sister decide to attend college in the United States. Both end up marrying and making a life in the US. But Roya has never gotten over Bahman, and when she finds out he is in assisted living near her home, she visits him and learns what happened that summer of 1953. I enjoyed learning about the history of Iran in the 1950s, but the story seemed trite (teenage love lasts 60 years--sorry, I'm a cynic) and shallow (the death of Roya's first child, while described as heartbreaking seemed to have less impact on her than losing Bahman). I wouldn't recommend the book, although I should report that everyone else in book club enjoyed it.

The Guncle, by Steven Rowley, is the story of how GUP (Gay Uncle Patrick) adapts when his sister-in-law (and college friend) dies and his brother has to go to rehab, leaving his two young children with GUP. Patrick is a retired self-involved actor, living in Palm Springs; his life is not designed for child care. But, perhaps predictably, he finds he actually has a knack for it, despite the many challenges the three face. The book is kind of corny, but it's also sweet and funny, and I enjoyed it (except why did the mom have to be dead? Really, why?). 

The mom is also dead in Bewilderment, by Richard Powers, but here the child (nine-year-old Robin, who is neurodiverse; his issues have garnered numerous diagnoses but little positive response) is being cared for by his father, Theo, an astrobiologist who models planets where life might exist. Robin is more interested in his late mother's work--environmental activism on this planet. Wanting to keep Robin off drugs, Theo agrees to let him participate in a highly experimental "treatment" in which he receives "training" using his mother's cognitive patterns as models. Powers generally draws on current science in his books, so I'm assuming this is based on actual scientific research--but it still does not seem believable, either that it could happen (clearly seems unethical) or that a father would let his child participate. Of course, Theo makes other less-than-optimal parenting decisions, so . . .  I admire Richard Powers but this is definitely not my favorite of his works; I got a little lost in the astrobiology, birdwatching, environmental science, and neuroscience, what one reader on Good Reads called "science babble." 

In my experience, authors who choose child narrators often have difficulty actually finding anything even vaguely resembling the voice of a child. In Fight Night, Miriam Toews does a good job capturing the voice of nine-year-old Swiv, who lives with her pregnant mother and ailing Grandmother. The downside of capturing this voice is that, for me, the writing style was not engaging, being rather choppy. I also had trouble with the attempts to make what is ultimately a sad story of a child given too many responsibilities and made to experience too many adult situations funny. Although a lot of readers report that they found the book hilarious, I just found it depressing.  

Mysteries/Thrillers

A Quiet Girl, by S.F. Kosa, is a pretty decent mystery. It seems to be two different stories--a man is desperately searching for his romance-writer wife, who has disappeared following an argument between the two, meanwhile a young waitress who has no memory tries to figure out who she is an dhow she ended up where she is. When the two stories converge, I was surprised. 

In State of Terror, by Louise Penny & Hillary Rodham Clinton, Clinton finally gets to take on that vast right-wing conspiracy she blamed for her husband's troubles. It's an entertaining read, featuring Secretary of State Ellen Adams, who must solve a complicated scheme involving international terrorists and enemies within the U.S. government--if she fails, nuclear weapons will be detonated in several U.S. cities. Clinton and Penny take down Trump, without naming him, and provide a setup for a sequel. Not surprisingly (but somewhat annoyingly), Gamache and Three Pines make an appearance. The audio book, which I listened to, is read by the actress Joan Allen, who happens to be from my home town and, perhaps because of their common Midwestern roots, actually sounds a bit like Clinton. Not a great book but entertaining.

Pretty as a Picture, by Elizabeth Little, is a dumb mystery involving a film editor's late arrival on a film set, only to be thrown into a murder mystery. Of course, she becomes involved in solving the mystery. I did enjoy the two teenagers, children of caterers, who ask her to join them as amateur detectives and later construct a podcast about the case. It was also fun to gain some insight into the movie-making process. But those two positives weren't enough to justify a recommendation for this book.

I found the story and characters in The Turnout, by Megan Abbott, repellent. Two sisters run a ballet school started by their mother. One starts an affair with the contractor repairing the school after a fire. All hell breaks loose and secrets of past and present are revealed. The only good thing about the book was the insight it gave into the craziness involved in putting on The Nutcracker.  Definitely NOT recommended.

YA

I started Concrete Rose, by Angie Thomas, months ago but just couldn't make myself pick it back up and finish it--until this month. That was not the case with Angie Thomas's previous two YA titles, which were compelling. Concrete Rose is the story of Maverick, father to the main character in The Hate U Give. His father, a gang member, is doing time in state prison, and Mav is struggling--trying to get out of the gang life but needing the money drug sales generate, as he has a baby and soon will have another on the way (with a different girl). It's an authentic slice of life circa 2000 and the character of Maverick is well-drawn, but somehow it just didn't grip me the way On the Come Up or The Hate U Give did. 

Nonfiction

I read Helen Ellis's collection of short stories, American Housewife, several years ago and found it very funny. Sadly, I thought she tried too hard to be funny in her recent collection of essays, Bring Your Baggage and Don't Pack Light (as well as its predecessor Southern Lady Code). Her topics--menopause, friendship, aging--are things I'm interested in, but her humor just didn't work for me. The one essay I really enjoyed was about her career as a poker player and the way she crafted an image to convince opponents she was a nice pearl-wearing lady rather than a skilled player and well-known author. I think I might enjoy a trip to the Redneck Riviera with Ellis and her friends, but I didn't really enjoy this book.

The African American historian Annette Gordon Reed provides a racial history of her home state of Texas (which she loves) in On Juneteenth. She tells the story through essays that feature her family's own history in the state, as well as other people of color. Most interesting to me was that the proclamation on June 19, 1865, was much broader than a simple announcement that slavery had ended in Texas. Rather, it stated that "The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves." Sadly, the promise of that statement still remains unfulfilled in Texas and throughout the United States. This short book is definitely worth reading.

Favorite Passage

The books were easy to restack, but he pulled a few titles to donate, anyhow. Books should be an experience, not a trophy for having read them.

Steven Rowley, The Guncle

I felt the pleasure of competence and the warmth that only comes from sharing ideas. It always baffles me when my colleagues complain about teaching. Teaching is like photosynthesis: making food from air and light. It tilts the prospects for life a little. For me, the best class sessions are right up there with lying in the sun, listening to bluegrass, or swimming in a mountain stream.

Richard Powers, Bewilderment

A Swim in the Pond in the Rain and Other Early January Reading

A Swim in the Pond in the Rain (more about this later) made clear to me what a careless reader I am, and I decided to take more notes when I am reading and to post more often on this blog thinking it will keep me better focused to know I am going to write about a book. So here I am, posting (maybe) twice a month. Here's what I've read so far this year.

Fiction

The previous three books by Rachel Cusk that I had read employed an unusual technique--essentially they were comprised of the stories of the people the "protagonist" encountered as she rebuilt her life after a divorce. It was an unusual approach that I found interesting. Second Place does not use that approach--here the protagonist (known only as M) is telling her story in retrospect to someone named Jeffers. We don't know who Jeffers is or why she is recounting the story, which I found somewhat irritating. Why include this layer between the narrator and reader unless it serves a clear purpose? The story M tells focuses on M's years-long obsession with a painter referred to as L. During the pandemic, L asks to stay with M, her husband Tony, and M's adult daughter in the guest cottage (the "second place"), bringing along a young woman. They welcome the visitors, but suffice it to say what ensues is not pleasant. Perhaps because I found the secondary characters more appealing than M and L (and characters are important to me), I did not really enjoy this book although I can appreciate aspects of what Cusk does. 

Louise Erdrich's latest novel, The Sentence, is also a pandemic novel, but it opens some years before with the narrator, Tookie, explaining how she ended up in prison for ten years, not exactly an innocent woman but not exactly guilty either. This part of the book doesn't seem to have a lot to do with what happens once Tookie gets out, marries the cop who arrested her, and starts working at Louise Erdrich's book store (Louise is a character who makes a few appearances in the book). And a lot happens in Tookie's family and in the broader culture. Examples: Tookie is haunted by a former customer, her stepdaughter comes home with a newborn, the pandemic strikes, George Floyd is killed and Native Americans like Tookie decide how to support the BLM movement while seeking justice for their own people killed by police. It's a lot, maybe too much. But it's Louise Erdrich, so it's worth reading! 

Caul Baby, by Morgan Jerkins, is like nothing I've read before. It's set in Harlem, starting in the 1990s and covering 20+ years. It involves a powerful yet deeply dysfunctional family, the Melancons, who have made a business of selling pieces of caul (the amniotic sac in which some babies are born), purported to have healing powers. They exercise their power by refusing to sell to some people. When they refuse to sell a piece of caul to a woman named Laila, who has had multiple miscarriages and whose baby ultimately dies, her niece Amara vows to become a lawyer and take down the Melancons. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to her, the child she placed for adoption is being raised by the Melancons--everyone in the book is somehow entwined with everyone else. While I recognize that the stuff about the caul was a form of magical realism, it still creeped me out (literary term). But the exploration of Black motherhood (and daughterhood) rewards the reader with insights and questions to ponder.

The Other Black Girl, by Zakiya Dalila Harris, is sometimes classified as a thriller, which does make me wonder about why we have "genre fiction" because the author's intent is definitely more than thrilling the reader. Nella, the only African American professional at a New York publishing company, is excited when another black woman is hired as an editorial assistant. But Hazel is not the supportive "sis" she originally presents herself as. She's a climber who sucks up to the editors, undercuts Nella, and hands out a "hair grease" as though it could change lives (spoiler: it can). I won't say more but it's thought-provoking and entertaining. I did wonder if the African American editor and writer who had been well-known 20 years previously were necessary to the story, but that was a small blip. Recommended.

Short Stories

I've often said I am not a short story person. and The Souvenir Museum, by Elizabeth McCracken, reminded me of why. The short stories in the collection are grim, have quirks for the sake of being quirky, and leave me saying "hunh?" at the end. I say this knowing that the collection was very positively reviewed, with many critics finding the stories funny. Certainly McCracken goes for funny and she is a skilled writer, so sometimes I did find myself smiling. Upon reflection, though, I would generally think "that doesn't even make sense" or "that's not really funny." As an example, here's a sentence from the story "Two Sad Clowns," in which two characters who recur in five stories have their first date: "Nobody whose mother ever truly loved them has ever taken pleasure in playing the tambourine." When you first read the sentence, you might chuckle because it's a clever insult, but then you realize it's a nonsensical connection--of course people who were loved can enjoy playing the tambourine and not being loved would certainly have more serious consequences than becoming a tambourinist (is that a word?). Perhaps I'm so old that I am losing my sense of humor, but I offer as evidence that this is not the case that I recently binge-watched Ricky Gervais's After Life and laughed and cried in equal measure. So, yeah, I'd recommend that Netflix series over The Souvenir Museum any day.

Mysteries/Thrillers

Razorblade Tears, by S.A. Cosby, tells the story of two fathers who set out to avenge their sons. The sons, one white and one black, were married and had a young daughter, and the fathers at first think the murder was a homophobic hate crime. As they investigate, the picture becomes much more complex. The plot was interesting and the fathers were engaging characters, but the story was too violent for me to enjoy it without reservation. "Heroes" who end up killing a lot of people doesn't sit well with me. If that won't bother you, then I recommend the book for you.  

The title character of Verity, by Colleen Hoover, is a thriller writer who has been incapacitated in a car accident, possibly a suicide attempt following the death of her two daughters. Her husband Jeremy hires Lowen to complete the last three books in the series. When Lowen arrives at their home to look for notes for the books she is to write, she discovers a memoir written by Verity, which suggests that things in the household are not as they seem. You know a twist is coming, but when it does, it's not very believable. I wasn't crazy about this book (but, as a side note, there is a lot more sex in it than in most mysteries/thrillers).  

The Madness of Crowds is Louise Penny's latest in the Armand Gamache series. It deals with serious content--a statistician hired by the Canadian government to analyze pandemic-related data recommends a horrifying program of "mercy" killings and abortions. This report brings out "the crazies" and murder ensues. It could have been a good book--but instead it is repetitive and circular and, ultimately, rather boring. I think Louise Penny has worn out the Gamache character (this is book 17) and should perhaps move on to a new character. 

The Stolen Hours, by Allen Eskins, is a so-so mystery about an aspiring prosecutor who pursues a serial rapist/murderer. Meh.

Nonfiction

A Swim in a Pond in the Rain is subtitled In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life, but it is in fact author George Saunders who offers the master class. Indeed, it is essentially Saunders's Syracuse class on 19th-Century Russian Short Stories in book form. If you listen to the audio version, Saunders reads the analysis and a cast of amazing actors read the seven stories (Glenn Close, Nick Offerman, Phylicia Rashad, BD Wong) by Chekhov, Gogol, Turgenev, and Tolstoy. After each story, he provides his analysis, attempting to answer the question: If a story drew us in, kept us reading, made us feel respected, how did it do that?  He takes the stories apart in a minute way that made me feel like the most careless reader in the universe; he points out the decisions the authors made as they constructed the work, suggests how the story could have been totally changed by the smallest decision, and sees meaning that totally escaped me. Reading the book was simultaneously humiliating (why do I notice nothing?) and inspiring (I'll start noticing more). I probably won't start noticing that much more, but I can dream. Worth a read if you want to think about reading in a different way.

Favorite Passage

"These days, it's easy to feel that we've fallen out of connection with one another and with the earth and with reason and with love. I mean: we have. But to read, to write, is to say that we still believe in, at least, the possibility of connection." 

George Saunders, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain

"Small bookstores have the romance of doomed intimate spaces about to be erased by unfettered capitalism."

Louise Erdrich, The Sentence

Wrapping up the Year's Reading

This year I read more than 300 books, which is definitely a record for me (at least since childhood). I would feel it was more of an achievement, if so many weren't mindless mysteries that I listened to while packing/unpacking, doing jigsaw puzzles, etc. 

As usual at this time of year, I have started "working on" the list of books that appeared on the most "Best of 2021" lists that Lit Hub puts together (https://lithub.com/the-ultimate-best-books-of-2021-list/). I had read a measly seven prior to seeing the list, but the first book I got from it--Hummingbird Salamander, by Jeff VanderMeer--definitely made me question the worth of this endeavor and my reading skills. The book literally made no sense to me. 

I noted recently that authors are starting to write about the pandemic. Some (e.g., Ann Patchett and Jodi Picoult) are also discussing how difficult it has been to write during the pandemic. I appreciate this, both as a freelance curriculum writer who right this minute is avoiding writing (although I can't really blame the pandemic, as avoidance has been a lifelong issue for me) and as a reader who has sometimes found it difficult during the pandemic to focus on print and/or more serious reading.

Anyway, since I've written about so few books this year--mostly my favorites--I'm not doing my own "best of" list--just commenting on the best (and most disappointing/annoying) books of the past couple months. Somewhat weirdly, I didn't have any real favorites the past few months in the two genres I read most--fiction and mystery.

Short Stories

Most of the stories in Today a Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket, by Hilma Wolitzer, were written in the 1960s and 1970s, but her examination of women's lives remains relevant. About half of the stories trace a couple named Paulie and Howard as they navigate their marriage from the unplanned pregnancy that prompted them to marry to the coronavirus pandemic. The title story depicts a pregnant mother who wants to help a mother with two small children who becomes paralyzed in the supermarket aisle; it is sad and timeless. Highly recommended.

Five Tuesdays in Winter, by Lily King, is a collection of ten stories, many of which are about adolescents with problematic parents. King gives them unique voices, puts many of them in sad situations, but also offers redemptive moments. King is such a talented writer who has become one of those authors whose books I really look forward to, and this collection did not disappoint.

Young Adult

The One and Only Bob, by Katherine Applegate, is an entertaining story, but I'm including it here primarily because the audio book was so awesomely narrated by Danny DeVito. The best narration of the year!

Nonfiction

Smile: The Story of a Face, by Sarah Ruhl. Just after giving birth to twins, Sarah Ruhl was struck by Bell's Palsy, which distorted her face and limited her ability to show emotions. Her decade-long fight to regain control of her face prompted reflections that lesser intellects/people would definitely not have had. Her book and Kate Bowler's lovely No Cure for Being Human (And Other Truths I Need to Hear) were life affirming--but also serve as a powerful indictment of many medical professionals. Some of their stories would be unbelievable, except that you know they happened. The fact that both women not only survived these experiences (and their illnesses) but somehow used them to help the rest of us understand illness and humanity is remarkable. And the amount of work the two of them have produced while battling illness is truly stunning.

The Writer's Library: The Authors You Love on the Books that Changed Their Lives, edited by Nancy Pearl and Jeff Schwager, includes interviews with 23 authors, from Louise Erdrich to Charles Johnson to Dave Eggers. The individual interviews in this book are moderately interesting, but I found the patterns across interviews fascinating. Many of the authors described themselves as indiscriminate readers as kids, which I loved (I am still something of an indiscriminate reader)--Nancy Drew and the "Little House" books were mentioned by several. Certain authors and books were repeatedly mentioned as influences--James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Invisible Man, Phillip Roth, Maxine Hong Kingston. In terms of what the authors appreciate in someone else's writing--many mentioned writing at the "sentence level" (earlier this week I found myself commenting on a book's writing at the "sentence level," which freaked me out a bit). They also appreciate voice and character--but most don't care much at all about plot. It seems to me this puts them at odds with average readers, who in my experience care deeply about plot. Does this difference matter? I don't know, but it is food for thought. 

Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter, by Kate Clifford Larson, is not a book I would have read if my book group hadn't picked it, but it was quite thought-provoking. We had a great discussion of attitudes toward mental disabilities, ambition, family dysfunctions, and more. I don't think it's necessarily a great book, but it's great for book groups.

Annoyances, Disappointments, and Observations

In her two most recent books, Jodi Picoult has tried to break out of her previous pattern of family drama/legal battle--but I don't think her efforts have been entirely successful. Wish You Were Here is a pandemic novel; I was enjoying it until we got to the twist, which I found absolutely infuriating. Really, Jodi Picoult? 

As someone who grew up within a few miles of the Lincoln Highway, I was looking forward to The Lincoln Highway, by Amor Towles. It did not live up to expectations; despite many twists, they all seemed unpredictable. This is actually the book I described as well-written at the sentence level, but overall it was disappointing. 

After reading The President's Daughter, by Bill Clinton and James Patterson, I could not help thinking that Clinton, the draft evader (I don't blame him--I might have done the same had I been a man), secretly wishes he had been a Navy Seal. If you have read it, did you get that vibe? 

Favorite Passages

My statuesque figure had given way to random bulges, as if my curves had been rearranged by an inept or sadistic sculptor.

--Hilma Wolitzer, Today a Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket

No matter how much time went by, I would fear your treachery had only moved into the shadows. What is love but rust, and how can I have that now?

A beautiful coherent speech lies somewhere for someone to make in a moment like this, a collection of words to balm exit wounds. But she can't make the speech, she can't find it anywhere inside herself. 

--Carol Anshaw, Lucky at the Corner (good at the "sentence level"!)

In the waiting room of the NICU, Orthodox Jewish men prayed. I can still seem them now, in prayer shawls, davening. It was the only thing that made all the machines bearable, the human swaying to the internal sound of hope. I wished I could pray in a visible way. I wished I could pray.

Food is one part memory, one part ritual, and one part sustenance. . . . food is who makes it, and why. 

--Sarah Ruhl, Smile: The Story of a Face

Everybody pretends that you only die once. But that's not true. You can die to a thousand possible futures in the course of a single, stupid life.

--Kate Bowler, No Cure for Being Human