Books that Moved Me: Our Missing Hearts and Speak

Just spent the morning with my book club talking about why books are challenged/censored (fear was our main conclusion) and why people feel compelled to try to limit what other people's children read rather than just choosing deciding if a book is suitable for their own children (I think "people are annoying" was our main conclusion).  Speak, the book I read for the meeting (see YA section below) definitely deserves to have a wide audience of teenagers and those who love them.  But on to what I've been reading.

Fiction

With her new book, Our Missing Hearts, Celeste Ng has gone in a new direction. Following an economic crisis, blamed by leaders on China, the United States has passed the PACT act--the Preserving American Culture and Traditions act (yes, the PATRIOT act echoes here). PACT means that books are restricted, people are asked to report on their neighbors, children are removed from parents with dangerous ideas, and Asian Americans are treated as potential traitors. The book essentially tells two stories--the first is the story of Bird, a preteen boy whose mother Margaret, a Chinese America poet, disappeared some years before. He lives with his father, a former linguistics professor who now shelves unread books in a library. The title of one of Margaret's book, Our Missing Hearts, has become a slogan for those protesting removal of children from their families. Motivated by this fact and his receipt of a page filled with drawings of cats that he knows is from his mother, Bird sets out to find her. When he does, the book becomes Margaret's story--how she came to be in the situation she is currently in and what she plans to do about it. It's a powerful book about intolerance and injustice, courage, art, and resilience. And, librarians are the true heroes in the story! And it's beautifully written! Highly recommended. 

The online University of Illinois alumni online book group I joined earlier this year is currently reading The Violin Conspiracy, by Brendan Slocumb. It's the story of Ray McMillian, a gifted young African American violinist who discovers the family fiddle is actually a Stradavarius worth $10 million. This causes various conflicts, in his family (the elders claim that the violin belongs to them, not to Ray) and with the descendants of the slave-owning family who "owned" Ray's fiddle-playing ancestor (who claim the violin was stolen from them). Then, as Ray is preparing for the prestigious Tchaikovsky competition, the violin is stolen. The narrative moves back and forth between Ray's childhood, when he got no family support and was subjected to discrimination as a black child playing classical music,  and his preparation for and participation in the competition, as he freaks out (understandably) about his violin. I enjoyed everything about Ray's life as a black musician, including encounters with unfriendly police, but didn't find the "mystery" particularly compelling. Interesting note: Several commenters in our group thought that Ray's childhood was taking place in the 1970s, while it was actually the early 2000s (I think). I feel like this might reflect white readers' self-delusion about how much has changed--in schools, in the classical music world, and in society in general. We want to believe Ray would not have experienced discrimination from his music teacher in the 2000s, but, sadly, Slocumb, a musician and music teacher, knows more than we do.  

Mysteries/Thrillers

Ice and Stone is the latest entry in Marcia Muller's Sharon McCone series, and it's pretty good for the 34th book about one character, perhaps because it deals with a timely topic--the murder of indigenous women. Although the specific reason for their murder seems unlikely to be the motivator for the murders that have and are occurring in the real world, the prejudice and lack of investigation by law enforcement seems on point. There is a weird subplot about an attack on Sharon and Hy's office that goes nowhere, but I still recommend the book.

I know I complain a lot about bad mysteries, but The Coroner, by Jennifer Graeser Dornbush, may be the worst ever--obnoxious main character who is supposedly a brilliant doctor but acts like an idiot (I actually kind of wanted her to die when she was attacked by a murderer); constant mentions that she drives a leaf (is the author getting a kickback from Nissan or is she trying to virtue-signal?);  multiple violations of the Fourth Amendment by law enforcement officers (mystery writers really need to get the law right--no one in this book could ever have been convicted because pretty much all the evidence was illegally gathered); a corny romance;  and a terrible cliffhanger. Authors who write cliffhangers clearly don't care about their readers--they just want to sell the next book in their series. To make matters worse, this one involves the main character--a freaking doctor--sitting by someone praying for their survival. Why isn't she DOING something? Seriously, the worst. 

I first thought Look What You Made Me Do was a complete rip-off of My Sister, the Serial Killer, by Oyinkan Braithwaite. It certainly starts off similarly, but author Elaine Murphy does take the story in a different direction. Carrie is the witless accomplice to her sister Becca's crimes, helping her dispose of the bodies. But Becca's latest victim is discovered in a park--along with 13 other bodies, not killed by Becca. Because it's a mystery novel, Carrie and Becca start trying to identify the other serial killer. And chaos ensues. Not really a fan. 

Black Widows by Cate Quinn is not the first mystery I've read in which the murder victim had more than one wife, but it's still quite different. Told from the perspective of the three wives of dead husband Blake--Rachel, the controlling first wife, who was raised in a polygamous cult; Emily, a teenager who has an unspecified sexual problem; and Tina, a former drug addict and hooker, who probably loved Blake the most. The police ping-pong back and forth in terms of who they think the killer is--all three wives are arrested at different times--before the "surprise" of who really killed Blake is revealed. The book was somewhat entertaining, but a couple of things bothered me. First, all three wives (as well as Blake's mother) were presented as somewhat mentally damaged, which I don't think is a fair portrayal of LDS women (although, granted, I don't know any women in plural marriages). Second, while I'm not generally one to worry about authors writing about people different from themselves, it seems odd that a British author who has apparently never even been to Utah, would decide to write this book. Perhaps if she had actually spent some time with LDS folks, she might have drawn more complex characters and not portrayed every LDS character (except for one kid missionary who loaned Tina his car) so negatively. 

In Desert Star, by Michael Connolly, Renee Ballard has become the lead detective of the LAPD's newly reconstituted cold case unit. The catch is no other detectives are assigned to the squad--she must rely on volunteers and consultants. Of course, she draws Harry Bosch into the unit with the promise he can work on a case that has haunted him because he knows who did it but can't bring the perpetrator to justice. But first he has to help find out who killed the sister of the city councilman largely responsible for getting the unit funded. Lots of red herrings, but overall it's okay, though it's hard to believe a major city would actually have a unit manned by volunteers. Also, I feel like the more closely she works with Bosch, the less interesting Ballard becomes. Hopefully, the next title in this series will do more with her character. 

Science Fiction

Blake Crouch's latest, Upgrade, explores the idea that humans might be perfectible via gene modification (think CRISPR), delivered without the manipulated realizing what is happening. Protagonist Logan Ramsey, an agent with the Gene Protection Agency, goes into a basement where an IED with ice shrapnel explodes. At first, doctors do not think he has suffered any lasting damage, but then he starts noticing he's stronger, smarter (he can beat his daughter at chess), and more focused than ever before. Soon enough, he learns that this was all a trick by his mother, a brilliant scientist who everyone thinks committed suicide after she was responsible for the deaths of 200,000 people when one of her attempts to edit genes had the opposite effect of what was intended. She has also "upgraded" Logan's sister and wants the two of them to "save humanity" by upgrading people globally. Logan sees the potential downsides, while his sister decides to take on their mother's challenge. The rest of the book is a bit too much of a "chase scene" for me--and it's hard to develop character when the focus is on action (and science). Not my favorite Crouch book. 

Young Adult

This month, my book group decided we would each choose a banned book and report back to the group on what we read and how it informed our perspective on people who challenge books in a supposed effort to protect young people. I chose Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson, and it's incredible. It's narrated in first person by a high school freshman, Melinda, whose friends have all abandoned her because she called 911 from a summer party. She hasn't told her friends what happened to her at the party (it's clear she was assaulted, but we don't learn the details until we're quite a ways into the book)--they're just mad because the police came and friends and older siblings got in trouble. Melinda opts to speak as little as possible, which frustrates her parents (who are not the most insightful folk) and teachers. Only her art teacher seems to understand how to help her. Although much of the book is sad--Melinda's voice seems authentic and the reader aches for her--but parts are also funny, and the ending is upbeat and carries a positive message about how taking action can help not only yourself but others. The edition I got from the library was the 10th Anniversary Edition, which included a poem constructed from letters and emails Anderson received from readers as well as some thoughts from Anderson on censorship. She is more understanding than I:

"Most of the censorship I see is fear-driven. I respect that. The world is a very scary place. It is a terrifying place in which to raise children, and in particular, teenagers. It is human nature to nurture and protect children as they grow into adulthood. But censoring books that deal with difficult, adolescent issues does not protect anybody. Quite the opposite. It leaves kids in darkness and makes them vulnerable.

"Censorship is the child of fear and the father of ignorance. Our children cannot afford to have the truth of the world withheld from them. They need us to be brave enough to give them great books so they can learn how to grow up into the men and women we want them to be."

 Absolutely think teenagers and their parents and teachers should read this book.

Nonfiction

My friend Carolyn loved The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics so much she recommended it in her Christmas letter a couple of years ago. Although it took me a long time to get to Daniel James Brown's book, once I did I really enjoyed it. I knew NOTHING about rowing, but Brown does such a great job, I actually got totally engaged in his descriptions of the crew's workouts and competitions. But the real heart of the book is the story of the "boys" from the University of Washington who made up the victorious team, particularly Joe Rantz, who got the author interested in the story; the UW team members were from middle class and lower middle class families, many hard hit by the Depression, little resembling my stereotype of crew as practiced at the elite schools of the East Coast. I was amazed at how popular rowing was as a spectator sport, one that was broadcast over the radio--who knew? The author also does a great job detailing Germany's successful plans to use the games as a propaganda opportunity while hiding the atrocities already occurring there. Given the extent to which Avery Brundage was complicit in this propaganda effort, I'm amazed he continued to hold high office in the U.S. and International Olympic Committees after the war--and into the 1970s!! 

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teaching of the Plants was written by a botany professor, member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, poet, and mother,  Robin Wall Kimmerer. I don't think I will capture it's essence, but it's an examination of how the two ways of knowing represented by science and the wisdom of people who learn by engaging deeply with the world around them (over generations) are both complementary and contradictory. Kimmerer makes a case that in order for life on earth to be sustainable given the current challenges, we must move away from the culture of commodification to a recognition that humans have a reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. She makes this case through stories from her own life and teaching,  explorations of indigenous wisdom, and scientific research she and her students have done with a view toward exploring those reciprocal relationships. It's deep and inspiring, but I feel like it was almost too much to process. I think I should probably have read it over a period of time, spending time with each chapter or, perhaps even better, choosing a couple of chapters and digging deeply into them with other readers.  

Favorite Passages

Today it strikes Bird as unbearably sad, to pass by and leave no trace of your existence.

The world was on fire, you might as well burn bright.

Because telling you what really happened would be espousing un-American views, and we certainly wouldn't want that. [Yes, some of the book rings almost unbearably true of our current situation.]

    --Celeste Ng, Our Missing Hearts

. . . I take it [War and Peace] with me whenever I have to travel, hoping that one day I'll understand it. POr at least understand why Leo Tolstoy had wanted to gift the world with a mostly boring novel of over a thousand pages. It's still a mystery to me, and I keep hoping I'll come upon some gem-like insight that will explain it. 

    --Marcia Muller, Ice and Stone

They were now representatives of something much larger than themselves--a way of life, a shared set of values. Liberty was perhaps the most fundamental of those values. But the things that held them together--trust in each other, mutual respect, humility, fair play, watching out for one another--those were also part of what America meant to all of them.

    --Daniel James Brown, The Boys in the Boat

Philosophers call this state of isolation and disconnection "species loneliness"--a deep, unnamed sadness stemming from estrangement from the rest of Creation, from the loss of relationship. As our human dominance of the world has grown, we have become more isolated, more lonely when we can no longer call out to our neighbors.

    --Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass [I could reproduce a lot more passages, but I've already gone a bit overboard]

You Better Be Lightning lights up late October

How can it be November already? Here's a look at how October ended.

Fiction

A friend gave The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell, by Robert Dugoni, a rave review, so I picked it up. Sam "Hell" Hill was born with red eyes--a fact that subjected him to discrimination and bullying as a youngster. The bullies were a classmate and the principal of his Catholic school, a nun with a drinking problem. He finds two friends--Ernie, the only black student in the school and, Mickie, a rebellious girl--who make his life bearable and who continue to be his friend into an adult. As an adult, Sam becomes a tinted-contact-wearing ophthalmologist who takes on the case of his childhood bully's daughter, whom he suspects is being abused. The result is a personal crisis that sends Sam careening away from his friends and the life he has built. I thought the story of Sam's youth was engaging, but I was so annoyed by his interpersonal idiocy in his adult life that I found the adult portions of the story unsatisfying.  

This Is How It Always Is, by Laurie Frankel, is the story of a family with five sons, until the youngest son Claude declares he wants to wear a dress and be called Poppy. It's certainly worthwhile to explore how a transitioning child affects all the other members of a family, and I liked the book's treatment of Poppy and her brothers. On the other hand, I often wondered what her parents were thinking and why they were doing things like suddenly moving the family from Madison to Seattle and then trying to keep Poppy's status secret. And the event that seemed to bring the family to some kind of resolution--a medical mission to Thailand, in which the doctor-mom took Poppy along and both had life-changing experiences--seemed quite unrealistic. I wanted to like the book more than I actually did.

I might say the same thing about Lessons in Chemistry, by Bonnie Garmus. Here the central character is a brilliant woman, Elizabeth Zott, trying to succeed as a scientist in the 1950s and 1960s, further handicapped by being a single unmarried mother. The challenges are undoubtedly real, and her efforts to continue her career in unusual ways are admirable if slightly unbelievable. Her gifted daughter Mad is a wonderful character who wants to figure out the mystery of her dead father's family history, with the help of her friend Rev. Wakely, another wonderful character. I enjoyed much about the book, but I sometimes thought that the author was trying for humor in situations that really had no room for humor. For example, Elizabeth was sexually assaulted by her thesis advisor in grad school--not a humorous situation, but the way in which Garmus describes how Elizabeth stabbed him with her pencil is written in a way that seems intended to be funny. Sorry--not funny. 

Two of Kate Atkinson's works of historical fiction--Life After Life and A God in Ruins--are among my favorites of the past 20 years. But her new book, Shrines of Gaiety, is a disappointment. Set in the seamy underside of London in the years after World War I, the book features a large cast of characters, three of whom stand out: Gwendolen Kelling, a former combat nurse who has come to London to look for two young girls who have run away from York (and to escape the boredom of her life there); Freda, one of the girls Gwendolen is searching for, who has found London to be rougher than she imagined; and DCI John Frobisher, who is investigating the deaths of young women and to whom Gwendolen turns for help.  Other, less interesting characters are the family of nightclub impresario Nellie Coker and two crooked cops trying to steal Nellie's businesses. Bad things happen to almost everyone and then the book ends with a "here's where everyone ends up in the future" tacked on. I guess if you're very curious about the underside of this period, you might find the book interesting, but I did not. Not recommended. 

Mysteries

Five Decembers, by James Kestrel, is the most recent winner of the Edgar for Best Mystery Novel and, for once, I think the honor is well-deserved. Indeed, Five Decembers is more than just an excellent mystery--it's an excellent novel. The action begins in Honolulu in November 1941. Police officer Joe McGrady is faced with a challenging case--two young people murdered and found in a barn; one is the nephew of a high-ranking naval officer, putting more pressure on the police. Joe finds clues that lead him across the Pacific, and he heads to Hong Kong in search of the killer. Given the time, you can guess what happens--although what happens to Joe after the attack on Pearl Harbor is far from predictable. I don't want to give the rest of the story away--suffice it to say, I recommend this book. 

22 Seconds is the latest entry in the Patterson/Paetro Women's Murder Club series. This one involves violent protests against a new California gun law, as well as gun runners and drug cartels moving goods between Mexico and the United States. Subplots involving anyone other than Lindsay Boxer are underdeveloped--either a total waste or a set-up for something in volume 23. Not great, not horrible. 

I did a mini-binge of the first three novels in the Jane Ryland/Jake Brogan series by Hank Phillippi Ryan--The Other Woman, The Wrong Girl, and Truth Be Told, the latter two of which won Agatha awards. Jane is a reporter, Jake is a police officer, they're attracted to each other but can't have a relationship (or at least a public one) because it would be a conflict of interest. They get involved investigating the same crimes, and both seem to go off half-cocked fairly often. Crimes that seem unrelated actually end up being part of one big criminal fiasco. The sexual tension story line gets tedious, but the books are fairly entertaining.  

The Housekeeper, by Joy Fielding, is kind of Halloween-appropriate. A daughter hires a housekeeper to help her father care for her disabled mother and the woman goes from being a dream to a nightmare. It's a decent premise, but Fielding foreshadows so much that there's little suspense.

We know from the beginning of Things We Do in the Dark, by Jennifer Hillier, that protagonist Paris Peralta is now who she claims to be. But her current life has plenty of drama--her husband has been murdered and she's a suspect. Then an old friend, who also happens to be a true crime podcaster (that trope is getting tired and it's not used particularly well here), starts to investigate a case that involved her in her earlier life. Soon, her two lives come together. There are some surprises although one is signaled a bit too obviously before it is fully disclosed. Mediocre.

Nonfiction

Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism (second ed.), by bell hooks, is a well-argued discussion of why the situation of black women must be considered as due to both racism and sexism/misogyny. hooks examines how misogyny affected black women in slavery; she also looks at black men's misogyny and the varied ways that this misogyny affects black women. Also of note is the racism of the feminist movement, which rests hard on women of my age, but is supported by the evidence. Recommended.

Poetry

A friend posted enthusiastically about going to a performance by queer poet Andrea Gibson, so I ordered her latest book, You Better Be Lightning. It took me a while to finish the book as it's pretty intense. She writes about relationships, about love and loss, the vulnerability of LGBTQ youth, illness, goosebump moments . . . life.  Some of her poems are exceptionally brief but still pack a punch:

No Such Thing as the Innocent Bystander

Silence rides shotgun
wherever hate goes.

Spelling Bee without Stinger

I love myself
is often spelled
g-o-o-d-b-y-e

Some of the poems are quite lengthy, some look like prose. There's a wide array of material here, but every piece conveys emotion, often painful, but sometimes joyful (check out Gibson reading "Acceptance Speech after Setting the World Record in Goosebumps," which reminds us that joy comes in diverse and individual forms: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XK-hb_bjqU). As with any poetry collection, some poems resonant, others don't, but Gibson's work is affecting and I plan to check out more of what she's written. 

Favorite passages

The process begins with the individual woman's acceptance that American women, without exception, are socialized to be racist, classist and sexist, in varying degrees, and that labeling ourselves feminists does not change the fact that we must consciously work to rid ourselves of the legacy of negative socialization.

When feminists acknowledge in one breath that black women are victimized and in the same breath emphasize their strength, they imply that though black women are oppressed they manage to circumvent the damaging impact of oppression by being strong--and that is simply not the case. Usually, when people talk about the "strength" of black women they are referring to the way in which they perceive black women coping with oppression. They ignore the reality that to be strong in the face of oppression is not the same as overcoming oppression, that endurance is not to be confused with transformation.

    bell hooks, in Ain't I a Woman (and I could pull out a lot of other wisdom as well) 

Widowland, People Person, and More October Reading

 

Fiction

The idea of Widowland, by C.J. Carey, is interesting. The book is set in Great Britain, 13 years after Britain agreed to be ruled by Hitler's Germany. Women have been divided into several castes that define how they live their lives. King George and his family have disappeared, and King Edward (he of Wallis Simpson fame) is about to be re-crowned, an event that will end some aspects of the British-German agreement (including protection of British Jews). The protagonist Rose works rewriting literary classics to reflect the new views of women's roles. All that is interesting. But then the book goes off the rails when Rose receives a special assignment to investigate whether a group of widows (a disrespected caste) is responsible for anti-regime graffiti. That could also have been interesting but it just didn't work (e.g., why would Rose have been chosen for this assignment, for which she had no discernible skills?). Disappointing. 

People Person, by Candice Carty-Williams, is an entertaining but completely unbelievable story. Dimple has four half-siblings (same father; the five have four different mothers) whom she has met exactly once, when she was a child and their narcissistic father decided they should all meet. When her ex-boyfriend falls in her kitchen, hitting his head on the counter and apparently killing himself, she calls her eldest sister, who brings the rest of the crew alone to help dispose of the body. The rest of the book is about the five of them helping Dimple and building a family relationship. I found this so unlikely as to be a fantasy--but perhaps I am just a bad person. 

The Every, by Dave Eggers, is a sequel to The Circle, a cautionary tale about what can happen when your life is lived entirely in public via social media. In The Every, the Circle (essentially a combination of Google and Facebook) has merged with an on-line digital retailer named for a South American jungle, and the merged company's cultural influence is even greater than in the The Circle. A technocritic named Delaney decides to destroy The Every from within by getting a job there and proposing terrible ideas that will ultimately bring about economic failure. But the ideas are not only adopted by the company, they become wildly popular, albeit with some bad effects. The book is more satirical and less frightening than its predecessor, perhaps because the plot isn't strong and aspects of the company's practices and culture seem so ridiculous. But I enjoyed it.

Up until a couple of years ago, I had never read much Stephen King--but I've picked up several of his books recently and I do admire his writing skills while occasionally wondering how his brain works. Billy Summers is interesting because it's a story in which the main character is a hired killer (although he only kills truly bad people, so there's that)whomt I sometimes found myself liking. Then I remembered there was a lot not to like about the man--but he was dealing with so many worse people so maybe that meant he was all right. At any rate, Billy was a fully realized character. I don't know if Stephen King actually knows how assassins work, but the details mostly seemed plausible. Somewhat uncomfortably enjoyable.  

Mysteries/Thrillers

What She Saw, by Diane Saxon is evidently the third entry in a series featuring D.S. Jenna Morgan. I listened to it because it was free on Audible and, while I didn't hate it, was glad I hadn't used a credit on it. It opens with a man murdering his family members and setting his house on fire. One of his daughters survives and hides in a neighbor's barn. Why she thought she should hide is not entirely clear,  and it's kind of a distraction from the narrative about the work of the police. On the other hand, it's key to the climax, so maybe that's why. Probably won't read any more of the series. BTW: What She Saw is the title of multiple books. 

The Guilt Trip, by Sandie Jones, which was advertised as a mystery but seemed more of a domestic drama, had me wishing someone would die a lot sooner than they did--and I wouldn't have cared which character it was. In sum, the narrator is happily married until she goes to her brother-in-law's destination wedding and becomes convinced her husband is having an affair with the bride. She spends the weekend melting down, arguably too late, until she figures out what's really going on. Not recommended.

In Righteous Prey, by John Sandford, Lucas Davenport and Virgil Flowers take on a band of bitcoin billionaires who have decided to become vigilantes, killing "assholes," sending out press releases on their kills, and maintaining a Dark Web presence. Interestingly, Virgil's presence seems to prevent Lucas acting like the vigilante he himself has become in other recent books. The story is entertaining enough but is a clear set-up for a sequel, which I generally find annoying. 

I'm not a fan of Harlan Coban, but Gone for Good was available on Libby, so . . . I checked it out. It revolves around a 15-year-old crime that might have been committed by the protagonist Will's brother, Ken, who has been missing ever since. Now, with a new crime at hand and evidence that the brother may be alive, Will must figure out what is going on. If it sounds similar to my description of Alex Finlay's The Night Shift, that's because there are similarities. But The Night Shift is better. 

The Last to Vanish by Megan Miranda is not a particularly great mystery about a series of disappearances from a North Carolina inn. For me to think something is a great mystery, it has to have interesting twists -- but give the reader enough information as they go along to think the twists make sense at the end. The twists in this book are so out of left field that they don't seem believable. However, I did learn about an interesting concept from the book: trauma tourism. Trauma tourists go to places where bad things have happened and wallow in the horror. I guess this is really a thing!!

The Judge's List by John Grisham is one of those books that starts out strong--a woman whose father was murdered believes she has identified the killer--a sitting judge in Florida. She takes her evidence to Lacy Stoltz, an investigator with the Florida Board on Judicial Conduct. Since the Board doesn't generally handle murders, Lacy initially refuses to take the case--but the law demands that they look into every complaint, so she begins an investigation. Around the time the judge figures out he is being investigated, I thought it broke down and became a typical "chasing the bad guy" scenario. And the ending--truly hated. 

Cajun Kiss of Death, by Ellen Byron, won the Agatha Award for 2021, Byron's second win for the Maggie Crozat series in four years. The series is set in a small Louisiana town and is just way too cutesy for me--even though people are dying, being stalked, getting food poisoning, etc. all around. I thought it might be interesting because it was all about food--a chef was murdered, other chefs/cooks were suspects, there were recipes at the end. But nothing redeemed it for me. 

Nonfiction

Although I don't live in Broomfield any more, I'm still in a Broomfield-based book group and interested in the town's literary goings-on. This year, the One Book One Broomfield selection is The Honey Bus: A Memoir of Loss, Courage and a Girl Saved by Bees, by Meredith May. As one might guess from the title, there's a lot about bees and the beekeeping grandfather who taught Meredith about the habits and wisdom of the bees. Sadly, others in her life were less supportive--her mother barely leaving her bed for years after she was divorced from May's father and her grandmother--perhaps from some guilt complex--defending her daughter when she abused Meredith and her brother. I guess the book is well done for what it is, but I found the bees as a model for human community overdone and the family dysfunction of a piece with so many other memoirs that it failed to provoke the outrage it deserved. Again, perhaps I am just a bad person.

Favorite Passages

He knew there should be a balance between the taking and the giving a person does in one lifetime. That a good relationship, between bees and humans, or two middle school classmates, or between a mother and daughter, needs to start from a mutual understanding that the other is precious.

    --Meredith May, The Honey Bus

People liked the idea of a strong leader--they didn't much care what that leader stood for. What citizens wanted above all things was a quiet life. They didn't mind shrinking their horizons. They didn't object to not travelling, as long as nobody else was travelling either. They wanted an orderly life with everyone knowing their place. Plenty of rules, the more of them the better.

    --C.J. Carey, Widowland

Good Memoirs: In Love and Going There

So I have mentioned ad nauseum that I am not a fan of memoirs, but two very good ones were highlights of my late September reading. Other than those two books, most of what I read since I last posted just made me grumpy although I should say I did actually enjoy a couple of light beach reads.

Fiction

I was surprised to enjoy Golden Girl, by Elin Hilderbrand, because I had read a few of her books and never been too impressed. There's a fantasy element here that was actually entertaining--Cape Cod author Vivi is killed in a hit-and-run early in the book; a heavenly guide allows her to watch over her family for a few months and intervene with three "nudges." Who wouldn't want to do that, especially if you were a mom leaving three children behind? For me, the question of who killed Vivi wasn't that important (I guessed early on!) but getting the kids straightened out did engage me. Fun beach read (or, if you're me, fun listen on my morning walks).

Another fun though not deep read is The Bookish Life of Nina Hill, by Abbie Waxman. It's basically a rom-com but it's set in a bookstore (score) and trivia contests (funny) with family drama involving the heroine learning she has a large extended family she knew nothing about. Not very realistic but another fun late-summer read.

Mysteries/Thrillers

The Overnight Guest, by Heather Gudenkauf, has a Room-esque element, as well as the popular trope of having a true crime writer as a protagonist.  The writer Wylie Lark writes about cold cases and, rather creepily in my opinion, is staying at the Iowa farmhouse that was the scene of the crime she is trying to solve. Who would do that? Seriously? The story is told in three narrative threads: Wylie's present-day research, events around the time of the crime in 2000, and brief snippets about a child and mother trapped in a basement by the child's father. The three threads come together in a way Gudenkauf clearly intends to be surprising but just felt highly unlikely to me. Didn't love. 

The Island, by Adrian McKinty, is one of those thrillers in which people do something really stupid and spend the rest of the book trying to escape. Here it's a woman and her two stepchildren trying to escape from a crazy Australian family's island. It's basically an extended chase scene that I grew weary of.

Continuing my grumpy commentary, Do No Harm, by Christina McDonald, is a stupid story about a doctor who, upon learning her child has leukemia and needs an expensive treatment not covered by her insurance, becomes a drug kingpin pretty much overnight. And she's cavalier about any harm (substantial) she is causing; at points, the author seems to be arguing that opioid deaths are the price we have to pay for people getting some relief from chronic pain. Also stupid is the fact that the two local cops investigating opioid deaths are the doctor's husband (despite the fact that her brother is a known drug dealer) and a woman involved romantically with a doctor who has already been arrested on drug-related charges. Conflict of interest much?  Unsure why I finished this book. 

Lonely pregnant woman befriends another apparently lonely pregnant woman at a prenatal class. Second pregnant woman starts stalking first pregnant woman though first pregnant woman doesn't seem to notice. Weird doings ensue. Way too much explication at the end of the book. That's Greenwich Park, by Katherine Faulkner.

Slight break from grumpy negativity: The Night Shift, by Alex Finlay, is actually a decent mystery. On New Year's Eve 1999, someone attacks the employees of a Blockbuster, killing four (three teenage girls and the manager) and leaving one girl alive. Fifteen years later, the employees of an ice cream shop are attacked and, again, three teenage girls are killed and one survives. Are the two crimes linked? Could the suspect in the first crime, who escaped and has not been seen since, have returned? Is his brother, now a public defender, somehow involved? Is the survivor of the first crime? Pregnant FBI agent Sarah Keller has to put it all together. While I had suspicions about the person eventually revealed to be the killer early on, I still enjoyed the book. 

Like other well-established mystery series, Linda Castillo's Kate Burkholder series has gotten a bit tired. Perhaps because it strains credulity that there could be so much violence among the Amish in Kate's small Ohio community, The Hidden One involves the discovery of the body of a long-missing Amish bishop in Pennsylvania instead of Ohio. Kate and the suspect were close as teenagers and the elders in the community ask her to investigate. Of course, she is threatened and of course she solves the case. Not terrible but not great.

YA

I can't remember who recommended The House in the Cerulean Sea, by T.J. Klune to me, but they sold it as a sweet fantasy/queer love story about children with special powers who suffer discrimination but feel safe in the residential orphanage/school where they live. I found it mildly interesting but predictable. Then I read that the author said he had been inspired to write the book upon reading the terrible news stories about the horrific treatment of Native Canadians at residential schools. For the second time in this post I ask, seriously? To trivialize and misrepresent that experience through a treacly fantasy story is despicable.

Nonfiction

In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss by Amy Bloom is the moving and instructive story of her husband's decision to seek aided suicide when he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. It turns out that this is not an easy thing to do if you are expected to live longer than 6 months. Bloom and husband Brian Ameche (who seemed like something of an odd couple and yet clearly had a happy marriage) eventually landed on Dignitas, a Swiss company, as the route to a dignified death rather than "the long good-bye." Bloom reflects on the early signs of Brian's dementia, recounts the process of getting approved as a Dignitas client (grueling), and describes their trip to Zurich for Brian's planned death--and she does it all beautifully. 

More of a surprise to me was how much I enjoyed Going There, by Katie Couric. I've never been a huge Couric fan, but it was interesting to read how her career developed in an era when women journalists were subjected to various forms of discrimination and misogyny. And she does not hold back in calling out a lot of people who acted badly, especially at CBS during her 5 years there. The story of her first husband's illness and how she brought all her research skills to bear on trying to keep him alive was moving; her insight later that she had spent too much time trying to help him live and not enough helping him prepare to die was devastating. Years after his death, her daughter's research into her family's "Southern-ness" brought out some things about Jay's attitudes that were challenging, and I respect her for bringing them into the light. On the other hand, I have some doubts about her response to #MeToo and Matt Lauer. Although she acknowledges Matt did some terrible things, I felt she still has trouble accepting that these things happened (and that perhaps she should have known). In fact, she admits to being "tone deaf" or wrong a number of times throughout the book--and I felt in many of these cases she should have known better even as these things happened. So I'm still not a huge Couric fan, but the book is interesting and I recommend it. (And I was sorry to hear this week that she has been in treatment for breast cancer since June--the disease has definitely been a scourge on her loved ones.)

Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s, by historian Nicole Hemmer, is most notable in (1) pointing out that, although the right loves to quote him and pretend a reverence for Ronald Reagan, his optimistic view and willingness to compromise made him different from the conservative movement that he helped to launch (and actively disliked by some of its denizens), (2) reaffirming the influence of the right-wing chattering class, in part on television but maybe more effectively on talk radio and the internet, and (3) drawing a direct line from Pat Buchanan to Donald Trump. Donald Trump was not as new or surprising as we may have thought--he was the successful incarnation of the hateful and racist ideas that Buchanan had advocated for and eventually brought into the mainstream of the Republican Party, which, as Hemmer says, "gave up on governing in 2014" (I might say it was before that, when they announced their goals were for Obama to fail and be a one-term president). It's about power, more specifically, white power (she didn't say that specifically--but I am saying it). 

Favorite Passages

All happiness is fleeting, but I see now that there is fleeting and then there is the true and wall-like impossibility of ever experiencing this kind of happiness again, even once, even next week, let alone a year from now. Doors are closing around us, all the time.

"You should be with a guy who doesn't mind that you're smarter than he is, who doesn't mind that most of the time, you'll be the main event," he said. "You need to be with a guy who supports how hard you work and who'll bring you a cup of coffee late at night. I don't know if I can be that guy"--he broke into tears--"but I'd like a shot."  We married.

    --Amy Bloom, In Love

Empire of Pain and Other Late Summer Reading

You know the feeling when you read a book and you realize how ill-informed you truly are? That's how I felt reading Empire of Pain, which I highly recommend. 

Fiction

A few months ago, I decided to join the University of Illinois alumni online book group, which reads and discusses a book every quarter. There was a great series of discussions about Hidden Valley Road (a book I loved). Being over Isabel Allende, I then skipped reading A Long Petal of the Sea. This quarter, I was somewhat disappointed with All the Lonely People, by Mike Gayle. It's a pleasant enough book about an elderly Jamaican Brit, Hubert Bird, a widower who is estranged from his son and whose communication with his daughter is confined to weekly Facetime calls, in which he describes an active but totally fictional social life. When she announces she will be visiting in a few months, he decides to start making some friends so his stories won't be lies. The contemporary story is intercut with the story of Hubert's earlier life and the discrimination and challenges he faced as an immigrant in Britain. The book is okay, but I felt like it could have been so much more. Rather shallow in comparison to  many other novels about the immigrant experience. 

I read We Are Not Like Them, by Christine Pride and Jo Piazza, right after reading Fiona and Jane (see below), which was interesting because both books are about best friends. Like the interracial pair of writers who penned the book, Riley and Jen are best friends of different races. They grew up together in Philadelphia, where Riley was ensconced in a solid African American family and Jen, whose single mom was somewhat irresponsible, relied on Riley's family, especially her grandmother, for stability. Riley grew up to be a successful television journalist, while Jen is married to a cop. When Jen's husband shoots a black teenager and Riley covers the story, their friendship is severely tested. Their alternating perspectives reveal the betrayals both felt. While some of the explications of their feelings felt a bit obvious and the happy ending somewhat unlikely, I still enjoyed the book and hope the team of Pride and Piazza will work together again.

I must admit I struggled with Assembly, by Natasha Brown. It's a short novel but it's told in vignettes that I found hard to piece together. In addition, because the author doesn't name many characters, it's sometimes hard to figure out who she is talking about. We do know the protagonist is a black Brit who works in finance, has a white boyfriend whose family she is about to visit (with dread), and has cancer. Her company sends her out to schools to talk with young people about her success (touting the company's diversity), but she knows she is lying to them, as she doesn't talk to them about the reality of the micro and macro aggressions she suffers from colleagues. When diagnosed with cancer, she decides to regain agency by deciding not to have any treatment, choosing death over a life in which she has no control. 

So a second "theme" (besides best friends) in this batch of books was the #MeToo movement. Vladimir, by Julia May Jonas features an older academic whose husband John has been accused of inappropriate sexual relationships with students. The accusation is true, but his wife, the book's narrator, defends him because none of the relationships occurred after the college banned such goings-on and she and her husband had an open marriage. As John awaits his hearing, our narrator is under pressure herself--students feel uncomfortable around her. She has what I would call a breakdown, more or less kidnapping a new younger professor, the titular Vladimir (this isn't a spoiler because we know from the beginning that she has Vladimir chained somewhere). I have seen the book described as the first "camp" take on #MeToo. I just found it creepy. 

Surprisingly, I much preferred Jennifer Weiner's That Summer. I'm not generally a fan of Weiner, but I enjoyed her tale of a woman who, many years after being raped by a boarding school boy as a teenager, decides to seek out the boys who harmed her. She herself isn't sure if she's seeking revenge or simply some kind of acknowledgment. She finds herself facing a dilemma when she cultivates the rapist's wife as a means to get to him--and finds that she likes both the wife and their daughter. Entertaining, while still exploring the damage done by the "boys will be boys" attitude. 

The Man Who Lived Underground is a previously unpublished novel by Richard Wright. It opens with Fred Daniels, a Black man, walking down a Chicago street, counting his pay and thinking about his pregnant wife. He is picked up by the police, tortured into confessing (having worked on a Chicago Public Schools curriculum about the police torture of the 1970s and 1980s, I know this description, while horrifying, is not overdone), and then escapes into the sewer system. It's a gripping narrative that is well worth reading, made even more interesting by its publication with an essay by Wright, "Memories of My Grandmother," in which he discusses his thinking as he wrote the book. What he was thinking as he wrote didn't parallel what I was thinking as I read, but it definitely shed light on his intentions. Highly recommended.

In writing Cult Classic, it seems that Sloane Crossley was trying to inject a sci-fi element into her story of a woman who has had too many boyfriends that she is still thinking about as she prepares to meet her fiance. The sci-fi piece has several of those old flames cross paths with her. For me, neither the sci-fi element or the basic story worked--though Crossley does turn some interesting phrases ("I'd done nothing wrong except, perhaps, to lay the groundwork for wrongdoing"). Not recommended. 

I've seen Reputation, by Lex Croucher, described as feminist and compared to Jane Austen. I'd say it's more like a Georgette Heyer with female debauchery. 

Short Stories

Fiona and Jane, by Jean Chen Ho, is a collection of linked short stories about two best friends. Both girls are Taiwanese American, though one was born in the U.S. and the other was an immigrant. The stories begin when the girls were young and jump forward into adulthood. I particularly liked the story in which Jane visits her father, who has moved back to Taiwan, and learns that he is gay, involved with a man whom he knew years before he left for the States. This revelation threads through other events in her life, including her friendship with Fiona and her sexuality. While I did enjoy some of the stories, because they are about the same two characters, I wished for them to add up to more as a whole. The book was very positively reviewed in the NYT and elsewhere. 

Mysteries/Thriller

Cold, Cold Bones is one of the better recent entries in Kathy Reichs' Temperance Brennan series-- perhaps because she doesn't seem compelled in this book to instruct us on some arcane aspect of forensic anthropology. She is still trying to educate us--this time about issues faced by veterans, including Tempe's daughter Katy, but it fits in the story and isn't overwhelming. The story is one of revenge, although it takes a while for Tempe and Skinny Slidell (who is now in business with Tempe's significant other Ryan) to put together how a series of grim events--starting with a human eyeball with GPS coordinates etched into it being delivered to Tempe's back door--are linked. Entertaining.

So I was wrong about Dalton and Casey having a baby in Kelley Armstrong's next book in the Rockton series. Instead,  A Stranger in Town brings us an incredibly complicated story of murder and manipulation linked back to Rockton's early days, as well as a suggestion of another future direction--it appears Rockton will be closed and Dalton and Casey will start their own hidden community. Or is this, too, a false lead?

American Girl, by Wendy Walker, is a murder mystery featuring longstanding conflicts between the powerful and powerless in a small town. The protagonist is presented as being autistic, but the characterization is incredibly lazy--the girl is good at math and likes order but in no other way does she seem autistic. Nor recommended.

Lola, escaping from a dead-existence in London, heads to Paris to stay with her half-brother in The Paris Apartment. But when she arrives on his doorstep, he has disappeared. As she tries to find him, she discovers that all is not as it seems in the fancy building where he lives. The author inserts French phrases throughout, then translates them into English. Of course, many of these conversations would be entirely in French since the setting is Paris. Kind of wondering if that technique actually makes many readers feel more ensconced in France. Overall, just okay.

Nonfiction

 As I mentioned above, Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty, by Patrick Radden Keefe, was an eye-opener. Although I am aware of the opioid crisis and the protests against Purdue Pharma and the many cultural organizations bearing the Sackler name, I really had no idea of the criminal perfidy of the Sackler family across at least three generations. They knew what oxy was; they marketed the hell out of it, including selling it to known pill-pushers; they corrupted FDA officials; they sucked all the money out of the company after it became clear the company was going to be hit with huge penalties. They were/are horrible human beings. The fact that the revelations of their criminality has posed a dilemma for the many institutions to which they donated huge sums of money suggests that perhaps people should be more discerning when they ask the wealthy for donations. Highly recommended. 

Favorite Passages

A 2016 study found that purchasing even a single meal with a value of $20 for a physician can be enough to change the way that he prescribes. And for all their lip service to the contrary, the Sacklers didn't need studies to tell them this.

OxyContin was, in his view, entirely beyond reproach--a magnificent gift that the Sacklers had bestowed upon humanity that was now being sullied by a nihilistic breed of hillbilly pill poppers.

    --Patrick Radden Keefe, Empire of Pain (I could put a lot more quotes here--just read the book!)

Happy (Left on Tenth) and Sad (Red Comet) Lives

A family reunion in mid-August seems to have kept me from doing a mid-month post, but the reunion was fun as I have some entertaining relatives!  A few books this month made me reflect on happy endings, which are definitely good in a memoir but can feel entirely out of place in a novel that has been successfully building dread for a couple hundred pages. 

Fiction

Any Other Family, by Eleanor Brown, is an interesting look at family. It features three sets of Denver parents who have adopted the children of one biological mother and made a big effort to function in a way that the four children feel like siblings. They are all on vacation together when the biological mother announces she is pregnant again and is hoping that the couple who adopted her youngest child will take this new baby as well; but that mother is struggling with mothering one child and is not interested in adopting another. The story of the tensions that occur on their shared vacation as they try to solve the question of who will take the new baby is interspersed with their backstories and statements from prospective parents for the new baby from outside their family circle. One of the mothers is incredibly overbearing and hard to take--but I still enjoyed the unique perspective on family until the ending, which  was disappointing and somewhat killed my positive feelings about the book. 

The Husbands, by Chandler Baker, is kind of a reverse-gender treatment of the classic satirical horror story Stepford Wives, in which women with controlling husbands "convert" them to supportive, domestic gods. But Chandler Baker is no Ira Levin and the book neither amused nor thrilled me. Since Baker also wrote the "MeToo" novel The Whisper Network, it's clear she hopes to illuminate women's issues, but I just didn't think this one worked. 

I absolutely loved Bruce Holsinger's The Gifted School, but The Displacements bore little resemblance to that satire set in Boulder (although there is a family dysfunction element that is common). In The Displacements, a hurricane of unprecedented ferocity is bearing down on Miami. Except for father Brantley, a surgeon who is the incident commander at his hospital and thus cannot immediately leave, the well-to-do Larson-Hall family--mother Daphne, stepson Gavin, and children Mia and Oliver--evacuate. Their evacuation is a disaster, and the family ends up in a displaced persons camp in Oklahoma, unable to leave because they have no ready resources and Brantley is inaccessible. Things go from bad to worse at the camp, where we meet small-time crook Tate and his addict sidekick Jessamyn, who undertake a variety of scams at the camp, as well as Rain, the FEMA employee in charge of the camp. There's a prevailing feeling of chaos and devolution that seems all too possible, making the relatively upbeat ending feel out of place. Despite that, I liked the book and recommend it.

I'm sure I had read something about This Time Tomorrow, by Emma Straub, or it wouldn't have found a place on my TBR list. But by the time I got it from the library, I had forgotten it had a time travel element. When Alice Stern is experiencing angst over her 40th birthday, turns down her boyfriend's proposal, gets abandoned at dinner by her best friend who has to rush home because her baby is ill (highlighting the fact that Alice has neither husband nor children), gets drunk, and ends up sleeping on the ground in the shed behind her father's house, she wakes up to find herself turning 16. There's a lot of going back and forth between 16 and 40, with variations in her life at 40 based on things she did when she was back in the teenage years. But I really didn't care. The book lacks the magic of really good time travel stories (e.g., The Time Traveler's Wife; Recursion; Here, and Now and Then; Oona Out of Order) and I can't recommend it.

Tom Perrotta has written some wonderful novels about characters who make questionable moral choices, but I didn't care for Tracy Flick Can't Win. In case you don't recall, Tracy Flick was the character portrayed by Reese Witherspoon in Election. But Tracy is now an adult, a divorced mom and assistant principal at a suburban high school. Her principal is about to retire and she hopes to get his job, but there are inevitably obstacles. The story is told from six perspectives, which for me dilutes Tracy's story. When something dramatic happens at the end, I don't care, nor do I take any meaning from it. I've read a number of positive reviews of the book, so know that others do like it, but I can't recommend it. 

YA

My granddaughter had mentioned that she had tried more than once to get into They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera and had finally gotten far enough into the book to decide it was pretty good. So I decided to read it and could immediately see why it was hard to get into--in the first two chapters, the two main characters, teenagers Mateo and Rufus, learn they are going to die that day. That makes for a grim beginning. The central conceit of the book is that a "service" called Death-Cast lets people know early on the day they will die that it is their last 24 hours on earth (we don't learn how this service has come to be, and not too much else about society seems different). There are a variety of additional services available to "Deckers," those who have been notified they will die. One of these is a social media site called Last Friend, which allows Deckers to make a connection with someone to spend their last hours with. Through Last Friend, Mateo and Rufus connect and spend the day together, visiting people and sites important to them. Although I would have liked more explanation of how Death-Cast became a thing, I found, within the grimness, that the book celebrated friendship in a lovely way. And I enjoyed discussing it with my granddaughter!

Mystery/Suspense

To me, the most interesting thing about The Sacred Bridge, by Anne Hillerman, is that it looks like Hillerman the younger may be planning to take Jim Chee away from police work and back toward becoming a traditional healer. Don't know how that will translate into future mysteries but will definitely check out the next book to find out.

Alone in the Wild is the fifth in Kelley Armstrong's series about two police officers in a secret Canadian town established for people needing to escape from their previous lives. As with The Sacred Bridge, the most interesting facet of this title was the signaling that in the future, Casey and Dalton are likely to become parents. Since Rockton has no children, that could be an interesting development. 

A Line to Kill is Anthony Horowitz's third title in the Horowitz/Hawthorne series featuring a retired police detective and his mystery author sidekick. The first two titles felt fresh, but this one lapsed into more traditional territory and involved way too much explanation at the end. Not recommended.

I love libraries and have a love-hate relationship with mysteries so mystery about a dead woman in a library--sign me up. That's the set-up for The Woman in the Library, by Sulari Gentill. The author tells us that the killer is one of a small group of loosely connected young people who were at the library at the time of the killing. There's also a meta aspect to the story: a fictional writer is writing a novel about a fictional writer named Hannah who was part of the group in the library; a friend provides increasingly hostile critiques of chapters of the novel. Occasionally it got confusing, but it wasn't boring.

As the Wicked Watch, by Tamron Hall, is set in Chicago and features journalist Jordan Manning, who is investigating the disappearance of high-achieving African American teenager Masey James. I liked the first part of the book, which focuses on Jordan's work filing stories on why the police are characterizing Masey as a runaway when Jordan is sure she is the victim of violence. But then, when she is assigned to cover that store exclusively, she becomes more of an investigator than a journalist and the story seemed to spin out of control. Hall deals with a serious issue--violence against African American women and the neglect of such cases by both the media and police; I hope she'll stick to having Jordan remain a journalist rather than an investigator in future titles (assuming this is going to become a series).

What Happened to the Bennetts, by Lisa Scottoline, also took a turn half way through the book. The Bennetts are driving home from a soccer game one evening when they are stopped by two men in an SUV, who demand their car; when the family dog jumps at one of the perpetrators, the teenage daughter is fatally shot. One of the bad guys also ends up dead on the ground. In the middle of that night, after their daughter dies in the hospital, the Bennetts are awakened by FBI agents who inform them that mobsters and drug cartels were involved and to be safe, they must immediately go into hiding in preparation for going into witness protection. The first part of the book deals with the difficulties of suddenly being displaced, how you and the people left behind react. I really liked this part of the book. Then the father, Jason, owner of a court reporting business, decides to seek vengeance on his own--to my mind, totally unbelievable. So I liked half, didn't care for the other half. 

I feel like I can't say too much about No One Will Miss Her, by Kat Rosenfield, without giving away some of the twists. Suffice it to say it's about two couples--a wealthy couple from Boston and a not-wealthy couple from a small town in rural Maine. There are a LOT of twists, many not very believable--but still entertaining.

Girl, Forgotten, by Karin Slaughter, is a follow-up to her bestseller Pieces of Her, which became a Netflix series. The daughter from that book, Andrea Oliver, has just become a U.S. Marshall when her uncle the Senator gets her assigned to a case that involves crimes her cult leader/criminal father may have committed as a teenager. A number of things about the book really annoyed me, including: (1) a novice U.S. Marshall would never be sent out on a mission that involves her family and is a secret form her colleagues, (2) her new partner tells her that investigation is not the job of the U.S. Marshall Service--and then they spend the whole book investigating, and (3) Slaughter sets up a new confrontation with Andrea's father at the end of the book, obviously prepping us for a sequel--we've had that from other authors and it's just annoying! 

Nonfiction/Memoir/Biography

Before I started reading, I definitely had the wrong idea about Left on Tenth: A Second Chance at Life, by Delia Ephron. I thought it was about Delia finding love in her 70s following her husband's death. For a brief time, it was about that--and what a gem of a partner she found in her second husband Peter. But then the book--actually her life--took a turn and became about her grueling battle with leukemia. She has unbelievable support from family and friends (even though she doesn't tell her friends about her illness for quite some time). Although I read a review by the novelist Joyce Maynard that suggested Ephron spent too much time praising people who had helped her, I disagree. If it hadn't been for reading about the support she got from loved ones,  reading about her illness would have been almost unbearable. Of course, she survived, which is cause to rejoice. Reading the book is an emotional experience but definitely not for everyone.

I'm not sure why I kept listening to the 45-hour Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath, by Heather Clark. Clark obviously adores Plath's work and is proud that she had access to sources that the other numerous biographers of Plath did not have. So the work is adulatory and detailed. But the only real takeaway is that Plath had serious mental health problems and chose probably the worst possible person to be her husband. I loved The Bell Jar but have never really understood her poetry--perhaps if I go back to it now, I might be able to see my way through the poems. But even if I can, I'm not sure it will be worth the hours it took to get through the biography!

Andrea Elliott's Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival and Hope in an American City started as a 2013 series in the New York Times but Elliott continued her reporting for a total of eight years, following young Dasani from age 11 through her graduation from high school. Dasani was one of eight children of Chanel and Supreme. The family lives for years in one room in a truly awful homeless shelter. They also spend time in public housing, which is a much better situation, but one her parents are unable to sustain because of an array of bad decisions. Despite the fact that there is a lot of love in the family, the children eventually end up in foster care. Dasani initially avoids foster care because she's accepted at the Milton Hersey School in Pennsylvania. Although she does well at the school, she self-sabotages (it's not entirely clear why but concern for her siblings seems to be a major factor), getting into fights and eventually being sent back to a foster care placement in New York. New York political leaders do not come off well--particularly Letitia James, who tries to somehow take "credit" for Dasani after she became a mini-celeb when the NYT story was published. Even those who want to help the family seem unable to really make a difference. As I was reading the book, I thought it was a modern update on There Are No Children Here by Alex Kotlowitz, a book that had a huge impact on me back in the 1990s--and Elliott acknowledges that that book inspired her reporting. This book reminds us that the problems of poverty have not been solved, and the innocent victims of both systemic issues and parental problems are children. 

Dawn Turner's Three Girls from Bronzeville: A Uniquely American Memoir of Race, Fate, and Sisterhood made for an interesting follow-up to Invisible Child. Turner's work provides insight into many of the events that have shaped Black Chicago, from the Great Migration to the development and then neglect of public housing, to gentrification. All of this is context for her real focus: her own story and that of her younger sister Kim and her childhood best friend Debra. Despite their involved parents, Kim starts ditching school and drinking at a young age; after she has a miscarriage as a teenager, she is depressed and drinking more and more until she dies of a heart attack at 23. Debra was always a bold girl, but she loses her way somewhere along the way. She dances in strip clubs for years and then is convicted of killing a man she was doing drugs with. She never denies killing him but claims it was an accident. She ends up serving 19 years in various Indiana prisons. In prison, she gets a degree and works to help other inmates. She also, over time, goes through reconciliation with her victim's family. Based on the title of the book and her comment that "there but for the grace of God," Turner seems to see the women's different lives as a matter of chance. As someone who is not religious and does not believe in fate, I see individual decisions and systemic conditions as more central. Despite this difference of perspective, I did find the book a rewarding and insightful read. 

One Surprising Book (The Lioness) and One I Wish Had Surprised Me (Beautiful World, Where Are You?)

 It was another two weeks of mostly inane reading, but I'm currently in the midst of a 45-hour biography of Sylvia Plath, so I'm trying to redeem myself. Meanwhile, here's what I read as July wound down. 

Fiction

I have liked many of Chris Bohjalian's books and have always thought of him as a gentle writer (is that a thing?) who does a particularly good job depicting female characters. The Lioness is a total change of pace. Set in 1964, the book tells the story of a successful actress, Katie Barstow, and her new husband, a gallerist, who take an entourage of friends, colleagues (agents, publicists), and family members on the second part of their honeymoon (do people do that?)--a safari in Tanzania. Things go horribly wrong, and Bohjalian weaves the story of what happens with the back stories of the characters. Through the back stories, Bohjalian explores racism, exploitation of various kinds in the film industry, and child abuse, among other issues. But I found it hard to even remember who the characters were because the violence on the safari--human to human as well as animal to human--felt so overwhelming (and so not expected from Bohjalian). Not recommended.

I often do not understand why certain authors become darlings in the literary world, and that is the case with Sally Rooney, whose three novels have all received rave reviews. I didn't read her first book, and I didn't care for Normal People. As for her latest--Beautiful World, Where Are You?--I found the title the best thing about the book. At the center of the book are two young women--writer Alice and her best friend Eileen--and the men in their lives. Part of the book is presented in email exchanges between the two, while the remainder is standard narrative. In her correspondence, Alice waxes philosophical on writing, the novel, modernism, and aesthetics, which is the only part of the book that even approached being interesting to me. But nothing much really happens and what does feels prosaic. Perhaps I'm too old to appreciate what is clearly a millennial novel but I think I'm through reading Sally Rooney.

The Final Case, by David Guterson, has some similarities to Beautiful World. One of its major characters--the unnamed narrator--is a writer who thinks he's done writing but still thinks about writing quite a lot. The other major character is his father, Royal, an attorney in his 80s who needs his son to drive him around after he has a car accident that suggests he should no longer be driving. The titular case is based on a real Washington case, in which an Ethiopian girl adopted by a fundamentalist family is abused and dies; the parents are charged with death by abuse, and Royal takes on the mother's case because all the public defenders are too busy. There's a lot about the case and the court proceedings, but weirdly, the book doesn't really seem to be about the case. I'm not entirely sure, but I think it's about the good and the bad of families and the power of work. I liked it better than Rooney's book--the characters are old, like me, and the case itself, though not the point, was interesting--but it wasn't entirely satisfying either. 

Mystery/Thriller

Mysteries continue to be forgettable (and too numerous):

--The Sorority Murder, by Allison Brennan. A trifecta of tired tropes: a true crime podcast, a long-held secret among college friends, and a battle-scarred law(wo)man. Not Brennan's best.

--The Widow, by K.L. Slater. This was a freebie from Audible, so I don't feel too bad that I can't remember much about it except that a basic plot point seemed entirely unbelievable to me.

--Into the Darkest Corner, by Elizabeth Haynes. Another freebie from Audible focused on a woman who thinks she has escaped from an abusive relationship (but has developed OCD) . . . but has she? Rather predictable.

--Find Me, by Alafair Burke. Hope Miller, an amnesiac who has not known her own life story since being in an accident 15 years ago, disappears from her new home in the Hamptons. Her best friend Lindsay, a defense attorney, sets out to find her. A surprise at the end was really, really annoying.

--Insomnia, by Sarah Pinborough. This book portrays gaslighting (and the effects of not being able to sleep) really well, but I could have done without the supernatural element that Pinborough threw into the mix and the purported reason why the main character thought she was losing her mind was ridiculous.

--Blackout, by Erin Flanagan. This is a mystery with a science fiction element involving neuroscience that also deals with misogyny in academia, what constitutes scholarship in today's media landscape, rape culture, alcoholism...it's a lot. But it was good entertainment while at a water park with two 12-year-olds for the weekend.

--No Way Back, by J.B. Turner. Terrible book--wife gets killed in a complicated political scheme, estranged husband kills a couple people involved in the scheme, book ends. Obvious set-up for a sequel in which some more people involved in the scheme get killed.