Author Archives: Hara Person

Some Good Books, Fall 2016 Edition Part II

Sometimes escaping into a good book is just the right thing to do. To that end, here are some good books to explore as the weather gets colder and the world gets darker. Unintentionally, there are interconnected themes in this particular group of books which make them interesting to read back to back. There’s a lot about mothers and daughters, or the absence of mothers and what that does to daughters. There are also connected threads about what it is to be a girl, and what it is to be an adult woman. And in the midst of all that, there’s one very brawny, very masculine book. There’s so much work to be done in the world, but time to renew and refresh the soul and the imagination is important too. Grab a blanket. Dig in.

The Summer Without Menby Siri Hustvedt  ©©©

41ovnmq2uel-_sx337_bo1204203200_Poet Mia Frederickson is forced to re-examine her life after her husband of many years surprises her with the news that he wants to take a break from their marriage. After a breakdown and hospitalization in a psychiatric ward, Mia goes to spend the summer in her hometown near her mother, a resident in a senior home. The book brings together interwoven strands of Mia’s life that summer, as she gets to know women at different moments of the life cycle. There is her mother’s group of friends at the home, known as the Five Swans, fiery, creative, and opinionated women at the end of their lives who have created a new community with each other out of loss and change, one of whom Mia creates a particular bond with. There is her younger neighbor, a mother of two small children in a bad marriage to an angry, mostly absent man. And then there are Mia’s poetry students, a group of adolescent girls who prey on each other’s vulnerabilities while trying to articulate their angst and aspirations. It is all of these women, as well as Mia’s daughter back home, who are present in the summer landscape of Mia’s life as she tries to pick up the pieces and figure out what comes next. As the title indicates, men are offstage, though the shadow of Mia’s husband looms large. So too does another disembodied male, Mia’s mysterious philosphically-inclined texter. This brainy, literary novel is full of well-placed references to books and poetry, but it’s really about the texture of women’s lives, and the role of men in those lives.

Hystopiaby David Means  ©©©

51sgtorydgl-_sx331_bo1204203200_This Man Booker longlist title is a hard but rewarding read. This is a book within a book, ostensibly written by returned Vietnam vet Eugene Allen who needs to find a way to give voice to his wartime experience as well as personal pain. The period is the late 60’s, and JFK is still the president, having survived several attempts on his life. The country, like its president, is wounded and grim, hopelessly enmeshed in Vietnam for the foreseeable future. The government has established the Pysch Corps, an agency assigned with managing the mental hygiene of a traumatized nation. An complicated system, involving drugs and therapy, has been developed to help returning soldiers deal with their horrific memories and emotional scars. Meanwhile Michigan has been set aside as a territory for those vets too shattered by their Vietnam experiences to function in open society. The plot is complicated and circular, but the themes of freedom, memory, and trauma create a powerful vision of the destruction we cause not only to those we fight in wars in faraway lands but also in our own society while at war. There’s a macho, muscular quality to this novel which fits well into the war novel genre, but underneath that is some real tenderness.

The Mothers, by Brit Bennett ©©©

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This soaring first novel by Bennett is, as the title reveals, about mothers. The lack of mothers, poor mothering, the inability to be a mother, good mothers, communal mothers, the choice not to become a mother, the unexpected reality of motherhood. All kinds of mothers dance through the pages of this novel about Nadia Turner, a now motherless teenager about to go off to college. Nadia’s mother has abandoned her, taking her own life without even leaving a note or a clue to why. Nadia knows that her mother’s own life took a sharp turn when she accidentally became pregnant with Nadia, and she is tortured by the idea that she was her mother’s undoing. Their church, the Upper Room, is the center of their small black community in Southern California. Nadia’s father is a regular at the church, where there a group of older women, the mothers, who look after the community. Their voices form a kind of Greek chorus throughout the book, commenting on what they say and what they think they know. Nadia has a summer fling with Luke, the pastor’s son, who walks away from her when she becomes pregnant. This sets off a chain of events that impacts on many lives around them. During that last summer at home before she sets off for the rest of her life, making it out of the community due to her intelligence and good grades, she becomes fast friends with Aubrey, another motherless girl. But their lives are full of secrets that grow in the spaces left by their unmotheredness, until the secrets spill out and threaten the stability not only of their lives but of the lives of the church and the community. Bennett has created a compelling story and strong characters, and there are some amazing lines that make the whole book worth it even with those other plusses.

The Girlsby Emma Cline  ©©
517fj1m6rjl-_sx331_bo1204203200_Evie Boyd is a bored, awkward teenager in California in the late 1960’s.  Her parents are wrapped up in their own post-divorce lives, and don’t have a lot of time for her. Meanwhile the wold is in upheaval and societal norms are being questioned out beyond the confines of Evie’s existence. She yearns for something more meaningful than her mercurial friends and the embarrassing crush she has on her best friend’s older brother. When she comes across a group of older girls living in a nearby commune led by a charismatic man, she is attracted to the thrill of being part of their group. She is drawn to their abandonment of norms, and their aura of freedom. There is one girl in particular who fascinates her, Suzanne, on whom she develops an obsessive crush. She so wants her approval and attention that she will do anything Suzanne asks. Craving acceptance and nearness to Suzanne, Evie becomes increasingly drawn in to the group and their unique approach to right and wrong. What starts with a sense of summer-camp like fun becomes increasingly desperate and dangerous, until she winds up in the middle of the kind of horror from which there is no coming back. This novel manages to both portray the quotidian loneliness of a teenage girl and her desire for approval, while also depicting the kind of group-think that leads to acts of terrible violence.

Eileenby Ottessa Moshfegh  ©©

51pxzi2ebdl-_sx328_bo1204203200_Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, this strange, creepy novel was a gripping read. On the very first page the narrator tells the reader that this is story of how she disappeared. There is no suspense, therefore, in the final outcome, but there is great suspense in the how and why. The main character, Eileen Dunlop, lives with her abusive, alcoholic father. He is delusional, a retired cop who sees people out to get him in the shadows. He can’t be trusted to go outside and so Eileen hides his shoes in an attempt to keep him at home, running out to the liquor store as needed to keep him well-suppplied with gin. Their life together is one of misery, played out against a backdrop of Eileen’s mother’s death, a disgustingly dirty house, mean spirited conversation and accusations, and repressed urges. Eileen works as a secretary at a private correctional facility for boys, where she is essentially ignored and overlooked. Her friendless life is about as grim as possible until a new teacher arrives at work. Rebecca Saint John is everything Eileen is not – beautiful, charming, captivating. Eileen is completely taken in by Rebecca’s attentions. She is so enthralled, hungry for companionship, and flattered by Rebecca’s interest in her that she gets pulled in to a scenario beyond her control. That fateful event provides the spark that Eileen needs to instantly leave her life behind forever. It is only as a much older woman that, as the narrator of this story, she looks back and remembers what was.

Hot Milkby Deborah Levy ©©

51fjvtjak1l-_sx329_bo1204203200_This novel about a tortured and torturing relationship between a mother and daughter was another Man Booker Shortlist book. Reading this book was a claustrophobic experience, which may admittedly say more about me than the book itself, but it was not a pleasurable read. But I can see why it’s gotten so much praise. This is a textured, smart book about the power of mothers over daughters, and about the need for daughters to break free. Sofia is a mess, an anthropologist whose life is stalled. She spends her days caring for her mother’s endless maladies and trying to figure them out. These maladies are described in such a way that it really isn’t clear whether her mother is indeed quite sick physically, or if the issues are primarily psychological – and it doesn’t really matter because either way, her mother is in charge. Her mother, abandoned by Sofia’s father, can’t walk, among other things. She has literally lost the ability to move forward without Sofia’s help. They travel to a special clinic on the sunny coast of Spain for treatment, and while there Sofia begins to consider her own needs and write her own future. The deeply stifled rage of each of the main characters radiates off the pages. That this was a painful read surely attests to the power of the writing.

Rating System

©©© – Amazing Book, dazzling, blew me away

©© – Great Book, deeply satisfying

© – Good Book, but I wanted it to be even better

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Some Good Books, Fall 2016 Edition Part I

It’s been a tough few weeks and doesn’t look like it’s going to be getting any better for at least four years. There’s a lot to do. But we also need to take care of ourselves.  Even as we begin to figure out what part we’re going to play in the months and years to come, we have to keep feeding our minds and souls. So read a book. Or two. Or five. Here are some suggestions. More to come soon.

The Underground Railroadby Colson Whitehead  ©©©

61m3xrjb9ll-_sx327_bo1204203200_This gorgeous, heartbreaking book was on President Obama’s summer reading list and it’s not hard to see why he thought it was a worthwhile read. (Remember when we had a president who read books?). In this novel, Whitehead takes on our shameful history of slavery in America. But this is not simply a tale of victimization and cruelty. Whitehead’s characters, especially Cora, a motherless girl on the edge of womanhood on a Georgia plantation, are the center of this story of survival and resilience. Slavery and racism are the reality in which this novel is set, but this is a tale of struggle, kindness, and hope in the midst of horror. As Whitehead’s characters come to life on the page, so too does the mechanism of escape, the underground railroad, itself a full-blown character in the book. The dream of a way out of oppression and degradation is so real for the characters that the escape route itself becomes real, an actual railroad with train cars that zigzags underneath the earth on its way toward freedom. Danger is the constant companion of hope, both as real as the tracks that lay hidden underneath homes and streets and mountains. There are many Americas in this book, an idea that is even more resonant in this post-election season of sorrow. Whitehead depicts head on the blindness with which the slave era was afflicted that allowed some people to believe that all humans were not equal and to thus treat other people as property without rights or agency, a legacy that lives with us still.  Whitehead shines a light on these different Americas that existed within close prolixity to each other, and are times literally just below or above or out the window or behind a wall, but were hidden from each other unless you know where to look. This novel reminds us not only how far we have from the days of slavery, but how far we still have to go to break down the barriers that exist in this country.

Commonwealth, by Ann Patchett  ©©©

51xlrajhsxl-_ac_us160_At a recent book talk, Patchett revealed that this powerful novel is based on her family. That fact is all the more meaningful once you’ve read the book and know that, among other things, the story contained within Commonwealth involves a book that gets written about the family in the book. So yes, it’s a book about a family about a book about a family. When talking about how much of it was really about her family, she had a great comment: None of it is real, and all of it is true. That’s just a perfect way to talk about writing fiction. But this novel is much more – it is complex, involved, and has a long arc. It starts with a wonderfully random, mundane moment – a lawyer shows up with a bottle of gin at a christening part for the baby daughter of a cop he doesn’t really know. It is a moment that winds up changing the trajectory of many lives, ending marriages, starting other marriages, and the naming of a child. Siblings, love, trust, guns, and Benadryl are all important themes that run through this richly woven novel of moments that on their own often seen quotidian, but add up together to a beautifully complex portrayal of family connections, alliances, and betrayals over several generations. Patchett is a master of imbuing the mundane with enormous consequences, and revealing how one seemingly insignificant act can dramatically shift the course of many lives.

H Is for Hawkby Helen Macdonald  ©©©

51fjfqmnabl-_sx327_bo1204203200_I don’t typically read nonfiction in my free time, as that is how I spend much of my work life.  But I made an exception for this book upon the enthusiastic recommendations of two smart friends who are both great readers. They were right – it was worth it. (Also, it’s on many best book of the year lists and a finalist for many awards, so they weren’t alone in their enthusiasm for this book). Helen Macdonald is a British academic who became unglued by the death of her father. In the midst of despair, she decides to go through with a long deferred dream to get a hawk and train it.  There is much beautiful description in the book about the joy and agony of training her hawk, Mabel, and wonderful connections to T.H White and his fascination with hawks. As an adolescent I was captivated by White’s Once and Future King and still vividly remember Merlyn transforming Wart, who would later become King Arthur, into a hawk as part of his training to become a good and worthy king. So I loved all the Arthurian and T.H. White references. But putting those specifics aside, this is really a book about grief. Throughout the process of obtaining and training Mabel, Macdonald is in deep mourning. She experiences periods of significant self-doubt and feelings of worthlessness, all familiar parts of coming to terms with loss. Her connection to Mabel and her single-minded dedication to training the hawk ultimately being her back into a life whose contours have been permanently reshaped. This may sound very odd, but it is a magnificent, if quirky, depiction of the anguish of losing a loved one, and is well worth the read.

The Guineveres, by Sarah Domet  ©©

unknownIn a great coincidence, four girls named Guinevere all wind up at the Sisters of the Supreme Adoration convent school. Each girl is called something different – there is a Gwen, a Vere, a Ginny, and a Win – but it is their common name that brings these four unwanted girls together.  In the austere school run by nuns, the girls form a tight friendship that helps them manage the severity of their daily life, and deal with having been abandoned by their families. Each girl has an origin story which unfolds over the course of the novel, and each story is heartbreakingly sad. These origin stories are woven together with imagined and extraordinary stories of heroic but tragic women saints. Together the girls plot their emergence into the world upon turning eighteen, and buoy each other’s daily existence. They get into trouble and cover for each other, share fantasies about life outside the convent and reassure each other that someday their lives will be better. Things begin to change when four severely wounded, unidentified soldiers are brought to the hospital wing of the convent to convalesce.  The girls each adopt a comatose solider, hoping that he will be their ticket out, and imagine themselves to be in love. These soldiers without names or identities are blank slates upon whom the Guineveres can write their own fantasies. Desperate for affection, these girls lavish love on their soldiers, refusing to believe that the futures of these young men are bleak at best, for they desperately need something to give them hope. Without giving away the ending, suffice it to say that futures never turn out as expected. But this is a beautiful tale of friendships that blossom out of sadness and desperation, and of the ways that hope and love grow in the crevices of suffering.

The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem by Sarit Yishai-Levi  ©©

51urygarell-_sx328_bo1204203200_This book is both a great family story spanning several generations, and also a wonderful look into life in the pre-State and early statehood years in Jerusalem. Written originally in Hebrew, this novel was a bestseller in Israel. The story centers around four generations of women in a Sephardic Jewish family. The narrator, Gabriela, is desperate to learn more about her mother Luna, a beautiful but distant figure who never loved her the way a mother should. She has heard about a curse on the women of the family, and she sets out to investigate. Her journey through the family history takes her into stories about her great-grandmother Mercada, a healer, and her grandmother Rosa, who cleaned houses for the British. The history of Jerusalem, and the language and culture of the Sephardic Jews of Jerusalem, are also themselves significant characters in this novel. Yishai-Levi paints a rich and detailed picture of a culture and way of life at a particular time in history. As Gabriela sifts through the family history, she uncovers hidden scars, painful secrets, and ill-fated love stories deeply intertwined with time and place. Each of the four generations has lived through a time of great change and tragedy, and each has reacted to it differently. If you’re interested in Jewish history, or in the history of Jerusalem, or just looking for a compelling inter-generational story, this one is highly recommended.

Rating System

©©© – Amazing Book, dazzling, blew me away

©© – Great Book, deeply satisfying

© – Good Book, but I wanted it to be even better

 

 

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A Sukkot Harvest Recipe: Balsamic Roasted Squash With Pears and Pecans

foliageWhen my kids were growing up, we put up a sukkah every year. It wasn’t necessarily the most beautiful or creative sukkah, but there it was, in our Brooklyn backyard. In the last few years, as my life has taken some unexpected turns and the kids have gone off to college, I haven’t had a sukkah. But that doesn’t mean that I can’t bring Sukkot to my table. A weekend spent in the midst of the beautiful fall foliage in Massachusetts was a great opportunity to bring some fresh squash home.  This hearty and aromatic fall dish is a perfect addition to a Sukkot meal. It will also make your kitchen smell amazing.

Balsamic Roasted Squash with Pear and Pecans 

Preheat oven to 425.

  1. squash-dish1 medium to large delicate squash
  2. 1 large, firm pear
  3. 1 onion
  4. 1 Tablespoon baharat (a middle eastern spice blend that typically includes cinnamon, cloves, allspice, coriander, cumin, and pepper)
  5. 2 Tablespoons crumbled pecans
  6. 2 teaspoons balsamic glaze
  7. Olive Oil
  8. Salt and pepper
  9. Parmesan, Romano or Asiago slivers (optional)

Cut all vegetables into medium chunks.

Coat baking dish with olive oil.

Toss vegetables with additional olive oil, baharat, salt and pepper to taste.

Bake until vegetables are nicely browned and soft, about an hour.

Remove from oven and sprinkle with pecans.

Top with ribbons of balsamic glaze.

If wanted, toss cheese slivers on top.

Enjoy!

 

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Honey Cake for a Sweet New Year

14470609_10154465613400822_6699187027675087114_nPart of my sermon writing and service preparation ritual is baking. Though I am not a congregational rabbi, this is the one time a year when I regularly have congregational responsibilities. For the last 18 years I have served as high holy day rabbi at Congregation B’nai Olam in Fire Island Pines. For the weeks leading up the holy days, in addition to my regular work responsibilities, I spend a good chunk of my nights and weekends preparing to lead the congregation.

I bounce between the computer and the oven, trying to be productive on both fronts. The baking helps ground me as the high holiday prep sets me aloft – it’s a good balance. Both activities are different aspects of the holiday observance. One is about the soul and the intellect, the other about the worldly sphere of taste, smell, and visual pleasure. I have never tested this theory but it often seems that I could not do one without the other; they are two sides of the same experience, a sort of necessary duality. Food for the soul and inspiration for the body.

Every year, as I enter the process of soul-searching that is part of my sermon writing and preparation, I also search cookbooks and blogs for the best honey cake recipe. And as I’ve done so, I’ve tweaked and added to various recipes. I’m not a fan of dry, practically tasteless honey cake (or dry, tasteless sermons either, for that matter). So I’ve been going for a moist, dense, savory-sweet cake with depth. The recipe has got to include strong coffee, brandy or applejack, and crystalized ginger.

I think that I found it this year. The following recipe may just hit the spot. To give credit where credit is due, it is based very loosely on a recipe from Mimi Sheraton, but it is adapted quite a bit. Whether you are a sermon-writer, t’filah leader, outline-preparer, storyteller, cantor, rabbi, chanter, shofar-blower, communal leader, or communal participant, may your service to the community be sweet, full of depth, and nourishing. Shanah tovah u’metukah. 


The Best Honey Cake

 (Adapted from Mimi Sheraton)

2 cups dark honey

¾ cup black coffee, brewed double strength

3 tablespoons mild vegetable oil

1 cup crystalized ginger cut up into small pieces

4 extra-large eggs

¾ cup sugar

3½ cups sifted all-purpose flour

Pinch of salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

1½ teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon cinnamon

½ teaspoon ground nutmeg

½ teaspoon ground cloves

¼ cup brandy or applejack (I prefer applejack)

½ cup ground almonds

  • Preheat the oven to 325˚ F. Oil 2 small loaf pans.
  • Put the honey in a large, heavy saucepan and slowly bring to a boil over low heat. Add half the ginger and mix it into the honey. Let the honey mixture cool, then stir in the coffee and oil.
  • Beat the eggs with the sugar in a large bowl until they’re lighter in color and thick in texture. Stir in the honey-coffee-ginger mixture. Add the flour, along with the salt, baking soda and powder, and spices, into the batter. Add brandy and mix in.
  • Pour the batter into the oiled pans. Sprinkle almonds and cut up pieces of crystalized ginger on top.
  • Bake until the top is golden brown, about 1½ hours. The edges will brown a long time before the centers are done so insert a knife or toothpick to test. Cool in the pans, or wrap in foil and pans refrigerated for up to two weeks before serving.

The longer the cake waits uncut, the more flavor it develops (within reason). It can last a few weeks if refrigerated.

It’s also easy to double (or triple or quadruple). Make a bunch of small loaves to give as gifts at Rosh HaShanah.

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Some Good Books, Early Summer 2016 Edition

Summer time hopefully means more time to read. Here is a round up of some recent novels that have been keeping me busy.  A few are big, weighty books (and I don’t mean their physical size), some have more modest ambition. But they’re all worth a read. For more on the rating system, see below.

The Year of the Runaways by Sunjeev Sahota ©©©

41pcO-RsW8L._SX346_BO1,204,203,200_This Man Booker short-listed novel follows the fortunes, or misfortunes, of a group of four young Indian immigrants to England. Each of their stories is followed from India as they try to make new lives and new identities in a generally inhospitable and strange environment. These interwoven stories are poignant and heartbreaking, each in its own way. The characters each want, and need, different things; they are each moved to act by different motivating factors. Along the way they bump up against each other and their stories become intertwined. In the end, each  finds a way out of the challenges of hunger, loneliness, and hopelessness, though in unexpected ways. These are both coming-of-age stories, and the familiar territory of grim immigration tales. Yet neither of those descriptions does justice to the painful journeys of all four of these young people trying to make their way in an uncertain world, the weight of familial desperation,  geo-political realities, religion limitations, and cultural expectations on their shoulders.

Gold Fame Citrus by Clair Vaye Watkins ©©©

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Since this book was named best book of the year by the Washington Post, NPR, Atlantic, and many other news outlets, it jumped its way up to the top of my to-read list. This novel portrays a terrifying dismal dystopian future in the United States of severe shortages and drought. Southern California is a ruined, parched, unsustainable ghost of its excessive past now under military control. The two main characters, Luz and Ray, subsist as squatters in a former starlet’s mansion full of useless luxuries but few necessities. They dream of heading east but the trip through the western states, now one enormous shifting dune sea devoid of life, is dangerous and unsanctioned. But when they come across an odd toddler and take her under their care, they decide to do what they can to improve their chances of a future, and they set out across the desert. Part adventure saga, part apocalyptic nightmare, part cautionary tale, this story of their trek and the people they encounter in the wilderness is a fantastical futuristic journey. There are echoes of some of the best of Ray Bradbury’s martian landscape imaginings, except that this is all the more terrifying for taking place in the United States of a very close future. Beyond the narrative arc of the individual characters, this novel presents a vision of what could be that is as highly original and compelling as it is disturbing. The descriptions of the world Luz and Ray inhabit, what they see along their trip, the charismatic leader and his tribe that they encounter, and in particular the Amargosa Dune Sea, are rich in imagery and imagination, simultaneously horrific and terrifyingly gorgeous. This book truly is a must-read.

Valley of Strength by Shulamit Lapid ©©

51SzkC3hNeLI read this novel in Hebrew years ago, albeit haltingly, so I was excited to see it in English. It is a classic of Israeli literature, a beautifully told tale of the Jewish settlement of the Galilee in the 1880’s. As a historical novel, it provides background about the backbreaking work involved in creating what eventually became Rosh Pinnah. It is rich with depictions of the intellectual battles fought at that time over the different settlements, and the ideologies, finances, and politics behind them. The narrator Fania is an immigrant from Russia, a survivor of a progrom in her hometown that killed her parents and left her pregnant at 16. Upon arriving in Jaffa she meets Yehiel, who takes her home with him to a settlement known first as Gai Oni to help him raise his two children, whose mother has died. In Israel this novel is seen as an early feminist work, as Fania is an independent woman who goes against communal constraints in a number of ways, including creatively finding opportunities to help her family’s finances. Though the translation seems a bit abrupt at times, it is well worth the read for the underlying love story between Fania and Yehiel, and for the way it brings to life the reality of that time in the history of the country that comes to be Israel. It was a good reminder that any romanticized image we have today of all the Jews getting along and working together to establish Israel was as untrue then as it is now – the story is filled with fights and arguments between all the various Jewish groups on the basis of ethnicity, religiosity, and ideology. This is a must-read for anyone interested in Israeli fiction, women’s fiction, and a peek into early modern Zionism.

The Heart Goes Last by Margaret Atwood ©©

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In another, but completely different, dystopian future, resources are extremely limited. Jobs have dried up and the cities have descended into chaos. Gangs roam freely and no one is safe. Charmaine and Stan live in their car, having had to give up their house, and though Charmaine is lucky enough to have a job at a strip joint, they are barely surviving. Charmaine learns about Consilience, a planned community which guarantees employment, housing, and safety. She convinces Stan to join up and be part of this visionary community which she sees as their way to have a secure future. Consilience is based on the premise that its members spend half their time living and working in the town, and half their time as voluntary prisoners in the town’s jail. Residents share apartments, with one couple in place and the other in jail, back and forth. They are sold on the idea that this isn’t a regular prison – there are no scary or violent prisoners, and it’s all rather civilized and pleasant. But there is a terrifying underbelly to this grand vision which becomes clearer as the novel progresses. Each in his or her own way, Charmaine and Stan get caught up in what is really going on behind the scenes of the placid every day life of Consilience. On a human scale, this novel poses many questions about love, control, passion and compassion. But is also poses some of the big questions that underlie many works of dystopian fiction: what happens to our society when human lives and human rights are sacrificed on the altar of the profit-driven insatiable greed of big business? This novel can momentarily veer into predictability and preachiness, but it is generally smart, well crafted, and wonderfully imaginative, and well worth a read.

The Betrayers by David Bezmozgis ©©

4113iaNuRYL._SX331_BO1,204,203,200_This complicated, complex novel about a former Russian dissident who is now a disgraced Israeli politician was a winner of the 2014 National Jewish Book Award and received much praise from other corners as well.  Baruch, formerly Boris, has left Israel and his family in the middle of a tense political moment, running away to the resort town of Yalta with his young mistress. While there, he comes across the very man who had sent him to the Gulag many years earlier. The past rises up to meet him, shedding light on the principled but flawed man he has become today. He encounters his betrayer at the very moment that he himself has betrayed his wife and children and made off with his mistress. He must come to terms with the trajectory of his life and the result of choices he made as a young man as he faces his own aging. The framing of this novel is about the good versus the bad, the right versus the wrong, truth versus lies, youth versus age, and yet nothing, and no one, is all one and not the other. Someone who has spent his life on the side of justice and truth, a man who can’t be blackmailed, a man whose life has been shaped by big ideas and taking stands on often unpopular beliefs, is the same man who has let down those closest to him, his wife and children. Funny, poignant, slightly snarky, sometimes uncomfortable, and highly intelligent, this is well worth the read.

The Glass Wives by Amy Sue Nathan ©

51JEPGjrvWLThis book is based on a great premise. Richard Glass has died suddenly in a car accident. He leaves behind a wive, their baby, and an ex-wife and their twins. The wives are not friends, which is understandable since Richard was involved with the second wife while still married to the first. Anger, hurt, and frustration ensues, and there is some welcome humor in the midst of the family’s grief. The ex-wife, Evie, would like the second wife, Nicole, to go away and leave her alone. But out of financial need, sorrow, and the wish to keep their children (who of course are siblings) connected, they wind up joining forces  and creating a new kind family. It is somewhat less Hallmark-y than it sounds though it does lean in that direction. But the writing does not soar; the novel lacks  the kind of sparkle and nuance that would lift it beyond the level of just a good story.

The Promise by Ann Weisgarber ©

51YUsTIE1JLIf you’re looking for some enjoyable historical fiction for your summer reading, this is a good one. This novel tells the story of the terrible 1900 flood in Galveston, Texas, in which thousands of people were killed in one day. Told from two points of view, the place and the time come to life. At the heart of the novel are two very different women: Catherine, a talented and Oberlin educated pianist who has committed adultery with a married man in Philadelphia and is now being shunned for it, and a local woman, Nan, who only knows this reality. Out of desperation, Catherine renews correspondence with an old acquaintance, Oscar, who has a young son and has just lost his wife. He invites her to join him at his farm outside of Galveston as his wife, and out of desperation, she agrees. Nan meanwhile is ensconced at Oscar’s, looking after him and his son as a promise made to the deceased wife, who had been her dear friend. Once Catherine arrives, naturally the two women clash in classic city mouse versus country mouse style. As Catherine acclimates to a harsher life than anything she has ever known, real love develops between her and Oscar, and she begins to make inroads with his son, but things remain complicated between the two women. All of this is backdrop for the big storm which quickly changes the course of events for all the people of the Galveston area. The characters and their story are compelling, but the real drama is the storm itself. Weisgarber builds steam slowly so that even though we know what actually happened, the tension builds as the storm rages on, and the consequences still manage to come as terrible surprises.

Rating System

© – Good Book, but I wanted it to be even better

©© – Great Book, deeply satisfying

©©© – Amazing Book, dazzling, blew me away

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Some Good Books, Spring 2016 Edition

It’s been a rainy few days and we all know there’s nothing better in the rain than settling in with a good book. Here is a round up of some recent good books I’ve spent some time with.  This is a mixed bag of some newer and some not-as-new titles, but all were good reads. See below for more info on the rating system. Happy reading!

The Children Act by Ian Mcewan   @@@

51UJmXPQY2L._SX320_BO1,204,203,200_This one is a breathstopper. The writing is gorgeous, and the plot thick, complex, and engrossing. Fiona Maye is a family court judge in London in the midst of a complicated case involving a very sick young man who has not quite reached the age of majority and whose parents do not want him given a life-saving blood transfusion for religious reasons. She must grapple with the intricacies of the case as her husband of many years leaves her for another (younger) woman. Fiona is a densely written character who thinks intensely about the ethics of this case and others. Mcewan deftly takes readers on a journey into a fascinating legal mind that is driven by fairness, a sense of integrity, and a love for the law at its best. As she struggles with what it means to be a successful, childless woman who has prioritized her career over other kinds of choices, Fiona must also face the aftermath of her decision in the case of the sick young man. What does success mean when your husband goes looking for something/someone else? How can she tell strangers how to live their lives when her own is a mess? How can she adjudicate relationships between parents and children when she has none of her own? What does her own happiness mean and how can she realize it? Who has the right to decide whether someone lives or dies, and what must she do with that power? Mcewan gives his readers a lot to think about in this powerful novel that weaves together the personal and professional in a powerful way.

 

Mayumi and the Sea of Happiness by Jennifer Tseng   @@@

51Y+A2dOhQL._SX319_BO1,204,203,200_Tseng took a dive into the deep end in this novel about a middle aged woman’s need for intimacy and sexual fulfillment. (Ok, middle aged might be a bit of a stretch – she is in her young forties but refers to herself as middle aged). Mayumi is a part-Japanese librarian living year round in a New England island summer community that expands in the summer and contracts in the winter. The island and sea metaphors run deep throughout this novel and highlight Mayumi’s solitude. She is in an unsatisfying marriage with a man with whom she barely interacts. He sleeps alone in one room, and she sleeps with their young daughter, Maria. One day a teenager walks into the library. Mayumi quickly develops a  crush on him, and sets out to interact with him as much as she can. She craves any contact she can have with him, even if it is just checking out his books, or making a reading recommendation. She meets his mother as well, and they become friends of a sort. Her one sided crush on him sustains her for a while, and provides her with a much needed refreshed sense of hope and interest in life. Needless to say, Mayumi and the boy eventually embark on a secret sexual relationship. This is a book that takes women’s sexuality seriously. The narrative about their physical relationship is told only from Mayumi’s side. With some initial coaching and encouragement, he is able to bring her great satisfaction. One of the fascinating things about this book is that it tells a story rarely told – that of an older woman seducing a young man, a sort of Lolita in reverse. And Lolita, the book, indeed plays a role in this tale, as do many other well known novels that this literarily-inclined character refers to throughout. Mayumi does worry about the ethics of what she is doing, but her drive to be with him and to find pleasure is stronger than any sense of wrongdoing. What is also fascinating in this novel is the language used to express sexuality. Unlike the typical phallic references, subtle and otherwise, that we are familiar with from the vast body of the male canon, Tseng plays with creating a woman-centered imagery, in which windows and door become sexual metaphors, and triangles dot the descriptive landscape. Go, run, read this book!

 

41xgKh4KBKL._SX336_BO1,204,203,200_My Name is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout   @@@

Another exquisite novel by Elizabeth Strout. As always, her writing is spare and precise. With few words, she creates a world. Lucy Barton is laid up in the hospital after what should have been a quick and easy procedure. Days turn into weeks and she still cannot return to the home she shares with her husband and daughters. Her estranged mother comes to visit, and the past becomes entangled with the present. This is a quiet story that contains deep emotion right below the surface. Old longings and frustrations peak through the seams. Even in this diminished state Lucy cannot get what she wants from her mother, and cannot redeem her past. The loneliness of late afternoon vistas from hospital windows is interwoven with threads of hope, gratitude, and determination as Lucy Barton considers her past, present and future; in other words, her self.

 

After the Fire, a Still Small Voice by Evie Wyld   @@

51sNj07dgfL._SX323_BO1,204,203,200_I was motivated to read this after reading another book by Wyld, All the Birds Singing (reviewed here in 2014). After the Fire is is her debut novel (and for my rabbinic friends I’ll just say despite the biblical title, this is not a Jewish-themed book) but I was so taken with her elegantly constructed writing that I wanted to try another one. This novel was not as ambitious as All the Birds Singing, but it did not disappoint. Set in the wilds of eastern Australia, there are two main characters with different story arcs. It is not clear until the very end how the stories, and the two characters, Frank and Leon, are connected. At the start, Frank has just been left by a woman and sets out in search of a new beginning back at a cabin that once belonged to his grandparents. Leon is the son of a baker and his wife, immigrants to Australia who eventually leave their son to manage on his own as they set out on a post-war journey of their own. Both are men in search of love and connection, even as they are bruised, solitary figures, flawed survivors of damage only barely hinted at. In both stories, the past rises up to be dealt with, and the jagged edges are intertwined with tenderness.  The cabin is a character of its own, an attempt to create home and order in the midst of chaos. And in the end, the two stories bump up into each other without, thankfully, a neat resolution. This is a writer worth watching.

 

Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots by Jessica Soffer   @

51EC+5Zc0dL._SX330_BO1,204,203,200_That this novel had to do with both Iraqi Jews and with food intrigued me. I will confess it was a slow start and I almost abandoned it. The food parts of the book were great, yes, but the story seemed at moments disjointed and way too pat. The main character, Lorca, is an adolescent girl in tremendous emotional pain. Severely unmothered, she seeks ways to make her mother, a celebrated chef, notice her and be grateful for her. She sets out to make what her mother has said is her favorite dish of all time, a fish dish called masgouf. For a time the book has a YA feel to is, a tortured coming of age story with painful details and angst but without a lot of depth. This is not by any means a happy story, but even so, the lucky coincidences seemed to pile up too fast and too neatly. But then it takes a turn which makes it much more interesting; it turns out that this is not actually about coincidences at all but about the power and pitfalls of wishful thinking, and about finding love where you can get it. Despite what it seemed like at the beginning, there is no magical happy ending, not everything gets resolved, and redemption is still somewhere in the distance. In the end, it was worth the read. And as an added bonus, the fish recipe central to this tale is included at the back.

Rating System

© – Good Book, but I wanted it to be even better

©© – Great Book, deeply satisfying

©©© – Amazing Book, dazzling, blew me away

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Some Good Books, Fall 2015 Edition

Looking for some good holiday reading, or some presents for the readers in your life? Here is a round up of some recent good books I’ve read. In the last edition of Some Good Books, I started a rating system. See below for more info about the ratings. Enjoy!

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara ©©©
51Khv+2lemL._SX327_BO1,204,203,200_This book is quite literally breathtaking. Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and a National Book Award finalist, it was my personal top choice for the winner. This book will make you gasp with pleasure, with pain, with sorrow, with anger. This is one of those books that will change whomever encounters it. There will be the before you read it, and the after. It is incredibly gorgeous, but exquisitely painful. You can’t put it down, but it hurts to read it. The narrative follows a group of men, friends from an elite New England college, who stay closely connected to each other as they build lives and careers. There is an almost fairy tale quality to their stories on one level, as each one achieves significant success in his field. But even their privilege, whether inborn or hard-earned, can’t make them immune to pain and to the damage that people can inflict on each other. This is a book about love, about friendship, about trust, and about trauma that looks at the best and the worst of human behavior. Yanagihara digs deep into our capacity to wound, to nurture, to heal, to care, to cause harm. Do not read this looking for an uplifting story of redemption and recovery. Rather, this is a story in which the trauma is so bone deep that even the truest love cannot heal the damage. And yet strangely it is not a book without hope even in the midst of suffering.

Golden Age by Jane Smiley ©©©

51+eW3sBVxL._SX334_BO1,204,203,200_The third, and sadly, final book in Smiley’s Last Hundred Years Trilogy continues the march forward of the Langdon family as they continue to bump up against realities of the time in which they live. At the risk of being overly grandiose, there is something almost sweepingly biblical about the trilogy, with its spare writing and ability to depict dramatic change through the small details of individuals lives.  This hundred year journey depicts the story of a tribe as it makes its way from its Iowa farm origins and spreads throughout the country, with each generation and indeed each family member responding each in his or her own way to the world. The family members are impacted by the events, trends, and developments that occur in their lifetimes: the economy, feminism, drugs, the sexual revolution, psychoanalysis, cults are just some of the factors by which their lives are shaped. War is an especially powerful and recurrent theme, as different generations are impacted by different wars in different ways.  And yet the individuals who make up the now quite extended Langdon clan never completely sever their ties to the land and the primal power of the natural world.  From the centrality of the farm and the lack of control over things like rain and drought in the first book, this third circles back in a near-apocalyptical way to the family farm and the environment.  Climate change, with its attendant fears and impact on human life, looms large in this last book in the trilogy, which depicts a worrisome future not too far away from now. If you haven’t read the first two in the series (see review of the 2nd book), read them in the proper order, but do read them!

The Illuminations by Andrew O’Hagan ©©

41Kq6PCW6eL._SX329_BO1,204,203,200_Another Man Booker longlist title, this is one of those books that just quietly sneaks up on you until you’re completely enraptured. The story essentially follows two trajectories, one of an older woman Anne, and the other of Luke, her grandson. Anne, now battling old age, is someone who was almost famous – a pioneering photographer who garnered some attention in her time but has been long forgotten. Her grandson Luke is a soldier in Afganistan whose mission has gone seriously off course. When Luke was a child, Anne had taught him how to see beyond the ordinary into the extraordinary, a bond which still unites to two. Their stories reconnect once Luke returns home and comes to visit his grandmother, taking her on a journey which stirs up her past and his present, and illuminates that which has been hidden. Without veering into sentimentality, it is a tender tale of a pairing not seen often in literature, that of a grandmother and a grandson.

Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff ©©

61F+t-ywhCL._SX329_BO1,204,203,200_Get ready for a gyrating tale about marriage and the tales we build about ourselves and those we love. The book, a finalist for the 2015 National Book Award, is divided into the first half, Fates, and the second, Furies, as it chronicles the lives and marriage of the two central character, Lotto and Mathilde. Fates focuses on Lotto, and what better name for this character. Does he make his own fate, was it predetermined, is it all just a game of chance, or was it shaped behind the scenes by one of the powerful women in his life? Is his creativity really his, is it well deserved, or just luck? Furies shifts to Mathilde, who is revealed to be someone quite different than she seemed when she was the subject of Lotto’s narrative. This is a fascinating, at times grim, but always powerful story of passion, determination, manipulation, and our human tendency to see what we want to see in those around us.

 

 The Moor’s Account by Laila Lalami ©©© 
51jzobdRhGL._SX322_BO1,204,203,200_This book has a serious pedigree: it is a Pulitzer Prize Finalist, longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and winner of the American Book Award. And the accolades are well deserved.  This account by a black Moroccan slave provides an untold perspective of the colonization of the Gulf coast of the what is now the United States by Spanish conquistadors in the 16th century. The writing is gorgeous, with lush descriptions of both people and place, and the relationships between the characters are fully drawn in all their complicated richness. In the course of their perilous journey, the narrative deftly explores questions about the constructs of race, class, gender, and power, and of course colonization.  This book is part adventure tale, part historical fiction, part a meditation on the notions of civilization and culture, part just a beautiful work of writing that will get its grip on you and not let go until you’ve read the last page.

Untwine by Edwidge Danticat ©
51vW1Iq6wYL._SX329_BO1,204,203,200_Danticat’s last book, Claire of the Sea Light, was among my favorite books of the past few years. Untwine is a YA novel, and anyone looking for the magic of Claire will be in for a disappointment in comparison. But once you understand that it indeed meant to be in the YA category and adjust your expectations accordingly, there’s a lot to love here in this heartrending story of two identical twins, and the aftermath of a terrible car accident. In the face of tragedy, this book elegantly asks the question of how do you keep on living when half of you is suddenly gone? How do you understand who you are when your whole sense of self has changed in an instant? The intergenerational family relationships are beautifully brought to life and provide the life-affirming underpinning of this tragic story.

A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler ©

51VXVWyB4BL._SX334_BO1,204,203,200_There were moments that shone in this intergenerational family story, but overall this book was only fine. Not terrible, but not great. Just fine. I am not, admittedly, a great fan of Anne Tyler’s novels, but its designation as a Man Booker shortlist title intrigued me. I read the book wanting to be surprised, but alas, that did not happen. This novel covers several generations of the Whitshank family, and centers around a house built originally by the family patriarch. Perhaps this book suffers from having been read in close proximity to Smiley’s Hundred Year Trilogy, which similarly tells the story of several generations of a family and not a house but a farm (see above). But where Smiley’s account had depth and nuance, Tyler’s feels tired and predictable.

 

Rating System

© – Good Book, but I wanted it to be even better

©© – Great Book, deeply satisfying

©©© – Amazing Book, dazzling, blew me away

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Thanksgiving Pumpkin Challah

After posting some photos of the annual Thanksgiving pumpkin challah, I got a lot of requests for the recipe. My tradition is to go to beloved cousins for an actual Thanksgiving dinner, and then to host a Shabbat post-Thanksgiving dinner the next night, which is generally also a celebration for the child whose birthday tends to fall right around then.  So the pumpkin challah has now become part of the tradition of both of those dinners. While it’s certainly not a historic menu item for either Thanksgiving or Shabbat – it was surely not eaten by the Pilgrims or by our Jewish ancestors in the Old Country or even on the Lower East Side – it’s a classic example of Jewish American cross-fertilization and a tradition-in-the-making. Here is the recipe.

IMG_1886Pumpkin Pie Challah Recipe

1 c boiled water

1/2 c cold water

1 c sugar

1 c vegetable oil

pinch of salt

2 1/2 T yeast

3 eggs

8-9 c flour

1 15 oz can pumpkin pie mix

handful of pumpkin seeds 

1/4 c crushed pecans

Optional: Extra spices or cinnamon sugar

Pumpkin challah: before

Pumpkin challah: before

1. Boil 1 cup water.

2. Put one cup of oil, pinch of salt, and one cup of sugar in large bowl or Kitchenaid type mixer.

3. Pour the cup of boiling water over the mix and stir with the oil to dissolve the sugar and salt.

4. When fully dissolved, pour in the 1/2 cup cold water. Mix well.

5. Add 2 ½ t yeast to mix. Let sit for a few minutes.

6. Add three eggs.

7. Stir in 7 cups of flour.

8. Stir in 1 can pumpkin pie puree. (Optional – add additional cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg if you want it to be spicier).

9. Knead. (Works best with a bread hook in Kitchenaid-type machine but can be done by hand).

1o. Add 1-2 additional cups of flour, depending on stickiness. After kneading, you want an elastic texture that barely sticks to your fingers.

11. Let dough rise in oiled bowl, preferably in warm, humid place. A slightly pre-warmed oven with the light on works great if the room is cold.

12. When dough has risen, punch it down, divide into 3 or 4 balls, and braid each one into a challah. You can make a round loaf and put into an oiled springform pan, or a bundt pan. Otherwise use a silicon sheet or parchment paper on a baking sheet.

Pumpkin challah: after

Pumpkin challah: after

13. Let rise again.

14. Apply egg wash. Sprinkle with pumpkin seeds and pecan pieces. Or go wild and sprinkle with cinnamon sugar.

14. Bake at 350 until golden brown and the loaves make a hollow sound when tapped.

Enjoy!

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Rosh HaShanah in the Pines 2015

IMG_2389
Every year I write a new poem for Rosh HaShanah to share with the community I lead in Fire Island Pines. Below is this year’s poem. I’m also including the poem from 2014 since I never posted it last year. 

Rosh HaShanah in the Pines, 2015/5776

The sea pushes back off the shore,

yielding to gravity with a sigh,

not a leaving but a letting go,

a retreat into its own deep fullness.

The sun relinquishes its hold on the sky

only to rise once more at daybreak

as the tide rolls back in,

a different kind of letting go,

an unspooling across the expanse.

And we creatures of earth are granted a fresh start,

a chance to gather the debris

and shape a whole new world.

 

Wholeness is a kind of holiness,

the stasis of perfection.

But brokenness demands re-creation,

a churning cycle of endings and beginnings,

the act of pulling hope and brightness from the wreckage,

taking the jagged shards and making of them,

if not wholeness, a new sort of sacred splendor.

 

(Copyright (c) 2015 by Hara Person)


 

Rosh HaShanah in the Pines, 2014/5775

 

We gather, poised at the edge of time,

hearts teeming with intention.

Like the tide, we expand and contract,

unsure of how to proceed.

 

A tenuous new moon tilts in a Tishrei sky,

while below the ocean roars.

Trees dip and sway in the darkness.

Wind rolls in off the sea.

Swells churn dangerously

as the deluge approaches landfall.

 

Accept our burdened hearts, we plead,

our broken spirits,

our yearnings for redemption.

 

Like the moon, let us begin the work

of rebuilding our selves anew.

Help us find shelter from the storm.

 

(Copyright (c) 2014 by Hara Person)

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Some Good Books, Summer 2015 Edition

It’s been a great summer of books so far. Here is a roundup of six of my most recent reading adventures. With this edition of Some Good Books, I’m introducing a new feature in my book reviews – a rating system. I don’t want to get too competitive with this. I don’t want to hurt any writer’s feelings (I know how it feels!). And most of all, the books that I review are – with perhaps a rare exception – all good books and all worth reading.  So I’m going to use a rating system of three, as follows:

© – Good Book, but I wanted it to be even better

©© – Great Book, deeply satisfying 

©©© – Amazing Book, dazzling, blew me away

I suspect that most books will be in the ©© – Great Book category, and that only a rare book will be ©©© – Amazing Book,  but we will see.

Early Warning, by Jane Smiley ©©

41vsJlW27nL._SX334_BO1,204,203,200_This second book in Smiley’s trilogy about an American family, following Some Luck, did not disappoint. In fact it was, once again, a distinct pleasure. Like the first book in this series, each chapter is another year in the life of the Langdon family, seen through the experience of one of the extended family members. This volume begins in 1953 with the family now far-flung across the country and only a small handful still left in and around the family farm in Iowa. What was once a nucleus of a family working together to eke out an existence on the land is now a loose collection of related but diverse groups creating their own  narratives, including the next generations of the family. Their encounters with the events of the post-war years spin out in a myriad of ways, and yet there are still threads that connect them deeply to each other, often in surprising cross-generational ways. As in Some Luck, Smiley’s writing can at times seem deceptively prosaic, but the powerful beauty of this family tale shines through as the characters move through their encounters with love, loss, deception, desire, vulnerability, and all of that which makes us who we are in a constellation of others.

Mislaid, by Nell Zink ©

51PsntlX17L._SX328_BO1,204,203,200_I loved the premise of this book, perhaps even more than the book itself. The title is indeed clever. But where it may disappoint (more on that later), it is still worth a read. The plot is a challenge to the easy binaries that make up our collective narrative. Identity and self-representation, sexuality and race, are all thrown into the mix and stirred together into a murky stew. As an adolescent, Peggy aspires to be a man and believes herself to be a thespian, later corrected to lesbian. So she goes to an all-women’s college in rural Virginia, complete with a deeply metaphoric swampy lake of hidden dread.  There she meets an instructor, a louche, penniless gay poet from a local wealthy family. They jump into a sexual relationship, get married, and have two children, a son and a daughter. Because what else would one expect from a lesbian college student and her gay professor (get it, Mislaid??)? Jumping ahead a bit, she leaves him and takes just the daughter with her. The daughter is a blond, wan little girl, but somehow Peggy manages to convince everyone that they are black, so that she can successfully hide their real identities and not get found by her husband. The characters are rich and complex, but without totally spoiling things, I’ll just say that the story gets too easily gift-wrapped up with an unbelievably redemptive happy-ever-after conclusion in which everyone gets let off the hook. Still, definitely lots here to discuss and dissect.

The Sunken Cathedral, by Kate Walbert ©
51zlMF2ZtZL._SX330_BO1,204,203,200_The main character in this novel is anxiety, of the particular New York City kind. The many human beings who inhabit this novel are secondary to the free-floating anxiety that runs through the pages of this book. Anxiety about extreme weather, about a changing city and its changing neighborhoods, about the growing gap between the haves and the have-nots, about growing old and isolated in the city, about finding a way to have a meaningful life in the middle of urban anonymity – all these kinds of anxiety run through this tale. And yes, it made of an anxious reading experience. I wanted more – I wanted the characters to rise up out of the anxiety – but they did not. And yet the idea of a mighty city being at the mercy of forces beyond its control, and thereby being reshaped by forces both within (economics and changing demographics) and without (flooding as a result of climate change) are powerful metaphors for aging. The two main characters, Marie and Simone, are French immigrants who survived the war to come to the United States as young women. Close friends who have both now outlived their husbands and launched their children off into the world, they decide to take a painting class. The others who people this book are their neighbors, their children, and those they meet in the painting class. As New York submits to excess water it cannot control, the lives of these two stalwart survivors too are battered by forces outside of their control.

A God in Ruins, by Kate Atkinson ©©

41EzuQhyFfL._SX321_BO1,204,203,200_This book came highly recommended by someone whose taste in books I respect, and so I dove in. But I admit that I was surprised to like it as much as I did. This story tells the tale of the 20th century through the character of Teddy, first a beloved young boy in England, an aspiring poet, then a pilot in the war, and later as a husband, father, and grandfather. Surprise is indeed a major element in this tale, as Teddy’s life continues to unfold in unexpected ways. Surviving the war, when so many British pilots did not, is one of the main elements that makes Teddy who he is. Having accepted the idea that he might never have a future, he has to figure out how to live in that future. Again and again, he encounters situations he never expected to have to face, and manages to find a way through. There is nothing remarkable about Teddy, yet his kindness and compassion make him a character worth caring about. And then Atkinson plays with us, taking away what she has just given us readers, and poses the very writerly question: what if? What if indeed. That is the question that the writer wrestles with in the privacy of his or her own head, the very core of writing fiction. Writers do not generally expose this question to the reader. But Atkinson puts the question right out there and asks us to wonder along with her: What if…

Life After Life, by Kate Atkinson ©©

41wEB2EBqOL._SX327_BO1,204,203,200_This novel came before A God in Ruins, which was written as a companion to it. But I read them the other way around, and so my reading of this one is informed by having read them in this order. The characters in Life After Life are much the same as in A God in Ruins, though with different focus. The novel centers around Ursula, Teddy’s older sister. Teddy himself appears at certain moments, as do other members of their family. But Ursula is the main attraction. Like A God in Ruins, this novel is a tale of the 20th century told through the story of one person, in this case Ursula. Born in 1910 on a snowy night when the doctor can’t through to the house, she is miraculously saved. Or is she? In fact, she dies before she can draw her first breath. Or does she? Throughout her life, Ursula dies, over and over and over, coming to various experiences and ends, or not. Through the life, or lack thereof, of Ursula, Atkinson explores the ideas of chance and destiny, of the impact that one person has on the world and those around him or her, and the question of what can happen if just the slightest change is made in one’s routine. If “a” happens, does it necessarily lead to a life of “b”? But if one can avoid “a”, then can one avoid “b”? One small act can lead to life of utter misery, or even death, while a different and equally banal act can lead to life of joy. It is the eternal question of the road not taken, and an exploration of how one small choice can cause a life to cascade into a completely different future. Though this kind of device could become kitschy or even annoying in some hands, Atkinson manages it masterfully, and creates a captivating reading experience in which it’s hard to put the book down.

 The City of Devi, by Manil Suri ©©©

41KUOSX-YCL._SX331_BO1,204,203,200_Looking for a Bollywoodesque post-apocalyptic novel set in India complete with Hindu gods and goddesses as well as superheroes (and if you’re not, why aren’t you?!)? Look no further. Just want a great, absorbing book with compelling characters and an unusual plot? This won’t disappoint. This volume, the third in Suri’s trilogy based on Hindu deities, manages to combine both absurdly, almost comically, exaggerated and deeply universal human elements. Told from the point of view of two very different but (as it turns out) related characters, this moving tale unfolds after havoc has been wrecked on the civilized world. A 9/11-like event has occurred on an international scale, creating worldwide instability. Unfettered capitalism, power grabs, religious-based and political-based terrorism, and the undoing of the technological infrastructure have combined to create a desperate situation in which two strangers, Sarita and Jaz, both set out to search for their missing loved one, becoming entangled along the way. Beyond its over-the-top backdrop and its frenetic pace, at its core this is a story of love, survival, and the universal need to create connections.

Coming Up…

Looking forward, the Man Booker Longlist was recently announced. My next edition of book reviews will focus on titles from that collection.  So far, I’ve read 2 and they have been quite good indeed.  In the meantime, happy reading.

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