Category Archives: Books

by Hara Person | July 29, 2019 · 9:41 pm

Some Good Books, Summer 2019 Edition

Here are my latest recommendations. This is particularly strong group of books. I hope you’ll find them worthwhile reads as well.

The Guest Book by Sarah Blake @@

This is a story about a family, but also about a country, told over several generations. The Miltons are blueboods, the bedrock of America. They are the definition of privilege and noblesse oblige. Civility and honor are prized, along with knowing one’s place – the assumption being that a everyone should know their place and act accordingly. The family patriarch buys an island in Maine in the years preceding World War II, which is the backdrop to much drama and a deeply buried mystery which later gets unearthed by a granddaughter trying to make sense of the past. Blake does a magnificent job depicting the different generations, their relationships to each other, and their experiences of both the island and the family legacy. The island itself comes beautifully to life through the seasons and over the years, with incredibly gorgeous detail of the sea and local plant life and the items in the kitchen and in the bedrooms, the clothes that the characters wear and what each generation is drinking, so that the place itself a main character in this compelling tale. She expertly weaves together the threads of this story that are both highly personal to the Milton family, and also contain reverberations of American history and changing national mores. The personal is truly political here, even as individual family members try over the generations to cover up their complicity. But truth seeps out of the cracks of even carefully constructed lies and omissions, and is eventually uncovered.

Confessions of the Fox by Jordy Rosenberg @@@

A conceptual novel if ever there was one, for most of the time I was reading this I couldn’t decide if it was brilliant or insane, or both. Based on the life of historical characters from 18th century London, Jack Sheppard, a reknown thief and jailbreak, and Edgeworth Bess, a famous prostitute, this novel is a combination of different styles, narratives, and narrators. It is about as queer a novel as is possible, dealing with queer identity and also breaking down boundaries about writing and novels and fiction, and so much more. Ostensibly, this volume is a research project being undertaken by a professor, Dr. Voth, whose career is shaky at best and whose heart has recently been broken. The reader comes to understand that the professor is trans, and that there is much going on in the Dr. Voth’s life beyond this project. The book is divided into two parts. One is a longlost autobiographical manuscript containing the story of Jack Sheppaard and Edgeworth Bess. The manuscript, which may or not be a hoax, reveals heretofore unknown information including that Sheppard had been born a girl, and other ways in which both were masters of gender-transformation and barrier-breakers. The other part of the book are Dr. Voth’s footnotes on the manuscript, which both comment on the manuscript, and within those margins also begin to shape a narrative about the professor’s own life and reality. If this sounds like a dizzying journey, it is. But it is well worth it. This boundary-pushing book is a delicious delight, at times quite funny and at other times heartbreaking. And, yes, it is absolutely brilliant.

A Place for Us by Fatima Farheen Mirza @@@

My first thought upon recalling the experience of reading this book is simply to take a deep breath. There is a reverence to this book, a deep respect for the tradition out of which this story comes. In many ways, this book belongs to a genre of stories of immigrants to the United States, with generational differences causing friction between parents and children and struggles over identity and belonging. Within that genre there is a sub-genre to which it belongs as well, the stories of immigrant families from India, with all the particulars of those stories. And while this particular book does belong to that genre and sub-genre, it is so much more. As the family gathers for a wedding, their love for each other comes to the surface along with secrets, anger, and hurts. As the narrative moves from the present to the past, and then into the future, betrayal after betrayal is revealed, and the scars become visible. Yet with all the drama, there is an understated stillness and quietude that threads through the complexity of this family story. Their Muslim faith is in the forefront of their behavior; their beliefs and theology is described in loving ways that allow for struggle and engagement rather than serving as a mere descriptive element. They want to be people of faith, and they are sustained by their faith, even as they worry about not living up to its highest aspirations. I found their struggle to be deeply moving, and the level of complexity with which they struggled to be quite compelling.

Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli @@@
Read this book. Now. Run, don’t walk. This Man Booker Longlisted novel is both urgently of the moment, and achingly timeless. A patched together family of unnamed members, a mother, a father, a daughter and a son, get in a car to drive across America. It is in some ways an epic American road novel of discovery, myth-making, and in this case also myth-breaking. The parents are both involved professionally in recording sounds for the purposes of creating stories and documentaries, though their particular interests are in different areas. The mother, spurred by her distress about lost children in the midst of the current refugee and immigration crisis, is determined to tell a story about what is happening with children currently trying to enter this country. The father wants to tell the story of the Apache, to examine the reality versus the myth of what happened to the people who were the original inhabitants of this land and for whom we are the ones who came, uninvited and unwelcome. This is a story about the history and future of a particular family, and it is a story about a the history and future of this country. It is heartbreaking, and gorgeously written, with a kind of poetic repetitive beat that drives the narrative even at its most quotidian. But wait – there’s more. The story is told from several points of view, and includes lists, and so many names of books and writers, and a story within the story, and descriptions of photographs, and sounds, so many sounds and echoes of sounds that it feels like a multi-sensory experience as well as one of those never-to-be-forgotten interdisciplinary college classes that dizzyingly ties everything together in ways formerly unimaginable. A wise friend recommended that I listen to the book rather than read it, something I almost never do with fiction, but I listened to her advice and now I understand why. So that’s my recommendation as well – this is a book to listen to. Try it and you’ll see why.

Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver @
I love Barbara Kingsolver’s writing but this should have been a better book. I don’t regret reading it. But it seemed as if, because Kingsolver is such a successful author, that it didn’t get the editing it should have gotten. The concept is great. There are two parallel stories occurring in the same place, a century apart, in Vineland, New Jersey. Kingsolver has great material to work with here – Vineland has an interesting history. But the story felt too forced and too much in service about making a point about the state of the world in which we’ve found ourselves today, and the dire consequences that we will facing shortly if we don’t change our ways. In both stories. a literal house and a way of life are falling apart. Can either be saved is the question asked in both stories, and the answer is not a good one in either. But the stories are filled with interesting characters and possibilities for transformation, moments of aching tenderness and beautiful descriptions of nature. All of that made it possible to get through a book that desperately needed to be shorter and sharper.

Rating System

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

©© – Great Book, deeply satisfying, loved it

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Filed under Books, Fiction, Publishing, Stories, women

Tagged as Barbara Kingsolver, Book reviews, Fatima Farheen Mirza, fiction, Jordy Rosenberg, Novel, Sarah Blake, Valeria Luiselli

by Hara Person | January 15, 2019 · 3:34 pm

Some Good Books – Winter, 2019 Edition

I’ve been busy and am quite behind on posting these book recs but here is the latest batch. There are a lot of wonderful books here, plenty of great stories and masterful writing to keep you warm this winter. Some are even extraordinarily good. Dig in and enjoy.

The Overstory, by Richard Powers ©©©

It is not an exaggeration to say that this book left me gasping. Short-listed for the Man Booker Prize, it had my vote to win but did not. It is hauntingly gorgeous, poetic, despairing but somehow also hopeful. It’s a long read so get ready for the ride but it is completely worth it. Through a series of seemingly disparate stories, Powers weaves a web of interconnectedness between humans and trees. Trees are the real characters here – you’ll never read so much description of trees and be as entranced as you will be in the pages of this eco-novel. There is both metaphoric and literal terror and love shot through the pages of this ambitious, soaring novel. Powers has written a kind of prophetic warning about the long-term and irreparable damage the human race is doing to the earth through the experiences and struggles of a vast array of different human beings. The contrasts he makes between the low-level details of transitory human life and the grandness of the trees of the forest that stretch back in time are masterful and breathtaking. Waste no time – go read this book.

From a Low and Quiet Sea, by Donal Ryan ©©

Ryan writes about three different lonely men in Ireland, each one struggling with who he is, the choices he has made, and the impact of those choices on the people he loves. Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, this quietly powerful novel connects all three men in a surprising denouement that manages to not descend into sentimentality but rather provides a fitting conclusion to the three stories. The three stories depict different kind of qualities, values, and personalities, not to mention generations, but together form a kind of disquisition on the performance of masculinity and the societal expectations that both afford men power but also limit who they can be. But all of that aside, the writing is taut and beautiful, and the characters, each one grounded in his own time and place and personal history, are memorable.

The Mars Room, by Rachel Kushner ©©

It took a while to get into the groove of this complicated, tenacious novel, another Man Booker shortlist title, but I got there. Essentially the story of a woman on death row, the story unfolds through multiple charismatic narrators, each of whom has her or his own story to share. It is both deeply empathetic of each of the narrators, no matter what they did to get into the situation that brought them to prison, and unsparing in its detail about the reality of women prisoners. Each one is a fully realized human, with needs and desires and a history. The main narrator, Romy, a single mom, former stripper, and in jail for murdering a stalker, is particularly sympathetic, an example of how misogyny often punishes women for men’s bad behavior.

The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar ©©©

This book, shortlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction, is a cross between a satisfying slice of historical fiction and a delicious fairy tale confection. The details of proper mercantile life in late 18th century London contrast with the life of high class prostitutes seeking security and respectability, all of which is shot through with a golden thread of fantasy when a mermaid appears. The descriptions are rich and luscious, from the interior of homes to the array of mouth-watering sweets to the party decor. This novel deals with big themes like desire and sexuality, and our hunger for wonder and curiosity, but it also draws complex, believable characters who move the story along in sometimes tragic, sometimes heroic, and often unexpected ways. A delight from start to finish.

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, by Gail Honeyman ©©

I’ll admit it — this one took a while but it did eventually grow on me. At first I thought it was too affected and sort of facile, almost mean. But so many people recommended it to me so I kept going, and about halfway through I fell under its spell. Eleanor Oliphant is an unusual protagonist, a rather unlikable main character. But as the book gathered steam she became more sympathetic, and the story became funnier, albeit in a caustic, almost sarcastic way. The mystery of her origins is revealed slowly and surprisingly, and as it did she became more likable and more understandable until I realized, with surprise, that I was rooting for her. Her struggle to come to terms with her past and create an authentic life for herself is deeply moving, and I felt really bad about being so critical at first. This book is definitely worth a read, despite how long it took me to get into it.

Waking Lions, by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen ©©

Where to start with this book? This was a hard one — a deeply raw, painful story packed with so much that feels familiar, known, and hard to deal with. The landscape, both literally and figuratively, of this story is the desert, that vast liminal placed of wilderness. Specifically, it takes place in southern Israel, in and around Beersheva. Driving home one late night from a shift at the hospital, a Jewish doctor hits and kills a man. He drives away, but his actions were witnessed by an African refugee woman. Soon he is under the control of this woman, living a secret life separate from that of his policewoman wife and their children. Though some elements of this story are specific to Israel and deals with its issues about identity, belonging, place, power, and the details of Israel’s African refugee issue, in many ways this is a universal novel of immigration, the having or not having of agency, and what it means to be “an illegal” anywhere. The translation feels uneven at times, but this is a powerful and important book.

Warlight by Michael Ondaatje ©©

In this beguiling tale of memory, secrets, deception, and love, Ondaatje builds a story out of murky details and hidden identities. In post-war London, two teenagers are left more or less on their own when their parents take off, ostensibly because of their father’s job. Some shadowy adults are ostensibly left to care for them but they are mostly left to their own devices, or so they believe. They experience a different kind of life than they otherwise would have, one that includes an eccentric group of adults revolving through their living room, late night canal trips, smuggling greyhounds and perhaps other items as well, adventures in forests, and romantic interludes in empty houses. The whereabouts of their parents is a mystery that slowly unravels as the book progresses and the main character, Nathaniel, grows up. Without giving anything away, he comes to learn who his mother really was, and what her role was both during the war and in its aftermath. The book advances quietly, revealing small pieces at a time and introducing a fascinating cast of characters as it conjures up Nathaniel and his sister Rachel’s experience both during the time their mother is away and then upon her return, as well as their mother’s secret life without them.

Rating System

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

©© – Great Book, deeply satisfying, loved it

4 Comments

Filed under Books, Fiction, Publishing

Tagged as Ayelet Gundar-Goshen, Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction, Bialy Prize, Donal Ryan, Gail Honeyman, Imogen Hermes Gowar, Man Booker, Man Booker Prize, Man Booker Shortlist, Michael Ondaatje, Rachel Kushner, Richard Powers

by Hara Person | May 27, 2018 · 2:04 pm

Some (More) Good Books, Late Spring 2018 Edition

With warm weather upon us, it’s time to stock up summer reading. Here is a batch of some really, really good books – not exactly light beach reads, but worth the effort. There’s some great writing here, good stories, and in some cases, timely topics. Enjoy!

Another Brooklyn, by Jacqueline Woodson ©©©

This finalist for the 2016 National Book Award is a luminous and haunting coming of age story set in the Brooklyn of the 1970’s. August and her friends are girls on the brink of adulthood, trying to figure it all out. They are tough and strong, and also painfully fragile. In their Brooklyn universe they are beautiful and special, with glorious futures await just ahead. But Brooklyn, and the world at large, are dangerous places for ambitious, trusting young girls. As life lets loose on them, their friendships are tested and their futures become far less certain. As is true for so many girls, and even more so for black girls like August and her friends, growing up comes with a cost. Life is not always kind, parents are not always protective or available, and dreams don’t always come true. Beauty and tragedy vie for the upper hand throughout the pages of this powerful novel.

The Sparsholt Affair, by Alan Hollinghurst ©©©

This sweeping novel takes place over seven decades and multiple generations, with a group of British gay men at its core. The changing attitudes toward homosexuality and morality is what underlies these story of intergenerational friendship, but it also about families, about fathers and sons, about desire and sexuality and secrets, and about art. And it is also about aging, and what happens to secrets and desires and needs as the characters move through their lives, from young adulthood to death, and how people react as the world changes around them.Hollinghurst’s prose is both precise and beautifully equivocating. He uses an inordinate amount of commas and qualifiers within long sentences but the result is satisfyingly human rather than tiresome or vague. He spins a web of words that draws the reader in and deposits you right inside the scene, within the elaborately described rooms or conversations.

Elmet, by Fiona Mozley ©©

This finalist for the 2017 Man Booker Prize has an ephemeral feel to it, almost like a movie shot through gauze, or a fogged lens. It takes place in a forest setting, in which a father lives with his son and daughter. The fairy tale allusions are all there — an idyllic setting, a magical relationship to nature, the lack of a mother (all too common in fairy tales after all!), and the sense that danger lurks right at the edges of the light, out of view but there all the same. And so it’s disorienting to realize that the book takes place in the present, not in some faraway time. And the danger is there all right, but no spoilers here. Told after the fact by Daniel, the brother and son, mystery and tragedy are threaded through the telling that only beginning to make sense as more details become clear. Part mythical tale, part contemporary coming-of-age story, the writing in this first novel gains traction slowly, taking on more urgency as it builds.

An American Marriage, by Tayari Jones ©©©

If anything could be called a novel for our times, this might be the one. Jones has written an explosively powerful book about a man, Roy, whose life is turned upside down in an instant one night. Roy and his new wife Celestial are staying at a motel when Roy is accused of a crime, and nothing is the same after that. This is a story of America, where the simple fact of breathing while black is dangerous, where a young man who has done everything he can to get ahead in life can suddenly have everything, including the woman he loves, stripped away from him, and where racism has a cascading effect on families and communities regardless of class and level of education. Jones’ writing is taut and careful. Anger simmers under the surface of the narrative but she keeps tight control of the language, even when the characters themselves reach a boiling point.

My Absolute Darling, by Gabriel Tallent ©©

This heartbreaking, painful book had me literally covering my eyes at moments as I read it, as if I was watching a movie and couldn’t bear to see what was happening on the screen. Of course that makes no sense when reading a book, but I was so caught up in the story that it felt as if it was unfolding right in front me and I both couldn’t look, and couldn’t look away. Turtle Alveston is a young teenager as the story unfolds. She lives alone with her father, not far from a caring grandfather, in a house in the woods of Northern California that has fallen into disrepair since the death of her mother. Her father takes pride in teaching her how to be self-sufficient, how to use a gun, and how fend for herself. He teaches her to be mistrustful of other people, especially women, and abandons her for periods of time. He is effusive in his love for her, but he is a mercurial and dangerous character who violently abuses even as he declares his devotion. When Turtle forms a friendship with a boy her own age, her father does all he can to put a stop to it. In the end, Turtle uses the skills she has learned under her father’s tutelage, as well as her own anger and desire to survive, to triumph over victimhood. The lush and lengthy descriptions of nature, the paragraphs upon paragraphs of local foliage and seascapes, is achingly gorgeous, especially when contrasted with the equally comprehensive details of violence and abuse. This novel shares some things in common with the equally painful A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara, in that both books deal with incredible abuse both physical and sexual, and the suffering of the young people upon whom this is cruelty is inflicted – if you had a hard time with that book you might want to think twice about this one. But still, despite all that, if you can manage it, this is well worth a read. And this book, unlike Yanagihara’s, offers up the possibly of redemption.

Rating System

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

©© – Great Book, deeply satisfying

1 Comment

Filed under Books, Fiction, Publishing, Stories

Tagged as Alan Hollinghurst, book review, Fiona Mozley, Gabriel Tallent, Jacqueline Woodson, Man Booker Prize, National Book Award, novels, Tayari Jones

by Hara Person | April 29, 2018 · 9:17 pm

Some Good Books, Spring 2018 Edition

Resistance takes many forms. Remember the whole “people from s**thole countries” moment in this low level of civil discourse we’ve been chafing against in this new American era? This edition of Some Good Books focuses on authors or descendants of people from some of those places. There’s been a lot said in the last year against immigrants. But the truth is, most of us are descendants of immigrants, if not immigrants ourselves. Isn’t that the whole point of the United States? The fact is that immigration is what makes this country unique, and what continues to enrich and enliven American culture. This would be a good time to take a chance on an author with whom you might not be familiar. Some of the following authors are American born descendants of immigrants (ok, right, aren’t we all?), and some are immigrants themselves. Here are some suggestions.

Goodbye, Vitamin by Rachel Khong ©©©
Hong’s quietly beautiful first novel centers around a young woman, Ruth, who has come back to her parents’s house. Newly out of a relationship and unsure what to do with her life, she comes home to help her mother care for her father, a college professor with dementia. There is tenderness here, shot through with both sweetness and pain. Ruth cares for her father with compassion and humor, first trying valiantly to protect him from his new self, and then trying to figure out how they, and Ruth’s mother, can live with the truth of what is happening to this once sharp and admired man. Her mother moves in and out of the frame as she too tries to navigate what is happening to their family, but the heart of this novel is the relationship between Ruth and her father. There is no fairy tale ending, but Hong manages to gently push Ruth into a place where she can take charge of her life again.

Chemistry, by Weike Wang ©©

This quirky first novel by Wang draws on the author’s background in science to tell the story of a PhD student who finds herself unable to keep going forward. She has so far done all that her immigrant Chinese parents expected, and is on the way to becoming exactly the daughter they planned for. But her research in chemistry is leading nowhere, and when her scientist boyfriend proposes marriage, she realizes that she can’t keep living up to other people’s expectations. She steps out of her prescribed life, and into a world of questions as she begins to think about what it is she really wants, and who she wants to be. The writing feels both surgically precise and expertly indecisive, looping in and out of focus, beautifully capturing the tension within which the unnamed narrator is stuck as she tries to figure out how to become her own person. Though the style and voice are unique, there is much familiar ground here for anyone who has grappled with meeting the expectations of immigrant parents, or really, any parents.

What We Lose, by Zinzi Clemmons ©©©

This achingly gorgeous novel about losing one’s mother is Clemmons’s first. This novel is narrated by Thandi, the American-born daughter of a white American father and a black South African mother. She has spent her life feeling not quite this or that, not white but not black, not American but not foreign. With her mother’s illness and then death, the questions about her identity move into starker relief. This tale is a study in pain and grief, in which the writing itself stops and starts in bursts, sometimes just a single line, sometimes an outpouring of love and loss, punctuated with occasional graphs and images. We follow Thandi through the pain of her mother’s death and slowly into a new life of in which she will learn to love, trust herself, and become a mother as she begins to connect the dots of her complex identity.

Home Fires, by Kamila Shamsie ©©

Kamila Shamsie, from Karachi and now living in London, is not technically an immigrant to the United States. But she is an immigrant all the same, and since she went to both college (Hamilton College) and graduate school (UMass Amherst) in the US, I’m taking the liberty of including her in this round-up. Home Fires, long listed for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction (formerly the Orange Prize), reads like a movie. It is fast-paced, full of filmic imagery, and centers around many of the complicated issues of our day. Having raised her younger twin siblings after the separate deaths of their parents, Isma is finally able to get on with her own life. Though scared about coming to America as a muslim woman whose father was a jihadist, she accepts an invitation to leave London and study in the United States. She reluctantly leaves her sister Aneeka alone in London while Aneeka’s twin brother Parvaiz secretly follows their father’s footsteps on an uncertain and dangerous path. At a cafe in Northampton, Isma meets Eamon, also a son of Pakistani immigrants to Britain, and the futures of all the siblings quickly get wrapped up together with Eamon and his family. Privilege, class, or the right papers cannot protect any of these children of immigrants from the inevitable disaster which early on is clearly bound to happen by the end of the book. This is very much a novel of the early 21st century, a story of mistrust of muslim immigrants, a clash of east versus west, and the ways in which surveillance and security not only provide safety but also feed into our worst fears and cause terrible, and irreversible, harm .

Everybody’s Son, by Thrity Umrigar ©

Anton is the adopted son of a white family, a black boy and then a man growing up with all the trappings of white privilege. But what he believes to be the truth about his origins, and the mother who didn’t want him and couldn’t care for him, isn’t the whole story. His past and his future begin to unravel as he uncovers pieces of the story that have been hidden away, and has to rethink the foundations of his carefully constructed identity. This isn’t the strongest of Umrigar’s novels, but it is a challenging and timely story about class, privilege, the bonds of family, and about the crimes committed in the name of love.

And here are reviews of two additional and exceptionally good books that fit into this category, from older blogs.

Exit West by Mohsin Hamid

Stay With Me, by Ayobami Adebay0

Rating System

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

©© – Great Book, deeply satisfying

Leave a Comment

Filed under Books, Fiction, resistance

Tagged as fiction, immigrant, immigration, resistance, shithole countries

by Hara Person | October 18, 2017 · 12:47 pm

Some Good Books, Fall 2017 Edition Part 1

The weather is getting cooler and the days are getting shorter, so it’s time to lay low and dig in to some good books. Here are some recommendations from my last batch of reading, with more coming in a separate post soon. I’ve been trying to make my way through the Man Booker shortlist, so the first three here are from that list, along with two others. (Full disclosure: I didn’t read the winning book – maybe more on that in a subsequent post.) Enjoy!

4 3 2 1 by Paul Auster
This magnificent book left me speechless by the end. Shortlisted for the Man Booker, this novel is impressively muscular, bold, and massive in scale. It’s also very male (yes, there are female characters but they’re always assessed by how much the main character wants to sleep with them), not what I usually love. But love it I did. This is a huge novel, both in terms of page count but also ambition. Auster begins with a character, a sort of Jewish American everyman, born to two parents, grandson to grandparents, none of which is particularly remarkable. Their family history is recounted, including how their family name is arrived at, based on an old Jewish joke we’ve all heard. But from there it gets really interesting, if at moments somewhat confusing (keep plugging through – don’t give up!). Each subsequent chapter is divided into four, as in 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, and so on. Each of those four subchapters is a different trajectory of the life of the main character, four different possible routes through life he could have traveled, depending on circumstances, choices, and quirks of fate. There’s a pinch of Philip Roth, a little John Updike, even some Forest Gumpian travels through American history with the main character being in just the right place at the right moment. Though it may sound contrived, Auster is a master and in his hands this construct is heartbreaking, engaging, funny, and poignant. And by the conclusion, he has brought it all together so elegantly so that it suddenly all makes sense. Don’t be put off by the size – the effort is well worth it. ©©©

History of Wolves, by Emily Fridlund

A Man Booker shortlist title, this is one weird, fairytale-like novel. Written in an almost-but-never-quite-confusing elliptical style that wraps around itself in the telling, this is both a coming of age story of Linda, a young teenager living a solitary, rural life at the edge of a lake in Northern Minnesota, and also a story about parenting, and how parents do, or don’t, take care of their children. Linda’s parents are former members of a failed commune who stayed on when everyone has left. She lives on a dirt road edged by sumac trees and spends a great deal of her time alone, in the woods or in a canoe. There are two tales of possible wrongdoing at the heart of the plot – a pedophile teacher on whom she develops a strange obsession, even a fondness, and a family of city people who come to stay at their country cabin across the lake with their four year old son Paul. There are hints right from the beginning that tragedy is going to strike, with mentions of a future trial in which Linda will play a role. As the story spins out, with glimpses along the way of Linda’s adult life, she tests out ideas about friendship, loyalty, love, and sexuality. This book is delicately beautiful, in a way that seems like it might crumble when touched, and yet there is a tough center at the heart of it that holds it all together. ©©

Exit West, by Mohsin Hamid

Having read this long before the Man Booker list was published, I was thrilled to see it wind up on the shortlist (its also a finalist for the Kirkus Prize). This hauntingly gorgeous novel could not be more timely, which is quite a feat given how long it takes to write and publish a novel. This one too had a fairy tale quality to it – almost like a modern day refugee version of Hansel and Gretel. Nadia and Saeed are two young people who meet in a city in a middle eastern country. At first their lives are almost recognizably universal as they study, work, smoke pot, and become increasingly intimate. But things change quickly as the unrest of civil war dramatically changes the landscape of their city and their lives. Soon their lives have turned upside down as they deal with checkpoints, violence, scarcity, and fear. Like so many others in that situation, they decide they have to leave and get out to the West, and they discover a network of secret doors that lead to other countries. The technique of metaphoric made real employed by Hamid is similar to the model used in Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead in which he envisions an actual railroad running underneath the ground to take slaves to safety. There are no boats or planes or weeks of walking to get to the West, here there are actual doorways that open up onto new vistas and possibilities, though not always with expected outcomes. Nadia and Saeed make their way through several landings as they cope with the uncertainty of life as unwanted strangers. Each exit and entrance changes them, and they painfully figure out how become themselves in the process. ©©©

Anything is Possible, by Elizabeth Strout

It’s always a good day when there’s a new Elizabeth Strout book published, and this one is based on a particularly delicious construct. In her most recent book before this one, My Name is Lucy Barton, Strout wrote about a woman who had left a troubled family background to move to New York, where she marries, has children, and eventually winds up in the hospital. While in the hospital, her estranged mother comes to visit her and they talk about people they know from back home. This novel, Anything is Possible, is about those people whose names dot the pages of My Name is Lucy Barton, as does Lucy herself. This book is really a collection of loosely connected stories about all the different people spoken about by Lucy and her mother, including her sister and brother. And many of the stories recounted here connect in different ways to Lucy and the persona of Lucy, that is, someone who left their hometown to go to New York and write books, someone who “got out.”. There is even a reference to a character going into a local bookstore and seeing Lucy’s book, with the cover described exactly as the actual cover of My Name is Lucy Barton. Strout has created a complete ecosystem with these two books that ping off of each other. But even without the connection to My Name is Lucy Barton, these tales are beautiful, moving, and so intricately, precisely, heartbreakingly crafted. ©©©

Stay With Me, by Ayobami Adebay0

Set in Nigeria, this energetic first novel tells the story of a marriage from the perspective of both the wife and the husband. Yejide and Akin meet as students and fall in love, despite familial and societal pressures that might keep them apart. And yet a simple romance this is not. There is a secret, or really a series of secrets, at the heart of this marriage that is revealed little by little as the story progresses, and it is only at the end that all becomes clear. It is above all a love story of two people trying to protect each other and themselves, a story of passion and shame and the falsehoods we tell in order to keep everything from crashing down around us. And as the narrative switches perspectives back and forth, it is also a tragic story of how much can go wrong between women and men when pride and customs and historic cultural norms and gender roles get in the way of trust and open communication. The writing is full of beautiful descriptions of longing and sensuality, the way people look at and see each other, and what happens over time as a result of deep anger, grief, and hurt. I look forward to seeing more from this author. ©©

Rating System

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

©© – Great Book, deeply satisfying

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Tagged as Ayobami Adebayo, Elizabeth Strout, Emily Fridlund, fiction, Man Booker, Mohsin Hamid, Paul Auster

by Hara Person | December 17, 2016 · 5:32 pm

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 Men, by Siri Hustvedt ©©©

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.

Hystopia, by David Means ©©©

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 ©©©

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 Girls, by Emma Cline ©©
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.

Eileen, by Ottessa Moshfegh ©©

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 Milk, by Deborah Levy ©©

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

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Filed under Books, Fiction, Publishing, women

Tagged as Brit Bennett, David Means, Emma Cline, Man Booker, Ottessa Moshfegh, Shortlist, Siri Hustvedt

by Hara Person | November 23, 2016 · 5:05 pm

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 Railroad, by Colson Whitehead ©©©

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 ©©©

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 Hawk, by Helen Macdonald ©©©

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 ©©

In 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 ©©

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

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Tagged as Ann Patchett, Colson Whitehead, Commonwealth, H is for Hawk, Helen Macdonald, Sarah Domet, Sarit Yishai-Levi, The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem, The Guineveres, The Underground Railroad

by Hara Person | June 19, 2016 · 10:50 pm

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.

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.

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.

I 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.

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.

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.

This 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.

If 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.

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Tagged as Amy Sue Nathan, Ann Weisgarber, Clair Vaye Watkins, David Bezmozgis, Man Booker, Margaret Atwood, Novel, Senjeev Sahota, Shulamit Lapid

by Hara Person | April 4, 2016 · 4:23 pm

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 @@@

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 @@@

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!

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 @@

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 @

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.

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Tagged as Elizabeth Strout, Evie Wyld, fiction, Ian Mcewan, Jennifer Tseng, Jessica Soffer, Novel

by Hara Person | November 27, 2015 · 3:06 pm

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 ©©©
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.

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!

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.

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 ©©©
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 ©
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.

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.

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Tagged as Andrew O'Hagan, Anne Tyler, Edwidge Danticat, Hanya Yanagihara, Jane Smiley, Laila Lalami, Lauren Groff, Man Booker Prize, National Book Award, novels, Pulitzer Prize, Pultizer Prize

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