Tag Archives: Novel

by | 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   @@

51jQtL80z4LThis 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  @@@

51o0nr39qaLA 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   @@@

516M+tLi0vLMy 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 @@@
51d7s6xTONLRead 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  @
41WSkqxA9DL._SX329_BO1,204,203,200_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

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

Leave a Comment

Filed under Books, Fiction, Publishing, Stories, women

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

by | 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.

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 ©©©

519Wc8KRhfL._SY346_

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 ©©

51BqarAXj2L

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

Leave a Comment

Filed under Books, Fiction, Stories

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

by | 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   @@@

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

1 Comment

Filed under Books, Fiction, Publishing

Tagged as , , , , , ,

by | August 9, 2015 · 12:21 pm

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.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Books, Fiction, Publishing

Tagged as , , , , , ,

by | June 7, 2015 · 3:17 pm

Good Books: Summer 2015 Edition

Summer is here and it’s time to read.  Here’s a round up of some recent good books, mostly fiction and, as an added bonus, one memoir. None are exactly beach novels, but they’re all worth a read. Enjoy!

Tell the Wolves I’m Home by Carol Rivka Brunt
UnknownThis novel is at the top of this list for a reason. It is a coming-of-age story about a fourteen year old, June, who has a very special relationship with her gay uncle. The story takes place in the mid-80’s and her uncle Finn, a famous painter, is dying of AIDS.  When Finn dies and she begins to grieve her loss, family secrets begin to shake loose. In the process, she develops secrets of her own, including a growing friendship with Finn’s hidden boyfriend, Toby, who her family labels as a murderer for infecting Finn with AIDS.  The many strands to this tale are interwoven beautifully as June deals with the loss of Finn, her strained relationship with her older sister Greta, her feelings of both anger and love for Toby, and all the attendant struggles of growing up.  The depiction of how AIDS was viewed in the 80’s rings all too true.  There is also an interesting and wonderful Oscar Wilde-like strand of this novel which involves a portrait that Finn has painted of June and Greta.  The painting is the linchpin upon which the whole story hangs, as it too develops and changes along with June and Greta.  Brunt’s homage to Dorian Gray is an outstanding element in this smart, tender, and moving novel.

The Virgin Cure by Ami McKay 

Unknown-1A girl named Moth is at the center of this work of historical fiction. Called Moth by a now-absent father and raised by a Gypsy fortune-telling mother on New York’s Lower East Side during the post-Civil War era, she is born into a life of extreme poverty and want.  One day she is sold into servitude by her mother and taken to work uptown for a wealthy but cruel woman. Moth is the kind of plucky heroine that these types of books needs to stay interesting, and she is indeed wily and resourceful. She soon finds herself in training to become a prostitute, at a time when syphilis is ravaging New York City and men of means are on the prowl for young girls who can provide them with the “virgin cure”.  Moth grows up quickly as she figures out what she needs to do to survive, and without providing any spoilers, survive she does.  McKay has done a good bit of research about this era, and her insights into life on the Lower East Side, women’s lives, women’s healthcare, and some historical figures, especially a female physician committed to women’s health, make this a worthwhile read. The fact that this physician is based on McKay’s actual great-great-grandmother adds a little extra flavor to this dish that, while tasty, could use a little more depth.

After Birth by Elisa Albert 

Unknown-2Where to start with this one? For one, if you are a woman and aren’t sure if you want to have a child, don’t read this novel yet. But if you have had a child, or are the partner of someone who has birthed, absolutely read this book. It would be easy to say that this is book is about postpartum depression but it’s so much more than that.  The protagonist at the center of this searing depiction of birth and early motherhood is Ari, who is an isolated, lonely, and depressed new mother.  She lives in Vermont with her husband, an academic, where she has few acquaintances and essentially no friends. She loves her son, Walker, but feels horribly alone in the post-birthing experience. Albert is brutal in her condemnation of the medicalization of birth, the way in which modern medicine disempowers women and disconnects them from their own bodies, and how Western society has disabled the tradition of women mothering one another through the transitions of birthing, breast-feeding, and child raising. One of Ari’s contentions is that c-sections are a form of rape perpetrated upon women by the medical establishment.  As a two-time c-section birther, and even though I know that way more c-sections are performed than are medically necessary, some of this felt uncomfortable and even extreme. But that is part of the power of this difficult novel. Albert has masterfully written a character who is not “nice,” who does not conform to societal expectations, who is angry and grieving and far from the soft-focus stock image of new motherhood. Her body is unfamiliar, her scar throbs, and her breasts have taken on a life of their own. (Those particular depictions are oh so resonant!). Having had the experience of birthing taken out of her power, she feels out of control and can’t find a way back to ownership of her body or of her life.  No one understands her and what she’s going through, not even her husband. She is desperately alone and the idea of ending her life is never far from her mind. And then she makes a friend, another new mother, who is surprisingly in worse shape than she is.  Through that friendship, and that friend’s new baby, she regains some control and comes back from the edge.

The Gods of Heavenly Punishment by Jennifer Cody Epstein
Unknown-3Cody Epstein knows how to tell a good story. Her characters are always richly drawn and fully realized, and the situations into which she places them are always well researched and ring true.  This novel is no exception. Told from several different perspectives and spanning several generations, this an epic story of the war in the Pacific during World War II.  The main character is a young Japanese girl, Yoshi, who life is radically changed when American bombers rain napalm down on her city.  The other strands of this story all connect through Yoshi but stand on their own as part of the legacy of destruction and pain caused by war, including Cam, the pilot of one of the American bomber planes, Anton, an architect who is caught up in the war despite himself, and Billy, who is posted in Japan following the war.  It is Yoshi who connects all the other characters and perspectives in this compelling tale of war, loss, secrets, and identity. The details of each character’s outer and inner lives are wonderfully drawn and pull you right in – this could definitely one of those books you can’t put down until it’s way, way after lights out.

The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman 

Unknown-5This book sat on my reading list for a long time before I finally dove in and read it. I’m so glad I did. This novel takes place in Rome, and involves the private lives of reporters and editors at an English language newspaper on the verge of extinction. Each of the characters, from the editor in chief to the obituary writer, to a stringer in Cairo is a tale unto themselves. They are struggling to keep the paper afloat as the world of publishing changes swiftly around them, and as control of the paper shifts to a new publisher. The details about each person’s life seems just right, with enough provided to bring each one fully to life. There are unexpected twists, a good dose of snark, and great insights into the relationships they have with each other. Humor is mixed in with sadness, cynicism fights with idealism, and despair and anxiety are laced with hope.  This novel is robust and vivid, artfully drawn against the romantic backdrop of Rome and full of all the attendant elements related to news paper publishing in the 21st century. This was a deeply satisfying read.

All Who Go Do Not Return by Shulem Deen

Unknown-4There has been a spate of memoirs over the last few years by people who have left the world of Hasidism. I admit to having a mild and inexplicable obsession with these memoirs, and yes, I’m sure there is something voyeuristic to my interest in them. But this memoir by Deen is different. Deen, who had been part of the world of the New Square Skverers, left as an adult in his mid-thirties, not his early twenties as others have done. This is not a vivid expose of sexual misdeeds or brutality (though there are some disturbing depictions of corporal punishment in educational settings).  There are depictions of faith-based violence and vigilante behavior, but while Deen comes to oppose this and see it as a very negative form of behavioral control, he also writes honestly of having been part of it at one point. This is all to say that he has not written a black and white, me versus them kind of memoir.  He also clearly want to protect certain relationships he has with people in the Hasidic world, and so he stays away, for the most part, from the kind of salacious details which might most interest outsiders already prone to be critical of the Hasidic world.  This is not to say that he shows fondness for the world he left – he is very critical of their brand of thought control, the substandard education provided within the community, and the ways in which they subvert the legal system. As an outsider who has read a lot on this topic, it is still shocking for me to learn (or have confirmed) that most adults in the community can barely read or write in English, and have no math skills – this is part of the way in which the community “protects” its members from the outside world, or isolates them and disables them from participating in that world.  He is critical too of the ways in which poverty is built into their way of life, again “protecting” them from the outside world. But there is a great deal of nuance and struggle here, along with deep pain. He is not, for the most part, writing about the world which he chose for himself for some period of time, but rather about his very deep struggle to make sense of meaning and faith within a world in which questions were discouraged and the rebbe had ultimate power over every aspect of life.  This is a tale of his own rebellion against that power, and his long journey to gain knowledge and free his mind.  He writes beautifully about his thirst for education, his dangerous questions about belief, his passion for ideas, and his need to find a supportive community. Though his choices caused him a great deal of pain, especially in regard to his children, this memoir is a testament to the need to fight for one’s own truth in the face of extreme pressure to conform to destructive communal norms.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Books, Fiction, Publishing, Stories

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

by | October 26, 2014 · 2:58 pm

Good Books, Fall 2014 Edition Part 1

In the last few years I’ve tried to read through the Man Booker Shortlist before the winner is announced. This year I managed to read four out of the six of the shortlisted titles – not bad given the timing – and one longlisted title as well.  Turns out that one of the four I read was the winner so that worked out well. The titles below are from the Man Booker lists.

Now that the days are getting shorter and the nights are colder, it’s time to get in bed with a good book  or better, a bunch of good books.  Here are some very worthwhile recommendations.

17905709-1The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan

This is probably not a book I would have chosen to read, had it not been on the Man Booker shortlist. It would have been a loss to miss this one. The easy way to describe this book is to say that it’s about the experience of an Australian doctor as a POW during World War II, held captive by the Japanese in what was then Siam, forced to work on building a railroad. But the book is much more than that. It is really about a full life of a man, a life shaped in large part by the POW experience but also shaped by the love of a woman he meets as a young man, by a love of books and words, and by a lifelong sense of yearning. It is about how history is both experienced and retold, and about death and loss and the striving for connection, and about what gets remembered and what forgotten after the horror of war is in the past. Though the main focus is on one man, the sweep of this novel is enormous. Flanagan masterfully blends the arc a single man’s life with that of world history. When I heard that this was the title that won this year’s Man Booker Prize, I was not surprised.

The Lives of Others, Neel Mukherjee

23216120The Lives of Others, Neel MukherjeeIt was hard to read this without comparing it to one of last year’s Man Booker shortlist titles, The Lowland by Jumpa Lahiri. Both novels deal with political and social unrest in India and the resultant unraveling of families.   The novels are very different otherwise, and yet the ghost of Lowland loomed over my reading of The Lives of Others, which suffered by comparison. That said, this is a rich feast of a novel. One of the wonderful aspects of this novel is the role of the house in which the Ghosh family lives. The house is a full character in this already full (and sometimes confusingly so) tale of a family in a downward spiral of wealth and its accompanying status. Several generations live within the house, though their physical proximity does not mean that they share experiences and outlooks. As the story progresses, the house, once solid, protective, and admired, becomes shabby and perilous. As the world changes around it, the fissures in the Ghosh family are exposed to the light, and the consequences are shattering.

To Rise Again as a Decent Hour by Joshua Ferris

18453074Where to begin with this strange book? It was funny, odd, annoying, and in the end, surprisingly satisfying. The protaginist of this Philip Roth-like novel is a somewhat anti-social dentist named Paul O’Rourke who is at odds with the world most of the time. Though devoted to the art of dentistry and seemingly good at what he does professionally, he doesn’t quite get the art of social interaction, especially with women. He has an obsession with Judaism yet always manages to say exactly the wrong thing. The interactions with his office staff are at times amusing, but also annoyingly, even if intentionally so, misogynistic. The story centers around some skillful identity theft in which Paul is stalked by a cleverly weird and oppressed group that tries to convince him that he is one of them – a group based on the idea of being doubters. The texts that are used in developing the history of this group are very well done and sound almost just right as Biblical text, and yet clearly aren’t – that aspect alone made it a worthwhile read, as does the unfolding of the history of this group and Paul’s connection to it.

The Blazing World by Siri Hustvedt

18143974Though this was a longlist title and therefore not part of my self-propelled assignment, it sounded too compelling to pass up. Though at times somewhat convoluted, this is an astounding feat of concept and imagination. Hustvedt’s character is an artist whose more famous husband, a gallery owner and art collector with an interesting private life, has died. Feeling that her identity as an artist had not been taken seriously by a world that recognized her as a “wife of” and “mother of,” she buys a building in Red Hook, Brooklyn, and sets out to devote herself to art. Her nurturing instincts cause her to take in some strays even as she tries to intentionally be more selfish and focus on her own art. She comes up with the concept of choosing a series of three male artists who will be her “masks” in the art world, presenting her work as theirs in a grand experiment to see how her work is received if thought of as created by a man. One of the remarkable things about this novel is the creation by Hustvedt of a whole imaginary body of work by the main character – work that feels wholly real and visible, and extremely female. The telling of this tale unfolds in a series of narratives from different perspectives, as well as newspaper articles, journal essays, and interviews. Hustvedt herself plays a cameo role, being mentioned in one of the essays. The gentle lampooning of over-inflated art world egos, theory, and language is employed to wonderful effect. The Blazing World raises many important questions about women, art-making, fame, disappointment, anger, and love that stayed with me long after I finished this powerful novel.

PS: Over the summer, I reviewed a few novels, and among them was another of the Man Booker shortlist titles, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler.

Leave a Comment

Filed under Books, Fiction, Publishing

Tagged as , , , , , , ,