The Red Daughter and American Spy

Greetings, how is everyone’s May going? It’s been a pretty rainy one here lately, which has sort of helped out my reading truth-be-told. But we’ve been trying to get ready for the annual Golden Triangle three-day bike ride this coming weekend in the mountains, so hopefully the sun will come out. Cross your fingers. Last weekend we faced clouds like these at left. Sometimes when you’re on a bicycle amid the countryside such dark clouds can be rather intimidating but then you must press on to try and finish your ride and get back to shelter. Luckily the skies held for us that day. Below I’ve attached a sunnier’s day photo, which is our goal for bike riding from now on. 

For those going to next week’s BookExpo America in New York, have a great time! Apparently over 600 authors will be there including special events with such folks as Malcolm Gladwell, Rachel Maddow, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Phillippa Gregory, and Judge Sonia Sotomayor among others. It’ll be a huge boondoggle. I recall Kenny Loggins belting out a mini-concert, which included “Footloose,” right there on the floor amid the book booths at BookExpo 2016. I had my picture taken with him after, ha!  That was the only BookExpo I’ve been to — it was in Chicago — and man was it a fun rush. I think I loaded myself up with nearly 20 advance book copies, wow. Unfortunately this year I won’t be going, but maybe next year I’ll be back. The Expo really showcases a lot of the best coming out in the fall, which is pretty much brain candy for us readers. Meanwhile I’ll leave you with a couple of reviews of what I finished lately. 

John Burnham Schwartz’s historical novel “The Red Daughter,” which follows the life and defection to the U.S. in 1967 of Svetlana Alliluyeva, the only daughter of Soviet despot Joseph Stalin’s, left quite a mark on me. Wow what a complex and conflicted woman and turbulent time in history — during the Cold War no less! Although quite a bit has been written before about Svetlana’s life — later known as Lana Evans — including a few memoirs by her and a notable 2015 biography by Rosemary Sullivan, this was my first foray into reading about Stalin’s daughter and the dynamics of her situation sort of blew me away. 

At the height of the Cold War, apparently Stalin’s daughter, who sought to defect, was seen by many in the CIA and State Department as “too radioactive to handle, likely to upset the fragile balance of nuclear forces thought to be keeping the world, if only barely from self-annihilation.” But ultimately the U.S. chose not to turn away the “most important Soviet defector in our country’s history,” so notes the book. 

The novel is told via Svetlana’s fictionalized journal entries, which alternate in chapters with those of Peter Horvath’s, a lawyer sent by the CIA to smuggle Svetlana into America, 14 years after her father, Stalin’s death. They keep in touch after her defection throughout their lives and that forms the gist of the narrative. Apparently in real life the lawyer was the author’s father and that’s how he came to write this story. Although, according to an Author’s Note at the back of the book, the character of Peter Horvath was much different than his father and did not become as involved with her.

Despite these embellishments between the two, the story seems to follow Svetlana’s life fairly closely.  And my, did she come to live and move around quite a bit amid the U.S., Russia and England. She seemed a complex person who could be charismatic and bright as well as difficult and headstrong. She also seemed neither solely Russian or American but caught between East and West, feeling at times alienated by both.

Surely she made some disastrous decisions, which ended up haunting her the rest of her life. For one, Svetlana, at age 41, defected to the U.S. abruptly during a trip to India, leaving behind her children, ages 17 and 21 without warning, which left her with much remorse and longing ever after, as detailed in the book. Then while in the U.S., she joins a cult-like community run by architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s widow, which ends badly after a couple years. And later in 1984 she decides to revoke the West and return to living in the Soviet Union with her American child, which doesn’t exactly work out either. Oy vey, what was she thinking. 

Despite these decisions, the story paints her a bit tragically and sympathetically as a figure who wished to escape her father’s infamous past (whose regime killed off many of her own relatives among the millions) and live her life on her own terms, which was never fully successful.

What I liked about it was that you really get a sense from the novel of the emotional weight of the Cold War and her decisions — her guilt as a mother for her acts — and how she couldn’t really escape her legacy. I felt sliced open just feeling the stress of all she struggled with, coming to this country like she did, as a spectacle, alone amid her circumstances. I thought the novel had some very well done passages that brought to life her mind-set and situation — making her perhaps not totally likable or forgivable but a complex figure in the clutches of history. 

Next up, I listened to the audiobook of Lauren Wilkinson’s debut novel “American Spy,” whose premise lured me to pick it up …. about a female black protagonist who’s languishing at the FBI and gets picked for a task force in 1986 to insinuate herself with the “charismatic revolutionary president of Burkina Faso whose Communist ideology has made him a target for American intervention.” Uh oh. 

The novel is labeled as a “spy thriller” but to me it seemed more like a coming-of-age tale or a fictional memoir about a young black woman (Marie), who wants to follow in her sister’s footsteps to become a spy. But then her sister is killed in a mysterious accident (known from the start), which Marie is still trying to get a handle on. The novel starts out with a pretty action-packed chapter of Marie and her two children surviving a home invasion and then goes back in time to various locales as Marie details her life becoming a spy that has led up to this event. 

She narrates the slow-burn of a story as if explaining to her twin boys who their father is and what happened in her career, alternating chapters from different times in her life between her FBI days in N.Y., her mission in Africa in the mid-’80s, and her current days with her mother in Martinique. It’s a bit convoluted and took quite while to get to the main gist of the story about her mission to get close to the leader of Burkina Faso. Apparently president Thomas Sankara, who’s a part of the story, was the real leader there from 1983 to 1987, so it was interesting to hear about his role in the country. I had not known of him before, or his ideology, or the various tides in Burkina Faso that were playing out during those days. 

Unfortunately at times the narrative seemed a bit weighed down with superfluous information to the plot, or too meandering, and I found the writing a bit over-explained … becoming at times convoluted and then over-simplifying what was going on and the bad guys’ operation. So I wasn’t as gripped by Marie’s story, or the writing, as I was hoping. I wanted to like the novel a bit more, but was able to see Marie’s mission through and found parts of it worthwhile. I just wouldn’t market it as a blazing spy thriller because to me it was more of a slow-burn novel about a young black woman becoming a spy that had a couple action scenes to it. I wouldn’t be surprised if the author puts out a sequel since this was only Marie’s first mission.

P.S. I found the cover of the paperback version of the book, which I attached at the top, much better than that of the hardback version in yellow. What do you think?

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read either of these and if so, what did you think? 

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The River and The Lost Man

I have been a bit AWOL from the blog lately as I was playing in a big senior tennis tournament here last week and my doubles partner from Austria was staying with us. She used to live here and decided to fly in and visit so we could play the age-group event, which included players ages anywhere from 35 to 85, competing against one another in their own age bracket. It was fun and we did fairly well and battled hard. I also placed fifth in singles, and now need to rest up after the seven matches played. Tennis is not so easy on the ole body, but it sure can be a good adrenaline rush at times. 

Meanwhile spring seems to be gaining hold and we’ve had some warm days recently. I need to get the garden going, especially in planting tomatoes, cucumbers and geraniums — the usual summer drill. The owl family that I posted about earlier has left the trees by the river; they are gone now. We believe they are healthy and happy somewhere and we wish them the best. We will continue to watch for them.

Meanwhile my book assistant and dog, Stella, at left, enjoyed a nice swim in the river over the weekend. She would make a good river otter and doesn’t hesitate to launch into any body of water. I just need to make sure there are no rocks before throwing her her ball. She will get it no matter what.  

Speaking of water, I enjoyed Peter Heller’s recent outdoorsy novel “The River” about two college school buddies (Wynn and Jack) who decide to canoe the Maskwa River in northern Canada and end up getting a wee more than they bargained for. There’s a wildfire headed their way and a couple of drunk Texans (damn) and a married couple at odds with one another who make things rather dicey. It’s not only the wildlife or natural disasters that you need to worry about, it’s the creepy homo sapiens you come across in the wild. You might recall the 1970’s book and movie “Deliverance” right?  It seems this canoe novel pays a bit of homage to that, mentioning author James Dickey along the way, though the story doesn’t come off as chilling as that scary river classic. 

I enjoyed “The River” as an audiobook. It starts off rather leisurely paced as a backwoods paddle between two Dartmouth College friends who seem adept outdoorsmen — Wynn is a burly tall guy from Vermont and Jack grew up on a ranch in Colorado — and builds as it goes along as conflicts start to arise and ultimately spills over into a pretty action-packed ending. The author writes well about the natural world and men camping and fishing in the woods. Apparently he’s a former whitewater kayaker who once traveled the world writing about challenging descents. 

I’m not an avid camper or kayaker (I’ve tried them a bit), but I’ve done quite a bit of hiking, cycling, and two river raft trips in the mountains so wilderness /survival novels sort of entice me. This is the third of Heller’s books that I’ve completed — perhaps the best being his post-apocalyptic debut novel “The Dog Stars” from 2012. “The River” touches quite a bit on male friendship and the outdoors. It’s probably not for everyone, but I found it hit the right rapids for me and would make a good summer read for those interested. 

Next up, I read Australian author Jane Harper’s mystery “The Lost Man” about the Bright family and its three brothers who have large adjacent cattle ranches to one another in the remote Australian outback. When Cam, age 40, the middle brother, and largest land overseer, is found dead near a gravesite in the parched sun nine kilometers away from his truck — his mom and relatives are perplexed: why would he leave his vehicle and its safety rations under such brutal heat conditions? Did he wish to kill himself? The older brother, Nathan, starts to investigate what happened to him, ultimately learning some things about his brother and family that were long-ago tucked away. Uh-oh. 

Most of this mystery I really liked, especially the setting in Australia’s remote outback, which is very vivid in the story, and its main protagonist Nathan, a lonely divorced dad who’s been ostracized from the town for reasons that become clear and who is trying to reconnect with his teenage son Xander, who’s visiting from the city. He makes for a sympathetic investigator into his brother’s death. And it’s compelling too that for quite a while in the story so many people seem to be possible suspects to what happened to Cam. Was it the backpackers that worked at his ranch, or his wife who he wasn’t getting along with, or the younger brother Bub who wanted more of Cam’s land? Or someone from his past who had been trying to contact him? You won’t find out till the very end when it all unravels. 

But meanwhile it’s a slow burn of a story that kept me interested till long past dark, particularly due to Nathan and his circumstances and complicated history with his brother’s wife, but the ending and who did it I found quite disturbing and maybe even hard to believe. The ending likely docked a star from me on Goodreads, otherwise there were parts of the book I enjoyed. I wouldn’t totally throw it against a wall, but the whodunit reveal didn’t really agree with me. 

This is the third book I’ve read by Jane Harper and is a standalone novel from her previous two mysteries that feature federal agent Aaron Falk. This one is without Falk, and I must say it was okay he wasn’t there. I’m not sure which one of her mysteries I liked best; they all had a few pluses and perhaps one minus to them. So while I’ve liked them, I haven’t overly loved loved them. Still they are enjoyable enough and somehow I continue to be drawn to her mysteries’ in remote Australian settings. I’m sure I’ll likely pick up the next one because I seem to be a sucker for them. 

That’s all for now.  What about you have you read either of these novels and if so, what did you think?

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May Preview

Spring is desperately trying to get here, but as of May 1 we had a bit of snow left on the ground from a wild blizzard that hit last Saturday night — much to everyone’s amazement. How strange it is to see snow in May, but fear not, it’s melting away quickly and our full bloom should arrive by mid-to late month so we are still on track.

Meanwhile my husband and I have been checking daily on the owls at their nest near the river, which I wrote about in my last post, and it appears that one owlet is missing, gulp. There’s still the mama and papa owls and now two owlets instead of three. Not sure if one flew off or if something happened to the third, but it’s quite heartbreaking that one’s gone. Still the mama owl sits stoically on a branch, watching the remaining two. The owlets seem pretty big now, and are flapping their wings often, so perhaps they’re getting ready to fly soon. We will keep an eye out until they go. 

In book news I want to congratulate author Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi, age 35, who just won the 2019 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for her novel “Call Me Zebra,” which follows the travels of a young Iranian-American woman as she revisits some of the places she once lived in an effort to retrace her family’s exile from 1990’s Iran and to compose a grand manifesto on the meaning of literature.

Oh my. From what I’ve heard it sounds like quite a rambling, bombastic narrative from an intellectually astute, adventurous main character. Judy over at the blog Keep the Wisdom liked it but said it’s probably not a novel for everyone. In fact it has a 2.86 rating on Goodreads after 197 reviews. Still the award’s judges said it’s a novel that “performs at the highest of levels in accomplishing only what the written novel can show us.” So I might test it out sometime, or look to see what the author puts out next.

Meanwhile, I’ve been checking out what’s releasing in May and there seems to be a plethora of notable new books, movies, and albums coming out … so what are we waiting for. Let’s dive into what looks enticing. First off, I’m curious about Julia Phillips’s debut novel “Disappearing Earth,” which is about two sisters, ages 8 and 11, who go missing from a beach on the Kamchatka Peninsula in northeastern Russia and how their disappearance impacts the close-knit community there over the course of a year. Each chapter goes into the life of a different woman on the peninsula whose story interconnects with others in the area … all amid the backdrop of a whodunit mystery.  

I thought I had tired of the missing persons’ genre but then a seemingly refreshing one like this comes along and I have to try the genre anew. Apparently “Disappearing Earth” is an immersive look into the land and culture of Russia’s remote — and volcanically dangerous — Kamchatka peninsula. And since I haven’t visited there in my reading before, I’m game for this highly praised debut by a Fulbright fellow who spent a couple years in Russia and apparently did a lot of research for this novel.   

Next up, I’ll pick Casey Cep’s debut nonfiction book “Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee.” I know, I know, maybe I shouldn’t be sucked into all these Harper Lee books … but this one, written by a much talked about young journalist, sounds pretty compelling. Apparently it’s about a true-crime case that Harper Lee had wanted to write a book about, and spent countless hours researching, but then it never came to pass. She had attended the 1977 trial of an Alabama preacher who’d been shot to death by a relative after the preacher had been accused of killing his own family for insurance money. But faced with lies about the case and her own insecurities, Lee ultimately ended up abandoning her plans to write about it. Hmm. 

This book, which is divided into three parts, goes into the particulars; first detailing the preacher’s life, who was rumored to be into voodoo; then going into his murderer’s life and trial; and finally describing Harper Lee’s efforts to write a book about the case. It seems the book goes into various tangents about the insurance industry, voodoo, racial politics, and the insanity defense that keeps things fresh along the way. Not sure I should be this interested, but there’s something about the elusive Harper Lee that keeps readers like me coming back to her life, struggles, and mysteries. 

Next up is Mary Beth Keane’s novel “Ask Again, Yes” about two neighboring families’ in a New York suburb and their shared history over the course of four decades. The men are NYPD rookie cops when they end up living next door to each other outside the city and their wives have struggles and kids, and the families become linked by love and tragedy.

Hmm, I’m sort of going out on a limb here to pick this as I’m not usually a big domestic novel / Celeste Ng kind of reader, but this novel has received a lot of attention so I’m adding it to my TBR list. Will I be glad I did, or rue the day due to the chaos of a domestic drama? Keane is said to be an author to read and watch so I’m going to wing it.  

Then there’s Anna Pitoniak’s sophomore novel “Necessary People” about a pair of college best friends whose female friendship turns toxic. One is born with everything and the other comes from nothing. Their friendship apparently takes a turn when they become post-college rivals at a cable news network, intent on achieving success no matter the cost. As the novel’s tagline says: “Friends come and go. Ambition is forever.” Ha, this could be wicked craziness.

Kirkus Reviews says it’s a story that is impossible to put down and is “escapism with substance.” It sounds like a catfight that’s fast paced. Such other recent novels as Tara Isabella Burton’s “Social Creature” and Christine Mangan’s “Tangerine” have also been popular exploring the dark side of female friendship. So watch your back and read these at your own whim.

I’m also curious about Erika Swyler’s sophomore novel “Light From Other Stars,” which sounds like it’s part coming-of-age tale — about a young girl who idolizes her father at NASA and dreams of becoming a female astronaut — and part sci-fi voyage about her later life aboard a spacecraft on a mission bound for Mars.

Wow, usually I’m not too sci-fi oriented but  this novel looks to have all the right ingredients and has gained a lot of praise. It’s said to be beautifully rendered and explores themes of time, loss, and human connection. For fans of the film “Interstellar,” which I saw and liked, this could be just the right ticket. Now let’s just see if I can handle the novel’s sci-fi elements.    

Two other May novels I’d be remiss without mentioning are: Julie Orringer’s novel “The Flight Portfolio,” based on a true story about the  American journalist Varian Fry, who helped imperiled refugees get out of Nazi-occupied France in 1940; and Sara Collins’s debut “The Confessions of Frannie Langton” about a servant and former slave in 1825 who is accused of murdering her employer and his wife in London. Hmm, both sound quite strong and now make me wonder if I should place them higher than a couple of the other May picks. Which book would entice you the most of all these?

As for May movies, there seems to be something for everyone this month: from comedies, to YA films to action and drama to a rock star biography. The best of the comedies might be “Long Shot” with Charlize Theron and Seth Rogen, starring as a presidential candidate and a speechwriter who fall for one another along the campaign trail. Oh yeah this happens often, right? With these two though it could be good fun.

I’ll also probably see “Wine Country” on Netflix with Amy Poehler, Tina Fey, and Maya Rudolph, as I’m hoping it’ll have a few good laughs — about a group of longtime friends who go to Napa for the weekend to celebrate their friend’s 50th birthday … only to have tensions from their past boil over. Ha, it sounds decent enough.

As for YA, there’s Nicola Yoon’s bestseller “The Sun Is Also a Star” out on the big screen this month, which I liked just fine in book form, but don’t think I need to flock to see, though the young actors in it look lovely.

Also the movie about Elton John’s life “Rocketman” looks to be performed well by British actor Taron Egerton, but I can’t seem to get too excited for it for some reason. In terms of music movies, I’d rather see the documentary “Echo in the Canyon” about the folk and rock music scene in L.A.’s Laurel Canyon in the 1960s and ‘70s. Various iconic musicians and groups, such as the Byrds, the Beach Boys and the Mamas and Papas, star in the documentary and talk about those days, and wow it looks really good.

Perhaps the most talked about drama this month is the American-British film “The Souvenir” that premiered at Sundance in January. Apparently it’s about a young female film student in the early ‘80s who becomes romantically involved with a complicated, untrustworthy man. I don’t know quite what to think about it just yet, but it’s received universal acclaim so far.

Apparently it’s based on the life and experiences of Joanna Hogg, who’s the British director and writer of the movie. And Tilda Swinton’s daughter stars in the lede role. What’s sort of amazing is that the sequel (“The Souvenir Part II”) is already in the works before the first one has even been released. Wow that seems quite bold.

Lastly in albums for May, there’s an array of new ones by such groups as Vampire Weekend, The Head and the Heart, and The National, and from such solo artists as: Joy Williams, Donovan Woods, Justin Townes Earle, Caroline Spence, and Jim Cuddy among others.  There’s a lot of good tunes to listen to, but I’ll choose Vampire Weekend’s new album “Father of the Bride” since I’m particularly liking the group’s song “Harmony Hall” on the radio recently.  Check it out. 

That’s all for now. What about you — which new releases are you most looking forward to? 

Posted in Top Picks | 20 Comments

The Current and The Perfect Nanny

Our area usually doesn’t come into full bloom until May but something neat has happened this spring in our neck of the woods. A great horned owl family has taken up residence in a nest in a tall tree down by the river and people around town have gotten word and are stopping by to watch this now-very popular family of five. There’s two parents, the mama owl near the nest and a papa not too far off, and three baby owlets who seem to be getting too big for their roost. They’re jostling about vying for space and at times flapping their wings, but haven’t flown the coop just yet.

It’s neat to see these birds so close on a daily basis, usually they’re pretty elusive birds that are most active at night. I’ve lived here for over 10 years and have never had such a good view of owls before. Now my dog and I walk by them each day to see what is new. We hope the owlets will survive and find their way in the world. Their parents have been great caregivers so far. They’re tough and make no mistake these birds are fierce predators that can take large prey, but so far we haven’t seen them during feeding hours so don’t know their full story. Still they are fun to watch in the daylight. Meanwhile I’ll leave you with a couple reviews of books I finished lately. 

Tim Johnston’s crime mystery “The Current” starts off with two college girls on a long road trip home who suffer an attack at a gas station and whose car gets knocked from behind by an unidentified truck into the icy waters of a Minnesota river, drowning one and injuring the other. It’s an incident that rattles the nearby hometown of one of the girl’s, which endured a similar tragedy of a teenage girl dying in the river 10 years before. The recent survivor comes to realize there’s connections between the two cases and begins to poke around into the prior murder, which was pinned on a boy who was ultimately not charged. 

Uh-oh. These kinds of icy, winter Minnesota mysteries are often hard for me to resist. And indeed I thought “The Current” had a more involved and better plot than the author’s 2015 acclaimed debut “The Descent,” which was a missing person, kidnap kind of story set in the mountains of Colorado. This one starts fast with the crime then turns into a slow burn of a novel about the injured girl and how other residents in her small hometown have been affected by the previous murder as they weathered years of suspicion, guilt, and grief. The accused boy and his family’s lives were changed forever as well as the lives of the victim’s family’s and the sheriff’s who was never able to get a conviction. Eventually the survivor girl is able to unravel enough secrets about that case and the town to get an arrest.

It’s a story, though while a slow burn, propelled me along quickly as I grappled with who and what were behind these crimes. It had a strong atmosphere of the town and the river, and the various characters felt like they had been through these tragedies. At times I wasn’t sure if the author was shooting for the novel to be literary fiction or crime fiction — it wavered between the two — as it went on at some length and manifested the various repercussions to the town folk. I liked it but thought it could’ve been edited shorter. The ending resolved one, but not fully both of the crimes, which didn’t really bother me as I felt that that is often the case, but if that bugs you, be forewarned. I will continue to read whatever the author puts out next as I think his crime novels are compelling and seem to be getting better. 

Thanks to Algonquin books for the e-galley they provided me for this review.

Next up, I listened to the audiobook of Leila Slimani’s novel “The Perfect Nanny,” which was picked by the New York Times as one of the Top 10 Books of 2018. The author was also awarded France’s most prestigious literary prize, the Goncourt, for the novel — the first Moroccan-born woman to win it — so I was keen to investigate. Apparently the book was a blockbuster in France but hasn’t taken off as much in the U.S. Still I was curious — though I went into it blind, not knowing much, and I was spit out the other side in a frightened fog. Holy smokes it’s dark! Need I say it’s inspired by a real crime that happened on the Upper West Side of New York in 2012, in which a nanny bludgeoned the family’s two children. Gawd I wondered after the first chapter — what was I doing. 

From the novel’s outset you know that a horrific crime has happened and who the perpetrator is but then you go back in time to get a sense of the mind-set and background of the nanny and her relationship with the family, especially with the mother. It’s a story, set in Paris, of Louise, who at first appears to be the quintessential nanny to Myriam and Paul’s two children. She does everything wonderfully: engage the children, clean the apartment, mend the clothes, cook the meals for the family. But in time as the married couple — Myriam, a lawyer, and Paul, a music executive — and the nanny become more dependent on one another, feelings of resentment and jealousy mount. The lonely Louise, who’s insinuated herself into all aspects of their lives, expects to be apart of their family, but the parents look to her services basically to care for their kids so that they can pursue their careers. 

Uh-oh. You begin to feel uneasy: this is not go to go well. In an unstable person, madness is never very far away. But the parents in the story are no angels either. That’s what’s so interesting about the novel. In the hands of a different writer, it would likely come off as a crime thriller like in “The Girl on the Train” genre or in the vein of a gruesome murder in the Scandinavian crime genre, yet this author writes it in such a way that explores various other issues as it builds and becomes more unsettling: such as motherhood, class, domesticity, working parents and mental illness. It’s not as much graphic as it is just the doom that builds in your own mind, knowing about its impending arrival. 

I found the novel well done, enough to give it 4.5 stars on Goodreads despite its very dark subject matter. Midway through, I began to ask who is this author and why have I never heard of her before, which is usually a sign that I find the writing pretty effective. It’s translated from French, so you might notice some language variances. But now that I know all about the insufferable Louise and the crime, I need to get them clearly out of my head for good. I used to like the name Louise but I’m not sure I can stomach it much anymore.  

That’s all for now, what about you have you read these novels and if so, what did you think?

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Daisy Jones and Trust Exercise

I’ve been in Southern California this past week visiting my parents. My hub was here for awhile and we rode bikes, which was fun and scenic. Thanks to rain this past winter, it’s much more green here than in years past. My folks still live in the same house from when I was in first grade, if you can believe it. It’s in part of the “Inland Empire” area between Los Angeles and Palm Springs and boasts lots of lovely citrus and avocado trees, and gorgeous views of the mountains. It’s a nice, peaceful place to visit, and warmer than our Canadian environs, so I can’t complain.

Despite being here, I did not attend the huge Los Angeles Times Festival of Books over the weekend, which is the largest annual literary festival in the country with more than 150,000 visitors. I’ve always wanted to go but never quite made the trek and I sort of wonder if I’d be swallowed up by it and not spit out. Still, Rebecca Makkai won the L.A.Times Book Prize for fiction there for her novel “The Great Believers,” which I plan to get to. Speaking of literary prizes, congrats to author Richard Powers for winning this year’s Pulitzer Prize for fiction for his epic environmental novel “The Overstory,” about the life of trees and the people who understand them. Judy over at the blog Keep the Wisdom loved it and I’m curious sometime to test it out. “The Overstory’s” win gives a big boost to eco-novels everywhere, so I’m excited about that.

Meanwhile I finished a couple books lately that have been bantered about this year. First, I listened to the audiobook of Taylor Jenkins Reid’s novel “Daisy Jones & the Six,” about the rise and fall of an iconic 1970s rock band. Did you think I’d miss it? I grew up on classic rock in the ’70s and ’80s and have consumed a steady dose of various rock star memoirs and their lives of sex, drugs, & rock ’n roll. My brother still gives me a new rock bio each Christmas — whether it’s of The Doors, or Eric Clapton, or Robbie Robertson, or Janis Joplin, or whomever I’ve likely been glued at one time to their stories. If you like such tales, then this one is worth checking out.

As you might have heard, “Daisy Jones & the Six” is a novel written in an interview format that unfolds like an oral history of the band with all its various members and managers giving input into what happened. I found its structure really conducive to experiencing the novel as an audiobook. It follows chronologically and all the various characters — of which there are quite a few — are played by different people so you become familiar with their voices and they seem to really take on their roles. Their dialogue too plays off each other in a cool way. By the end, I was pretty convinced the band was real and the individuals were all apart of it … but alas, no, this is a novel after all. So I had to wake up and snap back to reality.

The story revolves around a band that reminded me a lot of Fleetwood Mac. There’s the core group out of Pittsburgh that begins with two brothers, the Dunne brothers, Billy and Graham, along with four other musicians, who come to make up The Six. Then in an interesting way a free-spirited young woman, Daisy Jones, joins the band when they move out to L.A. Like Fleetwood Mac, the band includes two female members: singer-songwriter Daisy and the keyboardist, Karen; there’s also at times similar infighting and in-sleeping among the group’s members.

Lead singer Billy, who’s trying to hang onto his sobriety and marriage, and new member, Daisy, at first differ a lot on artistic directions of songs, their words, and styles, but over time come to thrive on writing songs together. They have a creative chemistry, perhaps in my head a bit like Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, or Lennon & McCartney for that matter. But while, author Taylor J. Reid says her inspiration for the band was a group like Fleetwood Mac, she also says such bands like the Eagles gave her much fodder to work with for the details, especially in their pitfalls. And believe me, Daisy and the other members have their share of drugs and misadventures.

It’s no secret Billy and Daisy’s band in the end break up, it’s set up that way from the beginning, but you wonder along the way how or why it happens. They hit a huge pinnacle of success after the band’s album “Aurora” comes out (a bit like Fleetwood Mac’s blockbuster “Rumors”), but then little cracks begin to deepen. The story takes a couple turns that kept it fresh enough, though you’ll probably guess the particulars. For the most part, I found the novel an enjoyable romp through the ’70s music scene and the life of a band. I liked the various characters and voices who made the story come to life via the audiobook. While a few parts might have been a bit cheesy, on the whole I was sad by the band’s end and nostalgic for those ’70s days when such music and stars reigned supreme. I hear the author might someday bring these characters back. What do you think, will there be a sequel, or just a movie?

Next up, I read Susan Choi’s novel “Trust Exercise,” which is a more complex book than any “Daisy Jones.” It’s broken up into three parts … overall it’s about teens at an esteemed performing arts high school in the 1980s whose teacher, Mr. Kingsley, puts them through some intense exercises and long production days, which will affect them and they’ll remember in different ways for the rest of their lives. The first part is told pretty straightforwardly about their high school days, and two teens in particular, Sarah and David, who get involved in a sexual relationship that is on again, off again, when Mr. Kingsley tags them for some of his class exercises. Uh-oh. Shortly after, an English-exchange troupe arrives at their school, and Sarah and her friend Karen get involved with two of the older guys from it.

Then it cuts to Part 2: which shifts to a dozen years later and to Karen’s point of view of her past at the school and in the present of her contact with the other alums. This section confused me with its use of Karen in the first person, as well as third person narrative, and I was like whaaa? But I kept going. In Part 2, Karen returns back to her hometown where her former classmate David is putting on a play, and in which she, Sarah and Karen’s former English beau get involved with. Uh-oh it’s the four of them again, confronting their old high school ties and days … in a final act that turns into a doozy. The book ends with a short coda from another character, only indirectly related.

It’s a novel that doesn’t exactly make you want to go back to high school again — with all the angst, hormones, embarrassment, and power plays at hand. The adults don’t seem to be acting any better than the kids, and the power and abuse in it are disturbing. I was reminded of people’s #MeToo moments. It offers up various characters who seem to remember things and confront their memories about those times differently.

It’s an ambitious novel with a lot to think about and the author writes well, but I didn’t find it exactly enjoyable — because of the flawed characters and place for one thing — nor was it an easy read. There’s not much dialogue or paragraph breaks in it and the narrative changes threw me a bit. You have to work for this one! Still Susan Choi is a talented writer with plenty of insight and turns of phrases about high school life and these characters that gave me enough to make it worth it. I’m sure her novels in the future will continue to challenge readers like this and push the envelope so to speak.

*Thanks to Grazia at Henry Holt Books for sending me a copy of “Trust Exercise” to review. 

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read either of these books and if so, what did you think? Lastly, I just want to pass along my utmost sympathies to the people of France and everyone for the awful fire at the Notre Dame Cathedral. I just couldn’t believe it, so horrible to hear. We had passed the Cathedral last summer on our trip. Feels emotional to see such flames on such an iconic, historic and beloved place.

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April Preview

Ahh April. If it weren’t for filing taxes and being known sometimes as the mud month around here, April might be delightful, but it’s just those annoying things that keep it a bit tarnished. The good news is I flew to Portland, Oregon, over last weekend to meet up with a couple of old friends who were there to attend the AWP Conference, which I joined in on. (See the lovely cherry trees in bloom along Portland’s waterfront, at left.) I didn’t know about AWP before, but the acronym stands for the Association of Writers & Writing Programs, which has an annual three-day conference each year that is huge and takes up an entire convention center. Many small publishers and university presses were there amid a large book fair, and there were also numerous panels going on per hour on such things as poetry and fiction writing, as well as nonfiction writing, and author readings. 

I haven’t seen so many poets together in my life! The AWP Conference was quite a cool experience regarding fiction books too. I listened to a reading and conversation among authors: Cheryl Strayed, Ariel Levy, and Danzy Senna, and went to one fiction panel about female protagonists that included Mira Jacob and Kirstin Chen, and another panel on research methods for historical fiction with Dominic Smith and Robin Oliveira that was excellent. Still I missed some other big name authors who attended, such as: Lisa Ko, Tayari Jones, Paul Beatty, Rebecca Makkai, and Colson Whitehead because we were sampling a few poetry panels and only went two out of the three days. All in all, AWP was great fun and Portland has a lot to offer: we especially liked the Art Museum, Blue Star Donuts (!), and a few neat restaurants (including the Multnomah Whiskey Library pictured above). Wow, what more do you want?! And now I’ll leave you with a preview of what’s coming out in April.  

It seems there’s so much good fiction out this month, it took me a long while to decide which five I wanted to read and highlight. Such well-known authors as Ali Smith, Stewart O’Nan, Ian McEwan, T.C. Boyle, Ann Beattie, and Miriam Toews have new novels coming out that look good. Despite the fact that I usually like their books, I have chosen a few others instead that have piqued my interest. 

First off, Angie Kim’s debut novel “Miracle Creek” is getting huge buzz and is said to be one of the It Books of the Year, so what are we waiting for. The novel is said to be about a fatal explosion that happens at an unusual treatment facility in Virginia that is owned by an immigrant Korean family and the ensuing trial that follows, which “uncovers unimaginable secrets from that night.” Uh-oh.

Nylon calls “Miracle Creek” “both an utterly engrossing, nail-biter of a courtroom drama and a sensitive, incisive look into the experiences of immigrant families in America.” Moreover author/lawyer Scott Turow calls it a “terrific courtroom thriller” and Laura Lippman says it’s a “marvel” and a “perfect novel for these chaotic times in which we live.” That sounds good enough for me. Now I just need to get my hands on a copy of it.  

Next up, I’m curious about Irish author Sally Rooney’s sophomore novel “Normal People,” which is just coming out in North America. The author has received so much buzz ever since her 2017 debut novel “Conversations With Friends” was published. I’d like to read both. Her new one “Normal People” is a coming-of-age love story that recently won the Costa Novel Award, making Sally Rooney the youngest winner ever at age 27, for the award that honors writers based in the U.K. and Ireland. Rooney is said to be the real deal who creates great dialogue.

Apparently “Normal People” follows two 20-somethings (Connell and Marianne) who grow up in the same small town in rural Ireland before becoming students at Trinity College in Dublin. They get together and split up a couple times … but you have to read it to find out how they fare in the end. The Wall Street Journal says it’s a novel that “explores class dynamics and young love with wit and nuance.” So count me in.

Next is Lydia Fitzpatrick’s debut novel “Lights All Night Long” about two Russian brothers — one (Ilya) is a 15-year-old who arrives in the U.S. as an exchange student in Louisiana while the older one (Vladimir) winds up in a prison in their Russian hometown for murder. The story moves between the two places as Ilya worries about his imprisoned brother and works to prove his innocence, piecing together enough clues online to eventually lead him to a shocking discovery. 

Esquire says “Lights All Night Long” is a “vivid coming-of-age novel that spools out an engrossing mystery amid a tender story about family ties and adopted homes.” From all I’ve read, it looks to be a heartbreaking and affecting tale, which has received a lot of praise on Goodreads and is one that is said to be hard to put down. What more do you want? 

Then there’s Susan Choi’s new novel “Trust Exercise,” which I’m interested to get to as well. It’s one of those stories where apparently the second half of the novel upends everything you thought you knew before, calling into question the truth of the original narrative. Uh-oh it’s crazy when that happens. What begins as an obsessive relationship between two high school drama students in the early 1980s twists into something darker as it reintroduces the characters in the second half a dozen years later.

Hmm. I’m not sure what to think, but it sounds like the novel includes a narrative twist within it that is pretty startling. Sometimes such an unreliable story component works for me and other times it doesn’t, but there’s enough buzz surrounding this book that I must check it out. As Booklist says about “Trust Exercise”: “literary deception rarely reads this well.” 

Lastly in books for April, I’ll pick John Burnham Schwartz’s new historical novel “The Red Daughter” about the defection of Joseph Stalin’s only daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva to the United States in 1967. Are you kidding me, from the premise alone I must see this through. The daughter’s life seemed so complicated and fraught by her father’s infamous legacy — as author Nancy Horan says the novel tells a “powerful tale of one daughter’s struggle to free herself and rewrite her own history.”

Filled with both historical details and fictionalized elements, the novel is said to capture the emotion and strain of Alliluyeva’s second life in the U.S., so says Publishers Weekly. It’s also been hailed by the likes of authors David Benioff, Jennifer Egan and Lauren Groff along the way. So count me in.

As for movies in April, nothing initially caught my eye except for the  documentary “Amazing Grace,” which features Aretha Franklin recording her live album “Amazing Grace” over two nights in 1972 at New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles.

Apparently the late Sydney Pollack captured it on film but was unable to finish it because the sound and picture could not be synchronized due to him not using a so-called clapperboard before each take. But here it is now all these years later and wow the trailer for it is awesome and inspiring. It is Aretha singing in all her glory. 

Other than that there’s some scary stuff releasing, with a new version of Stephen King’s “Pet Sematary” and a sci-fi flick called “High Life” about a group of death-row convicts who enlist for a mission into deep space to investigate an energy source and find out they are being used for something much more sinister. Uh-oh I hate when that happens. Robert Pattinson and Juliette Binoche star in the film, which is said to be meditative and sexually graphic. So beware if you are seeing it on a first date, or with your elderly relative, it could be just a bit awkward. 

Also the movie “Little Woods,” set in the fracking country of North Dakota, looks to be rough and gritty, about two estranged sisters who reunite after their mother dies and come to work outside the law to better their lives. Tessa Thompson and Lily James (without her British accent) star in this crime drama, with both receiving some high praise for their bleak roles. It appears with this one actress Lily James has certainly left her Downton Abbey days behind. Check out these movies if you get a chance, or wait for them to stream at home. 

Lastly in album releases for April, there’s new ones by such music notables as Norah Jones, Glen Hansard, Bruce Hornsby, and Sara Bareilles among others. I’m also looking to check out a piano retrospective album by American singer-songwriter Lissie and an album by British singer-songwriter Jade Bird. Wow Jade Bird, she’s young — only 21, but appears to be the real deal. I first heard her on Canadian radio, singing a song called “Lottery,” which I liked. Check it out here. So Jade Bird it is this month with her self-titled debut album. Go girl.

That’s all for now. What about you — which new releases are you looking forward to this month? 

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Becoming and Elsey Come Home

Wow what a difference a couple weeks make. Our temps seem to have soared from single digits to 60 degrees this month, and now we have ponds of snowmelt all over the place. Spring appears to have sprung for the moment, and Frosty the snow pile is headed out. Or is it? I’m sure winter will try to make a come back a few more times here, but it won’t last long now. We are in the homestretch. Say goodbye winter.

The start of spring can feel truly amazing … and yet there’s news of epic flooding in other parts of the world that look truly devastating — in the Midwest for one, and especially in Mozambique and Zimbabwe right now due to a cyclone. So my thoughts are scattered at the moment on everything from the basketball of March Madness to sheer catastrophe.

Which reminds me:  If you’re feeling stressed about something these days: work, bills, house, politics, the state of the world, then perhaps familiarize yourself with the Dammit Doll. Have you seen these? My sister gave me one years ago when I was following a losing football team. The Dolls are made to be whacked about against a sofa or wall so you can feel better and let your stress or anger go. The instructions say as you whack the stuffing out, it helps to yell: “Dammit! Dammit! Dammit!” I think the company that makes them is out of California, where someone apparently has a good sense of humor. I got a new one this past Christmas, pictured at left, of our current occupant in the White House. Let’s just say, it’s helped me out quite a bit these past months relieving stress … that is, when my dog isn’t trying to pull it apart. And now, I’ll leave you with a couple reviews of what I finished lately.     

I feel like I’m on the bandwagon with this one, liking Michelle Obama’s memoir “Becoming” very much. It came out in November and I’ve inundated myself with it the past couple of weeks, first listening to the audiobook of it read by the author, then reading the hardback copy, so I could note some of its passages. I know it quite well now. I liked both formats but would especially recommend the audio version as Michelle’s reading of it is pretty illuminating. Her varying inflections and slow thoughtful reading of it make her story come to life and give more resonance to what she wrote.

It’s not an overtly political book — nor merely PR fluff — about the Red and Blue states and whose policies are the best and what she accomplished under the administration, though there’s some of that at the end, instead it focuses more on her life story, her family, and how she was shaped by her upbringing and those close to her. There’s also some juicy parts about the presidential campaigns and her time in the White House that come to light. So what more do you want — the book is a behind-the-scenes look at history told in interesting detail from an accomplished African American woman, reflecting back on her experience. As she writes: “I’m an ordinary person who found herself on an extraordinary journey.” 

Indeed it was. From a working-class family on the South Side of Chicago (whose parents did not go to college) to attending Princeton and Harvard Law School, she was an overachiever, a box checker she says, who met her future husband while being a mentor to him as a summer associate at a Chicago law firm. Oh yeah. Barack comes off like a nerdy prodigy, not a happy hour kind of guy, but one from a far-off family with a different, mixed background. Her family, on the other hand, was Michelle’s home base, forever on the South Side’s Euclid Avenue, where she lived even during her working life after law school.  

Michelle and Barack were like yin to each other’s yang, so she writes. She liked order and routine, he gravitated toward mess and chaos. He felt a calling for politics, she felt the opposite. He was from Hawaii, she had never been West. Their lives were busy and loaded with work and projects. At one point, she says they sought marriage counseling. At another point she talks about them wanting children, but they had to go through IVF for the pregnancies of both daughters. You get a sense that their lives were quite a handful even before he became a state senator and eventually a U.S. senator, traveling to D.C. while Michelle stayed behind in Chicago. She was not a big fan of the political circus life, or of his life taking over her career. Yet ultimately she did not want to stand in his way. 

She writes about trying to balance being a wife and a mother, and working full time. And later, about getting onboard Barack’s run for the presidency and campaigning for him in Iowa and elsewhere. She elaborates on the perception she got of being an “angry black female” and a “radical” on the campaign, which is illuminating. She comes off being more of a pragmatist and a family person than any kind of radical. Both Michelle and Barack were also touched by tragedies: Michelle’s father, who suffered from multiple sclerosis, died when she was in her first job after law school, and her close college roommate, age 26, died around the same time. While Barack’s parents were both dead by the time he became a state senator. So they shared similar losses and adversities, yet were endeared to each other, their remaining families, and high-powered jobs.  

You’ll just have to read it, if you haven’t already: as Michelle’s view of Election Night in 2008 and her family’s subsequent years in the White House are definitely worth the price of admission. You’ll want to find out what living in the White House was like, with their daughters, and how things played out there. Michelle also talks about her health initiatives for kids, her work with Jill Biden to help military families, and the vegetable garden she started on the White House lawn. There’s not many swipes at political opponents, like the Bushes, or John McCain, though there are a few pointed ones at Trump: “I will always wonder,” she writes, “about what led so many women, in particular, to reject an exceptionally qualified candidate and instead choose a misogynist as their president.” Me too, Michelle, me too.

I guess in general the book made me like the Obamas a bit more. I had already been fans of them but now I felt I understood them and their humble backgrounds a bit better. Michelle’s grace, dignity, and intelligence shine through in this memoir, which seems a pretty candid look back. She’s not out to settle scores, but more in it to highlight her journey. Here’s one passage I found particularly on point:  

“The president-elect, I learned, is given access to $100,000 in federal funds to help with moving and redecorating, but Barack insisted that we pay for everything ourselves, using what we’d saved from his book royalties. As long as I’ve known him, he’s been this way: extra-vigilant when it comes to matters of money and ethics, holding himself to a higher standard than even what’s dictated by law. There’s an age-old maxim in the black community: You’ve got to be twice as good to get half as far. As the first African American family in the White House, we were being viewed as representatives of our race. Any error or lapse in judgment, we knew, would be magnified, read as something more than what it was.”  

— Michelle Obama in “Becoming,”  Page 295

Next up, I finished Maine author Susan Conley’s slim novel “Elsey Come Home” that came out in January. It’s a bit of a different, meditative kind of novel, told in the first person, about a woman who’s struggling in her life, to find a balance between being a wife, a parent to two young daughters, and a successful painter. She and her family are expats living in Beijing, China, when her Danish husband suggests she go on a one week group yoga retreat to the mountains to stop her alcoholic drinking. 

Elsey’s afraid she will lose her marriage and family, so she grudgingly goes on the retreat, where she meets a number of other people with similar problems. There she appears to be on the verge of a breakdown and is grasping to work through issues from her past (her sister’s death in childhood) and her present (her drinking and the balancing of being a parent with being an artist). You have to keep reading to see whether Elsey can reclaim her life and keep her family in tact. As it went on, the more I became involved in her plight to hold on and turn her downward spiral around. 

I guess I can best describe it as a meditative, expat novel that talks about far away places and the heart strings of family connections. It’s a sparsely told story that sort of sneaked up on me. Elsey’s two kids (and even her husband), who she so adores and await her return from the retreat, are so well done in the book, that you find yourself rooting hard, despite her seemingly unyielding slide, for a positive ending. I’m not sure I always thought Elsey was that likable or relatable, but I did sympathize with her to some extent. In the end, I found it an oddly moving tale about love of family and place.  

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read these books, and if so, what did you think? 

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The Falconer and Dreyer’s English

Hi all. We arrived back recently from NYC and had a good time, seeing many neat sights. The one at left is taken from Brooklyn after we disembarked the ferry and looked back to Manhattan. We had some sunny days and snow too, but the temps in the 30s were all pretty easy to us Canadians. We stayed in the Midtown area and got around everywhere by subway and walking, which worked out well. Apparently, our hotel, the Barclay, was where Ernest Hemingway worked on the final revisions of his novel “For Whom the Bell Tolls” after he returned from Spain with his fiancee and fellow war correspondent Martha Gellhorn. The book rests proudly on display in the lobby. I just thought you might like that literary tidbit. Poor Gellhorn and Papa, their love didn’t work out quite as well. 

Besides Brooklyn, we visited Central Park, and toured the Guggenheim Museum, and the 9/11 Memorial & Museum, which is quite gut-wrenching. We saw a Sam Shepard play on Broadway called “True West,” starring Paul Dano and Ethan Hawke, which we didn’t really love, but still it was a thrill to see close-up.

And of course we visited a couple of bookstores, including the Strand and a rare bookstore called Argosy. Little did I know that I would see that same bookstore featured in the movie “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” on the flight home, but there it was the same one we visited. Apparently the real Lee Israel, who the character is based on, stole some letters that she sold to Argosy bookstore so she could pay her cat’s vet bill. It’s a true story that became part of the movie. 

Anyways what also was terrific was making a trek to find “The Falconer” statue, which we knew was somewhere within Central Park. It was the name of Dana Czapnik’s debut, coming-of-age novel that I was reading and had brought with me on the trip — about a smart 17-year-old girl who lives for basketball and is in her final year of high school in New York City, circa 1993. More on the book in a minute, but I was on a quest to find the statue.

My husband had a map and after a bunch of walking we had “The Falconer” in our sights (see my photo at left). As the novel notes: it’s a statue of a young boy in tights with muscular legs, releasing a bird, the falcon’s wings in the midst of opening. The character in the book, Lucy Adler, says she’s always loved it for the skyward feeling it embodies like a perfect jump-shot, and she’s envious that there are statues like this made of boys but none of girls. “Why,” Lucy muses, “can’t girls with muscular legs in leggings stand on a hilltop and release a bird?” 

It’s a fitting symbol for this coming-of-age novel, told in the first person. Lucy is athletic and soon to graduate, she’s trying to figure out her plans — whether she will leave her beloved city and where she stands in her young life. She’s in love with her basketball buddy Percy, who seems oblivious to her feelings despite hanging out with her everyday. Lucy silently agonizes as Percy goes through a string of girlfriends. When she’s not with him, she reflects on her feelings and the city, while meandering around Manhattan with her basketball teammate Alexis and meeting up often with two female artist friends in SoHo, who advise her about life, love, and art. 

For the most part, I enjoyed this novel. I was particularly impressed by how well the author captures the few basketball playing scenes in the book. Lucy’s a great player and those were among my favorite parts of the book — of her playing pick-up games and with her high school team, along with the details about New York and the parts with Percy. I kept hoping she and Percy would get together, but you don’t find out till the end whether they do, or which direction Lucy and Percy will go in after graduation. I liked spending time with Lucy. She’s a smart girl, who learns a bit about herself, life, and feminism along the way.

My only hesitancy about the novel was at times it felt rather plotless as Lucy wanders around the city, meeting up with people, a couple of whom (like the two artists) didn’t really hold my interest. I kept wanting to get back to the main story about her and Percy and whether she could handle or grow from this stage in her life. Despite these reservations, I thought  much of the writing about Lucy was quite beautiful and well done. Some reviewers even speculated Lucy could be compared to such New York protagonists as Francie in “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” or Holden in “The Catcher in the Rye.” To me, that seems a bit of a stretch, but still it’s a novel in that kind of genre.  

Next up, I read a book I bought at the Strand bookstore called: “Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style” by Benjamin Dreyer.  I know it sounds dry (especially since I was reading it on the flight back), but I’m one of those types that will read grammar and usage manuals every time a new notable one comes out. The last one I read was Mary Norris’s 2016 book “Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen,” which was great, about the author’s years on the copy desk at The New Yorker. Like that one, this new book is a little part memoir and also a reference manual on grammar and style usage by a veteran editor who happens to be the copy chief at Random House. I had heard about his new book when it was featured on the New York Times book podcast recently. 

As a former newspaper copy editor, I knew “Dreyer’s English” would be right up my alley and indeed it was. Even though the author describes many of the same rules about punctuation, grammar, and style that I’m already familiar with, I’m always keen to brush up on knowing them, or finding out if there’s anything new to learn (see all my sticky notes in the book photo). Apparently this author meandered into his profession nearly three decades ago, learning it on the job over the years as he observed copyediting, how it was done and how writers responded to it.

Dreyer takes a refreshing, often witty look at old rules and which ones can be broken and which can not. He has chapters on Tidying Up Your Prose and 67 Assorted Things to Do (and Not to Do) with Punctuation, and the treatment of numbers and foreign words. There’s lists on commonly misspelled proper nouns, and lists of words that are often confused, such as: imply vs. infer, discreet vs. discrete, and hanged vs. hung, etc. He has a chapter on his language pet peeves that includes commonly misused words and redundant words strung together that can be deleted. He has a few cool anecdotes about authors he’s edited and their language quirks, though I wish there would have been more of these throughout the book. 

I pretty much agreed with most of the style/grammar rules he writes about, including his firm belief in using the serial comma on items in a list, such as: apples, oranges, and bananas. Though I thought his style on numbers a bit too loosey-goosey compared to how they are done in newspapers, which are spelled out up to nine and written as numerals thereafter. In book publishing numbers are mostly spelled out but are also seen as numerals in various cases. Hmpf, there seems less of a system there.

The author also adds many tiny footnotes at the bottom of each page in the book, which was not my cup of tea. I’d rather he had added them into the text so I could have noted what he wanted to say much more easily. Despite these reservations, I thought the book was a helpful, witty, and solid guide that goes into many of the pesky particulars on everything from apostrophes to dashes to semicolons to dangling modifiers, and beyond. If you want to brush up on your writing, definitely check it out.

PS. This blog is meant to be casual when it comes to writing style and punctuation. I’m sure I’ve made various grammar mistakes over the years here, though I try not to. One thing you might wonder is why I put book and movie titles in quotation marks instead of in italics like the rest of the publishing world. It’s because in newspapers, where I worked, they were always placed in quotation marks, which was drummed into my skull. That’s just one of a number of differences you’ll see between the print in publishing vs. in journalism. Someday I figure I’ll be due for a change on this.

That’s all for now, what about you — have you read either of these, and if so, what did you think? Or what’s your favorite place in New York? Maybe it’s the Guggenheim Museum that’s pictured above.    

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March Preview

Greetings, we are headed into March, which I hope should improve the weather here. It was a very cold February — below 0 degrees Fahrenheit on many days, so I am happy to leave February in the rearview. With a bit more light and warmth, March should bring a hint of spring, or at least that’s my hope. Still February saw my second 5 star book of the year (rounded up from 4.5), which was Edward Carey’s novel “Little,” so it wasn’t all bad — (James Baldwin’s “If Beale Street Could Talk” being my first in January). And this week we are headed to NYC so we are quite excited. I haven’t been to the Big Apple since the 1990s so there’s much to see and do. If you don’t hear from me for a while, it’s just because I am away for several glorious days. 

For those who watched the Oscars, I hope you had a fun evening. I liked the surprises, especially actress Olivia Coleman’s win in “The Favourite” as well as Rami Malek for Best Actor in “Bohemian Rhapsody” (no offense to either Glenn Close or Christian Bale who missed getting Oscars but are always quite excellent.) The supporting role wins were great too with Regina King winning for “If Beale Street Could Talk” and Mahershala Ali for “Green Book.” Ali is terrific and I’m digging him in the HBO TV series “True Detective” these days. 

I wouldn’t have minded if Spike Lee had won Best Director for “BlackKklansman” instead of Alfonso Cuaron for “Roma,” or if “RBG” had won Best Documentary instead of “Free Solo,” but I guess you can’t win them all. Of the movies featured, I was glad “Green Book” won for Best Picture and thought some of the criticism surrounding the film for being a feel-good story about race relations has been a bit harsh. I heard some relatives of the real Dr. Don Shirley played by Mahershala Ali in “Green Book” are not pleased with the film saying it distorts history and focused on the white guy. I don’t fault or dispute them, but still think the “Green Book” story of the real life friendship between the pianist and his driver against the backdrop of the Jim Crow laws was effective and revealing from what I saw in the film. What did you think?

As for what’s coming out in March, there’s a plethora of new novels due out, including ones from such well-known authors as: Lisa See, Dave Eggers, and even a posthumous story from Sylvia Plath, written when she was a student at Smith College in 1952. Not sure Plath would like them digging out her old stuff but you know how these things go. Meanwhile I will choose Lisa See’s new one about an ancient guild of women divers on an island off the South Korean coast, who risk their lives harvesting oysters, sea slugs, and octopi from the sea and see their way of life change over the decades. The story involves a female friendship, family secrets and a betrayal, while depicting challenges faced by Koreans over the course of the 20th century. Who better than author Lisa See to depict their way of life?  Her impeccable research and stories of friendship always seem to leave a mark on you. 

Next up I’ll go with the consensus and pick Taylor Jenkins Reid’s novel “Daisy Jones and the Six” about an iconic 1970s (fictional) rock group that topped the charts and sold out stadiums … only to break up suddenly. What was behind their rise and fall? Oh yes, I’ll need to find out. Are you kiddin’ …. a story about sex, drugs, rock and roll set in clubs along the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles with a storyteller like this … I’m not going to miss it.  But I have heard a few bloggers say the structure of the novel, which is told solely through transcribed interviews, takes some time getting used to. Kirkus Reviews says the way it’s told distracts from the storytelling and often feels gimmicky. Darn. Still for those nostalgic for the 1970s music scene, it’s said to be quite appealing and is already a popular read. 

I’m also curious about Candice Carty-Williams’s novel “Queenie” since it sounds like a bit of fun while being timely too — about a modern black woman searching for meaning in today’s world. The story follows Queenie Jenkins, a Jamaican-British woman, who after a messy breakup with her long-time white boyfriend, goes into a tailspin of making one bad decision after another. She eventually confronts her crisis with psychotherapy. Apparently the novel is said to have a boldness and honesty about it and doesn’t shy away from the messiness of sexual relationships and racial justice issues, so says Publishers Weekly. Kirkus Reviews calls it a black Bridget Jones. Well, is it or not? I will definitely have to find out. 

Next I’ll choose Peter Heller’s fourth novel “The River,” about two college friends whose friendship is tested when their late summer canoe trip in northern Canada turns perilous by an advancing wildfire, white water, and violence. Ahh this could be just the outdoors story I need midwinter … with a bit of action thrown in. I have read Peter Heller’s 2012 novel “The Dog Stars” as well as his 2014 novel “The Painter,” which were both decent. He likes to write western, male outdoorsy, wilderness kind of tales, and usually he can deliver the goods. This one reminds me only slightly of two river stories made into films: “The River Wild” with Meryl Streep and Kevin Bacon and “Deliverance” with Burt Reynolds and Ned Beatty, which still gives me the chills. 

Lastly in books for March is a tie between Siri Hustvedt’s new novel “Memories of the Future,” which seems semi-autobiographical, and a debut novel by Andrea Rothman called “The DNA of You and Me” about a “bittersweet love story set within the cut-throat world of academic research,” so says Publishers Weekly. I’m a bit torn as I have read Siri Hustvedt before and her novels are always quite thought-provoking, often about memory — this one being about a midwestern girl’s first year in New York in 1978 as she tries to write a novel … and then forty years later as a veteran author finding her notebook from then and trying to connect with her prior self. Hmm. Or Rothman’s book about a driven female scientist who is forced to take a hard look at her future after a relationship with her lab partner. Both novels are garnering praise on Goodreads, so take your pick. 

As for movies in March there looks to be a fun one called “Gloria Bell” starring Julianne Moore playing a free-spirited divorcee who, after her daytime office job, likes to let loose at dance clubs around L.A … until she stumbles into a romance with Arnold played by John Turturro that complicates matters.

Oh hooray, what we could use about now is something light and fun — and perhaps this is it. Turturro is often endearing in his roles, such as Jesus Quintana in “The Big Lebowski” and Julianne Moore looks to be having a ball in this role, so what’s not to like? 

There’s also another sailboat movie, and my spouse, being a sailing enthusiast, often makes us see all these. This new one is called “Styx” about an ER doctor who embarks on a one-woman solo sailing trip — oh why do they do this to me — to an island in the Atlantic who must make a momentous decision when she comes across a sinking ship of refugees on the high seas. Uh-oh. One reviewer on Rotten Tomatoes likened it to Robert Redford’s survival /sailing film “All Is Lost” with a spinning moral compass. I don’t know the actress Susanne Wolff, who plays the sailor in “Styx,” but she’s German and seems fit for the role. We will see how she fares solo in the vast Atlantic. 

Meanwhile I might not be able to pass up Matthias Schoenaerts in “The Mustang” — a film produced by Robert Redford — about a violent convict who is given the chance to participate in a rehabilitation program involving the training of wild mustangs. The trailer for it looks pretty powerful and the hunky actor has been quite enticing ever since his role in the movie “Rust and Bone” in 2012.

In “The Mustang,” both character and horse seem to become tamed by each other through much hard work … and the cinematography looks to be quite stunning. So what more do you want? Just beware: it’s a bit of a tough prison drama.

Lastly in albums for March, I have my eye on new ones by American singer-songwriters Jenny Lewis and Patty Griffin as well as British musician David Gray. Wow it looks to be a great month for tunes. I’ll pick Lewis’s fourth solo album “On the Line” as my choice this month. She’s a bit of a bold girl with her album covers, wouldn’t you say? 

That’s all for now. What about you — which releases are you most looking forward to this month? 

Posted in Top Picks | 25 Comments

A Wintry Mix

Greetings. I did not mean to take so much time between posts, but I guess recently I’ve liked including multiple reviews in one essay, because I think if a person isn’t interested in one book reviewed perhaps they can find another in the post that they might want to talk about more.  At least that’s my hope.  

Of course, this coming weekend: is the Academy Awards and I’ve seen quite a few of the nominated films, not all but many. We finally saw “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “Green Book,” both of which we enjoyed. I’ve also seen the nominees: “Roma,” “Vice,” “A Star Is Born,” “First Reformed,” “First Man,” “Mary Poppins Returns,” “RBG,” “The Wife,” “BlackKkKlansman,” “A Quiet Place” … still we are missing a few of the others.  With all the sound offerings, it seems it’s been a strong year in movies. Don’t you think?

 I’m not exactly sure what will get Best Picture, but I could see them pulling a “Roma” on us, or “The Favourite” but what about “Green Book,” which might be my pick? And perhaps it’s Spike Lee’s year to win Best Director. The Best Acting categories are also quite interesting. I like Glenn Close’s chances for “The Wife,” but I’m torn a bit between Christian Bale and Rami Malek for Best Actor, though the veteran Bale for “Vice” will be tough to beat. The Supporting Acting categories look strong too.

Do you plan to watch and what are you picks? As an added bonus, the remaining members of the band Queen are scheduled to perform, as well as Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga will sing their song “Shallow,” which should be worth seeing. So we will compare notes about it afterwards. Meanwhile I will leave you with a few reviews of what I finished lately.  

Little by Edward Carey, 448 pages, Riverhead Books, 2018

Edited Synopsis via the Publisher:  This historical novel conjures the life and adventures of an orphan girl in Revolutionary Paris, befriended by royalty and radicals, who would become the legendary wax sculptor Madame Tussaud, known for the wax museum she founded in London in 1835. 

My Thoughts:  Wow I must admit I did not know anything about Madame Tussaud going into this novel or the chain of wax museums today that bear her name, but I picked up the story for its Revolutionary France setting, and boy I was not disappointed. I listened to it as an audiobook and while it was long, I thoroughly enjoyed listening to all of its 14 hours over a couple weeks time. It reminded me of a Charles Dickens tale — perhaps a bit of “Oliver Twist” mixed with “A Tale of Two Cities.” 

The author breathes life into the adventures of the girl — Marie Grosholtz called “Little” — orphaned at age 7, who comes to live with Doctor Curtius who teaches her about casting wax heads. Fleeing creditors, they leave Switzerland and move to Paris, taking up residence in a big dilapidated house shared by a domineering widow and her pale son Edmund. There, Marie becomes a servant banished to the kitchen by the hateful widow, while Dr. Curtius continues to create his wax heads of famous thinkers and people of the day. 

The best part though is when — after a surprise royal visit — Marie manages to get herself invited to Versailles to tutor King Louis XVI’s sister Elizabeth. It’s her time at the palace where things get juicy. Marie rises in her ranks, becoming friends with Elizabeth amid the grandeur, which is amazing for a while but unluckily doesn’t last. In due time the monarchy is overcome by the Revolution and Marie gets imprisoned with little chance of survival. Yikes. She finds herself wasting away locked up, certain for the guillotine. 

Oh you have to read on to see what happens. Marie reminded me of an Oliver Twist-like orphan who you root for and who slowly makes her way in the world … going on to live quite a remarkable life, meeting Napoleon Bonaparte and various others of import along the way.

The audio is read by Jayne Entwistle who does an excellent job as Marie. My only lament is that I missed the author Edward Carey’s illustrations in the hardback edition, which I heard are excellent. Still it’s a great tale that comes to life and spans decades. Apparently it took the author 15 years to write and he got the idea from once working at Madame Tussauds wax museum in London. Here’s an interesting article he wrote about Tussaud in The Guardian newspaper. 

We Cast a Shadow by Maurice Carlos Ruffin,  336 pages, One World, 2019

I liked the semi-satirical construct of this debut novel … set in a near-future Southern city where racial divisions are worse than they are today with fenced-in ghettos and violent police patrols running the streets. A black father, who’s working to get ahead at a prominent law firm, is trying to do right by his biracial son who has dark birthmarks on his face and body. He hopes that if he can get a promotion he can afford to pay for a newly popular medical operation to remove his son’s blackness, giving him he thinks a better life. Meanwhile the father keeps it a secret from his wife who he knows won’t approve. 

The story is wryly told and the infighting at the law firm and power plays made it feel a bit like a sardonic version of John Grisham’s “The Firm” mixed with the racial issues of Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man.” The city’s atmosphere, too, feels quite disturbing and unsettling. Yet the father’s preoccupation with changing his son’s face and skin gets rather bleak and exasperating — he seems to go to any length to make it possible — though it’s due to his love for his son to make his life better. Still it’s driving a wedge into his family (and perhaps the reader too). You’ll want to read on to see whether the father will succeed at his law firm, and what will become of his son’s operation and the family. 

 Admittedly when I read Ellison’s “Invisible Man” in the early 1990s I was blown away by it and was very tied to the character’s plight. This novel is obviously influenced by that classic but you feel nowhere near the level of involvement with the characters or the plot. There are episodes within the story that are well done — a costume party at the firm and an event at a plantation that go awry — yet other chapters seem like fillers. It felt a bit uneven in that way. Also I wanted to shake some sense into the father. Still the novel raises some notable questions … about racism in the future, how it shapes us, and how far one is willing to go to protect those they love. I’m glad I read it — particularly because it’s from a new voice and author who seems to have quite a bit to say in a satirical/dystopian kind of way.  

Beautiful Boy:  A Father’s Journey Through His Son’s Addiction by David Sheff, 326 pages, Houghton Mifflin, 2008

I think almost everyone has known someone who’s been affected by addiction … and so this hair-raising journey is familiar to so many. I picked it up because I was interested to finish the book before seeing the movie of it, which came out last fall, and because a couple of close friends of mine lost their lives to addiction, so I wanted to see if the father had the same experience trying to help, or if there was something new to learn. 

All in all, I found the father’s memoir to be a helpful, harrowing exploration of what happened to his son and how it affected him and their whole family. The father seems to tell it in a very open and honest way, chronologically as it happens, grasping at straws at what to do and also doing a ton of research to understand his son’s addiction, which ultimately is a story of: drug relapse and recovery, drug relapse and recovery, drug relapse and recovery, and on, and on, and on for 10 years. 

The amount of time, energy, money, resources, and mental capacity one can go through — as you see in this book — trying to help a loved one overcome addiction is astounding. It is exhausting, heart-wrenching and downright scary. The father notes some pitfalls along the way and what things one should consider and how not to lose sight of the rest of one’s family in the process. He also delves into the particulars of crystal meth addiction and how it’s a particularly horrifying drug that can screw with one’s personality and brain.  

I came away thinking that the father was very doting, caring and attentive to his son throughout his youth, surfing with him endlessly and devoting time with him. The son obviously was very loved and bright but his parents divorced early on and he seems to have become prone to depression. And with addiction there’s no rhyme or reason: it cuts across all families: ones that are loving and close, ones that are not, ones that are privileged, ones that are poor, ones from all walks and races of life. Still this family had the resources to get him into some top recovery centers, though it took a while to get him there. The scariest parts of the book are when the strung-out son’s gone missing for days at a time. Ohh it’s every parent’s worst nightmare. 

I found it to be a pretty effective book — the father isn’t perfect and seems to take responsibility for things he should have done differently; he second-guesses himself about the best approaches and what to do, exploring many facets of addiction in a helpful way. So I guess I was a bit surprised by some of the miffed responses about the book on Goodreads because of the family’s privileged background. It seems some wanted the author to acknowledge that more in the memoir — that his kid was lucky to get help from such recovery centers when those from poorer backgrounds would have been stuck in jail or worse. The socio-economic side of things aren’t overly addressed, so perhaps that’s a valid criticism, though I’ve heard that the son and dad address some of these issues in subsequent books. Hmm. 

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read any of these books, and if so, what did you think? 

Posted in Books, Movies | 18 Comments