Hello. It’s been almost 50 degrees here (so far north), which we are sad about since it will kill our snow for skiing. We need a storm, but there’s nothing in the foreseeable forecast. It won’t be a good day when the polar ice caps melt. Just another thing to add to our long list of worries.
Speaking of which, we have 4 days left to the U.S. Inauguration. Let’s hope for a peaceful and kind transition. Is that too much to ask? I remember being at the Concert on the National Mall for President Barack Obama’s first Inauguration in 2009. Oh yeah, I was there. Ha. Me, Springsteen, U2, Mellencamp, Usher and Stevie Wonder among others. I almost froze my feet off standing out there for four+ hours, but it was a very memorable day … and the concert was a rocking.
With all the insurrection news the past couple weeks, and the worry about my parents and their health in California, my mind has been distracted beyond belief. But I think things are starting to feel a bit more hopeful and to calm some (though alarmingly the pandemic continues to take thousands of lives per day). Knock on wood for what’s ahead.
How has your reading year started off? Mine has been surprisingly not too bad: I’ve read a few books for my freelance (PW) gig, and finished a long audiobook. So I’m aiming for completing 70 books this year. We will see. I’m not too caught up in the numbers — I’m just hoping for good quality reads and a decent mix of light and heavier books, from an array of authors with diverse backgrounds and locations. What about you … any big reading plans? And now I’ll leave you with a couple reviews of what I finished lately. (p.s. The second book below was finished at the end of 2020.)
Conjure Women by Afia Atakora / Random House / 416 pages / 2020
Synopsis: The novel follows the lives of three women amid their isolated Southern plantation community that spans slavery times (1850s) and also just after the Civil War in the Reconstruction era. The slave May Belle is a respected healing (conjure) woman who passes her gifts along to her daughter Rue, who becomes a midwife and healer during post-slavery times, though she often uses her healing powers to foment secrets and lies to her advantage. There’s also Varina, the white plantation owner’s daughter who is Rue’s friend from childhood but who is pressured to toe the line to the ways of her white slave-owning family.
The story, which alternates chapters between slavery time and freedom time, is set in motion by the birth of a strange, mysterious baby; the arrival of a charismatic preacher; and a strange sickness that begins killing the children in the area. With the deaths, the trust in Rue’s healing and midwifery begins to ebb and the community begins to suspect she’s into witchcraft, so she’s left to figure out how to win back their trust.
My Thoughts: Wow, there’s a lot in this historical novel, and it’s quite a long saga, which I listened to as an audiobook for weeks during my morning dog walks. There were times I wasn’t sure it would end, but I kept going with it. I’m so glad I didn’t stop. I felt it was quite a storytelling feat … following these characters through the end of slavery into the Reconstruction-era to see what would become of them. The timeframe plays an important part as blacks (freed for the first time) and whites (who lose the War) must figure out new ways to live and relate to one another due to the changes.
It’s a story that delves into the fraught relationships of the mother May Belle, and daughter Rue, and with the white mistress Varina … as they navigate events that test the community. Rue, the main protagonist, is a bit of a conundrum (both good and bad), which adds a bit to the complexity of the story.
My favorite part of the novel was the storytelling and the language the author uses that made the 1850s, ’60s, and Reconstruction era come to life. The author obviously did a lot of research from diaries of the time period to get the whole flavor for the people then, their healing techniques, and how they spoke. I felt like I was right there on the plantation with them. Kudos to the author for this inspired debut novel. Some have compared it to Esi Edugyan’s 2018 novel “Washington Black,” which I loved, but it being different … that novel didn’t come to mind for me, despite this being also quite notable.
The New Wilderness by Diane Cook / Harper / 416 pages / 2020
Synopsis: In a dystopian future wracked by climate change, a woman (Bea) and her husband (Glen) decide to leave the unlivable, polluted City with their young, ill daughter (Agnes) to join a survival study in the Wilderness State. The governing authority is allowing 20 volunteers to live in the last swath of protected land amid nature, where they must learn to adapt as nomadic hunter-gatherers without help from the outside world. The novel plays out as a portrayal of motherhood (with Bea and Agnes) and humankind, and is a lament of our treatment of nature. It was shortlisted for last year’s Booker Prize.
My Thoughts: This debut novel came out the same month (August 2020) as Charlotte McConaghy’s novel “Migrations,” which is also a bit about nature and humankind’s ruin of it — and I thought I would like it as much (I wanted to), but to me the execution of “The New Wilderness” wasn’t as good a story and I wasn’t drawn into it nearly as much as “Migrations.” I guess I was genuinely a bit surprised that “The New Wilderness” was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
Still parts of it are compelling and visual — the mechanics of the group (called the Community) — and its fight for survival in the Wilderness State and not knowing if its members would make it while hunting and living off the land, and what would happen to them and with their dealings with the Newcomers arriving and the Rangers who control the area.
The story reveals the complexities in the relationships between Bea, Glen and Agnes, and with the rest of the group, whose wannabe head honcho Carl seems like a testosterone narcissist. Some of the writing of the action and the natural world is good, though some of the plot to me seemed to sort of drift along at times — like it didn’t know where it was going or have a plan to what it actually wanted to do. I was hoping the plot was going to go in a different direction than it eventually did.
And while I liked the toughness of the mother Bea’s character, who is sort of the de facto leader of the group, some of her actions and the ending don’t do much with or for her. Agnes is one to watch for. I listened to the book on audio, which was a pretty easy but long listen. If I had the print copy …. the longness of it as well as its drifting and conclusion might have made me want to throw it against a wall, ha. It does seem like it’s set up to have a sequel.
The group dynamics of the story made it seem to me sort of like: “Lord of the Flies” meets “Hunger Games” or something like that … but I wouldn’t elevate it to Margaret Atwood’s “MaddAddam’s” trilogy or such.
That’s all for now. What about you — have you read these books, or how is your reading year starting? Stay well.
