The Cue Card

We are headed out soon over hill and dale to meet up with my sister’s family for a ski long weekend in Idaho. It should be an adventure to get there in our loaded up car, but there’s a window of clear weather ahead, so we will go for it.

Our dog Stella, my book assistant, will be coming too and will get to see her half-sister Lab dog, Sadie, who my sister has. These dogs like the snow and the cross-country skiing, and it should be a festive time with a full household there. 

Perhaps while in Ketchum, Idaho, we will get to visit the memorial and grave of author Ernest Hemingway, who is buried there. Apparently Papa Hemingway, as he was known, loved visiting the town of Ketchum and the area for decades starting in 1939 and he bought a house there with his fourth wife Mary Welsh in 1959.

It was there at his Ketchum home where he worked at a standing desk on the posthumously published works, “A Moveable Feast,” “The Dangerous Summer,” and “Islands in the Stream” … until he died on July 2, 1961, from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. His house there is private so I don’t think it can be toured. But since I like his books, I plan to bring one or two of them along for the ride and read from them while there. What about you — do you have a favorite Hemingway novel?

And now just a flash about the novel I recently completed. It was Ben Lerner’s book “The Topeka School,” which made the Best Books of 2019 lists at both the New York Times and The Washington Post and I listened to as an audiobook. It was said to be a prequel to Lerner’s prior novels “Leaving the Atocha Station” and “10:04,” the latter of which I thought was quirky and amusing. But unfortunately “The Topeka School” was a bit of a slog to me.

It describes the formative years of a character named Adam Gordon (who’s based on the author), growing up in Topeka, Kansas in the ’80s and ’90s and his parents’ lives who are psychologists at a renown foundation. Adam’s a champion at debate (on the school team and at state competitions) but suffers from migraines due to a childhood concussion.

The chapters of Adam’s adolescence alternate with those of his parents: Jonathan (who has an affair with his wife’s therapist) and Jane (who’s trolled for her bestselling feminist book), and later an older Adam, who looks back on his life and family as a writer living in Brooklyn. There’s also chapters featuring a teenage outsider named Darren, who’s mentally troubled and whose involvement in Adam’s school clique ends disastrously in violence.

What to make of it all? The author has said he wanted to write a family saga that also shined a light on broader social implications about the prehistory of the Trump era. And how masculinity in a red state juxtaposed with his family’s background in psychotherapy and talking about one’s feelings. The book’s themes deal with language and therapy, juxtaposed with bullying, masculinity and violence. At least that’s what I gather from it. 

It’s not an easy read because the story to me didn’t have much of an arc. It’s a bit scattered and seemingly episodic into the lives of the Gordon family and lacked to me much suspense or a storyline to egg me on. And like quite a bit of “autofiction,” which is a fictionalized kind of autobiography or memoir, which this novel is, it can sometimes feel like navel-gazing at its most minutia, where everyday lives or inner lives can be described in the most mundane detail … enough to put one right to sleep.

Autofiction these days is very popular, with such authors as Rachel Cusk, Karl Ove Knausgård, Jenny Offill, Ben Lerner and many more … writing about their lives in such fictionalized ways. While I like some of it and think parts can be profound, I can only seem to take it in small doses then have to flee to novels with more of a storyline. There were glimmers for me of interest and brilliance in “The Topeka School” but also parts that felt like a long winter’s nap.

What about you do you like reading autofiction? And have you read Ben Lerner or any of these other authors — and if so, what did you think?

Hi. We’ve had much milder temperatures lately … the weather went from -25F the week before to 40F this past week … Wow what a huge difference it makes. We’re happy here again, see Stella at left with her trusty ball and the city skyline in the background. And it’s staying light a tad bit later nearing 6 p.m. Have you noticed? This is all positive news though we still have to get through February. So perhaps let’s not celebrate the coming of spring just yet. 

Meanwhile this week I’ve been reading about all the controversy and backlash against Jeanine Cummins’s immigration novel “American Dirt” for which she was reportedly paid an advance of more than a million. While various authors, including some Latino writers, have highly praised the thriller-type book for being a moving story that gives some insights into why we desperately need immigration reform, other Chicano/Latino writers have slammed Cummins for propagating stereotypes and appropriating the story of Mexican migrants and exploiting their suffering. Uh-oh, cultural appropriation has been at the forefront of battles with authors these past many years … and apparently Cummins isn’t Mexican and she doesn’t speak Spanish. But she has said she did five years worth of research for the book and traveled to Mexico and throughout the borderlands to get a feel for it. 

Others are mad that Cummins’s novel is getting huge attention (such as being picked for Oprah’s book club) instead of more authentic ones. As Chicano author David Bowles has said: “There is nothing wrong with a non-Mexican writing about the plight of Mexicans. What’s wrong is erasing authentic voices to sell an inaccurate cultural appropriation for millions.” Ouch. In addition David J. Schmidt in an article for the Huffington Post wrote he was bothered that “American Dirt” had in it borrowed elements from such authors books as Luis Alberto Urrea and Sonia Nazario. Hmm really? He says her book “leans much more heavily on these preexisting works than on any original research.” Check out his article here.  

So this is where it stands now. I guess in a perfect world, people would be able to read both: literary fiction from “authentic” authors and thrillers from those who care and research an issue and want to make a point. I still plan to read “American Dirt” but will have in mind others whose immigration stories I should get to as well. As critic Ron Charles of the Washington Post wrote: “If “American Dirt” … motivates some Americans to fight against this country’s immoral immigration actions along the Southern border, then more power to Jeanine Cummins. And once engaged in that struggle, these readers might move on to better books.” Hmm. What do you think about this controversy?  Will you read it?  I guess I can see both sides of the hoopla and I’m still thinking about it. For now I’ll leave you with a couple of reviews of two novels I finished lately. 

The Innocents by Michael Crummey, 304 pages, Doubleday, 2019

Synopsis: After sickness overcomes their parents, a pre-adolescent sister and brother are left orphaned and alone in a place their parents built in an isolated cove on Newfoundland’s northern coastline in the 1800s. The two must contend with their own survival amid the harsh, isolated natural conditions, and eventually their own physical awakenings. 

My Thoughts:  It’s true I have only read two of Michael Crummey’s five novels but already he could be my favorite Canadian author writing these days … although I also like Margaret Atwood, David Chariandy and various others. Crummey hails from Newfoundland and lives in St. John’s, which is a world away from where we are in western Canada. I’d really like to visit the eastern Canadian coastline sometime. Crummey writes amazingly about the natural world, and past ways of life, and the two novels I’ve read of his combine these elements.   

In this novel “The Innocents” I felt like I was right there observing these two sibling orphans amid their daily lives in their isolated Newfoundland cove in the 1800s. Their speech, the conditions, their need to get food from their little boat, and their isolation all conjure up the atmosphere of the place and water and waves of their cove. From comments on Goodreads, I guess that some found the novel slow-going, but I found it quite captivating and not very long. I was curious about their survival and arduous lives and the nature surrounding them. 

As the two kids age into their later teenage years, the storyline of their relations does not exactly go where you want it to go … though it explores the situation quite subtly …. of these two very isolated people left very young with no guidance or much human contact. They’re young’uns rather innocent to know too much better, and the story follows the tensions between them realistically. It’s not a matter you like to think about … but the author makes their lives very believable and you wonder what will become of these two in the cove and if they will come to leave.

I’m glad Catherine over at the blog The Gilmore Guide to Books also read and liked “The Innocents.”  See her review here. And here is my review of Crummey’s enjoyable 2014 novel “Sweetland.” 

Mostly Dead Things by Kristen Arnett / 354 pages/ Tin House / 2019

Synopsis: When a father who is a taxidermist suddenly passes away, his adult kids and wife who live in a small Florida town find their worlds rocked with grief and change. The protagonist Jessa, 30-ish, her father’s favorite, takes over the family’s taxidermy business but seems to be having a rough go of it, as well as her brother Milo, a father of two who has little interest in work, and their mother who seems to be in a full-on crisis, making art of animals posed in provocative positions. In addition, siblings Milo and Jessa are longing for the same woman, Brynn, who they grew up and fell in love with … but who has left them, skipping town years before. 

My Thoughts: I listened to this novel as an audiobook read by Jesse Vilinsky who does a good job inhabiting Jessa’s narrative as she tries to right her family’s downward trajectory after the death of her father. It alternates between the present — with her continuing his taxidermy business and trying to keep her family from derailing — and the past with her longing after the love of her life, Brynn, who became her brother’s wife, but skipped town on both of them. 

This is a family on the brink kind of story though a bit quirkily told … and it keeps you waiting to see if Jessa, her brother Milo and her mother will be able to recover and rebound. I liked the present-day story of the family a bit more than the alternating past one. It’s definitely a different kind of tale with a lot of the taxidermy trade — cutting up of dead animals — and the physical relationships of the gay protagonist Jessa, who’s in love with the same woman her brother is. I told you it has a different take. (Therefore beware if you’re uncomfortable about reading about dead animals and gay relationships.)

I realize taxidermy might make for an interesting metaphor for a novel … of dissecting lives etc. … but it proved a bit too much for me at times; I’m a little overly sensitive about animals and this story has a lot of dead ones in it. The author also seems to overdo a bit the smells and tastes in the novel of gross stuff like … blood, vomit, periods, bodily fluids, dead gunk, you name it … it’s probably in here. She definitely likes to get to the tangible aspects of things. 

Still “Mostly Dead Things” did make a few Best of 2019 lists such as at The New Yorker … and the author seems talented and has a fresh sense of seeing things … so I’m glad I made it through the novel — even if it was a bit too much for me at times. I’ll be curious to see what Arnett writes next. Surely it’ll be a bit strange and funny/quirky I think. 

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

Well it’s simply too cold to go outside this week, though I have been out in brief dashes. We’re in a deep freeze up here, which apparently won’t be ending till Sunday. Good grief, I don’t even want to say what it is … but it’s around -30C / -20F.  It won’t reach above 0 degrees F this week, so it’s best to bunker down. The photo of my dog and book assistant at left was actually taken in November (she never gets too cold for walks, but also likes to steal time when inside in front of the space heater). I don’t think I could take a decent photo this week as my hands would probably freeze off, but I am continuing with indoor tennis and some time at the gym along my usual chores. 

I hope everyone is staying well and doesn’t have our conditions. Knock on wood. I’ll leave you with some reviews of books I completed lately. The first two are from January and the bottom three are novels I finished in December.  I need to get these off my chest. 

The Man Who Saw Everything by Deborah Levy / Bloomsbury / 208 pages 2019 

Synopsis: In 1988, a young British historian Saul Adler, 28, who’s planning on going to the German Democratic Republic (the GDR) to do research and leave his photographer girlfriend Jennifer behind, gets grazed by a car in the crosswalk of Abbey Road, which seems to alter his life’s trajectory. Years later in 2016, Saul is hit in the same crosswalk and his memories while hospitalized return to his time in the GDR decades before. 

My Thoughts: Ohh this is a sly and odd little novel, which I listened to as an audiobook performed well by British actor George Blagden. You get a picture of Saul’s life — his youth in England that wasn’t very happy with his bully brother and communist father — and his sexual life and time in the GDR getting involved with his German translator (Walter) and the man’s sister (Luna). It’s a bit interesting Saul’s stay behind the Berlin Wall and those he meets there. You get a sense of the people’s secrecy and all the surveillance by the Stasi. Jump forward to 2016 in the book’s second half, and you find out more about what happened to Saul thereafter and those he had relationships with.  

I wasn’t totally sure what to make of it all — the two accidents decades apart in the crosswalks and the story’s various layers — but it seems to make some interesting parallels between Saul’s personal life and the political history then, contrasting such dynamics as East and West, feminine and masculine, past and present and life and death. It’s a story that’s thought-provoking and well written — even if it’s at times a bit bewildering. I found it quite visual amid its East and West settings and sad and with regrets.   

The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom / Grove Press / 304 pages / 2019 

Synopsis: The author’s debut memoir presents her family’s story (Sarah being the youngest of 12) about their lives in New Orleans East, an area far from the limelight of the city’s center, which they were uprooted from in 2005 by Hurricane Katrina.  

My Thoughts: This memoir received a lot of accolades at the end of 2019, making the Best of 2019 Lists of various publications including The Washington Post and The New York Times so I was eager to get my hands on it. I found it to be many things: a memoir, a family history, and a story about Katrina and New Orleans. The first part (pre-Katrina) deals with her parents’ and family’s history and about being the youngest of 12 siblings and half-siblings, growing up in their dilapidated, crowded Yellow House in New Orleans East. Her life eventually takes her away, as she pursues college in Texas, then working for Oprah’s magazine in NYC, and a job abroad in Africa. 

The second half (post-Katrina) involves the displacement of her family and so many others and the awful mess that came after the devastating hurricane. She returns to New Orleans to help family and work and eventually becomes disillusioned in a job in the office of Mayor Ray Nagin, which she leaves after six months. 

I liked much of the author’s factual reporting about the area and what happened, and felt for her family in losing their home and everything they went through. My only qualm with the book was it’s a bit here and there, and I felt it could’ve been a bit more focused and edited … the various anecdotes of her brothers became a bit too much. I did get her sense of the strong love she has for her family and the city she grew up in despite her misgivings about all the things wrong with it. I appreciated the author’s perspective, though thought some of the book could’ve used more honing.  

After the Flood by Kassandra Montag / Morrow / 432 pages / 2019

Synopsis: This debut novel takes place a 100 years into the future where most of Earth is covered by water and people live on boats or in mountaintop enclaves. A mother named Myra, who lives on a boat with her second daughter Pearl, intends to make a journey to find her missing first daughter (Row) who her husband has absconded with. 

My Thoughts: I enjoyed listening to this one as an audiobook read by Hillary Huber. The plot — of Earth being covered mostly by water in a century’s time — I’ve been told is pretty unscientific … even if the polar ice caps were to fully melt they wouldn’t amount to that — but still I went with it. 

The journey of Myra and her daughter Pearl is quite an undertaking and they run into some wily characters along the way and face various hardships. I will refrain from being more specific but you get the gist: it’s a grim outlook. The author does well describing their world and inner turmoil. I found it quite visual and suspenseful even though it’s a long story. It’s a post-apocalyptic survival tale that is about a family being pulled apart … and a mother’s never-ending quest to find her missing daughter, which held my attention from start to finish. 

Nothing More Dangerous by Allen Eskens / Mulholland Books / 304 pages / 2019

Synopsis:  The story features 15-year-old Boady Sanden who navigates the racial tensions of his high school and Jessup, Missouri in 1976. He lives with his widowed mother and becomes friends with a black boy named Thomas who moves in across the street with his family. But when Thomas’s father becomes head of the town’s largest factory, threats and bad things begin to happen. The two boys also find a body in the woods and start to investigate, making them targets of the bad seeds in town. 

My Thoughts: I enjoyed this coming-of-age, small town crime story that’s been compared to William Kent Krueger’s novel “Ordinary Grace” and reminded me slightly of a male teen version of “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Eskens has a nice touch drawing in the reader and the suspense of it builds until a final reckoning that shapes their lives forever. My only slight criticism is that the boys in the story seemed a bit younger acting than 15, though perhaps that’s a bit due to taking place in 1976? All in all, it was another enjoyable tale for me from Allen Eskens, whose first novel “The Life We Bury” remains my favorite. 

Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams / Gallery/Scout Press / 336 pages / 2019

Synopsis:  This debut novel features a 25-year-old Jamaican-British woman living in London, known as Queenie, whose breakup with her white boyfriend Tom sends her on a downward spiral of self-destruction and bad choices. She then gets suspended from her British newspaper job and her self-esteem and mental health plummet … until she seeks therapy that helps rebuild her life. 

My Thoughts:  I’m not sure if I was the right person for this novel. During Queenie’s downward slide, there’s a lot of casual sex with a multitude of partners — some of which is abusive and was hard to take. Her fall is a bit of a darker storyline than perhaps the novel’s marketing of being like a black “Bridget Jones,” or “Sex and the City” would have you at first believe. 

I was rooting for Queenie to bounce back and luckily towards the end she finally sees a therapist, which enables her to very slowly rebuild her life with her family, close friends, job, and treating herself better. This part was easier to like with her grabbing the reins of her life and asserting more control. The novel involves various issues including interracial dating, black lives matter, abuse, racism, complicated family and friends, mental health and self esteem … it covers much ground. In the end, Queenie’s transformation is a thankful reprieve. 

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

Happy 2020 everyone (wow we are there)! I hope your holidays were wonderful and that you received many new books and gifts. We just returned from visiting with family in Southern California and had a great time. The only trouble was that I came down with a bad head cold and have been sick this past week. Sigh. Now it’s sniffles and hacking for me. Still while there, we took a couple of fun bike rides, had many great dinners with family, and my sister and I saw the movie “Little Women,” which was quite enjoyable. It’s a sisterly movie after all. I think Louisa May Alcott would approve of this faithful movie version of her novel even though there are some tweaks to it … which make the story feel a bit more modern but also good. Have you seen it?

Now we are back in North Country and I have been looking over my 2019 year in reading. My stats were okay, though not great — it was more quality over quantity, which is a bit typical for me. I will try to boost my numbers in the coming year. Though I’m often not in a rush while in a book … sometimes I’ll read as well as listen to a book, which I did with Michelle Obama’s memoir “Becoming,” or I’ll listen to a book twice such as with “Southern Lady Code” or “Daisy Jones and the Six” — it’s just I find myself caught up in it and take awhile to move on. 

Anyways, what I noticed making this list below … is that I completed quite a few debut novels this year — which I didn’t realize I was doing but so many were good — and several dystopian tales that seem ripe for our times — I can’t stop picking them up. I was also high on the audiobooks whose productions are getting better and better. Some of them are amazing renditions. No wonder my dog gets such long walks and I’m keeping up with laundry. Now in leaving you with my 2019 list, I’ll just say that a few books pleasantly surprised me … and were my sleeper hits such as “Nothing to See Here,” “Fleishman Is in Trouble,” and “Severance” — these are stories that you don’t expect much then are jumpstarted from your seat.  All in all, it was a pretty strong year in books. Below are the ones I completed in 2019.  

• Books Completed: 56
• Fiction: 45
• Nonfiction: 11
• Print: 23
• Audiobooks 33
• Female Authors: 36
• Male Authors: 20
• Non-white Authors: 13
• American Authors: 45
• British Authors: 3
• Canadian Authors: 3
• Australian Authors: 2
• Irish Authors: 1
• French Authors: 1
• Nigerian Authors: 1

Favorite Fiction:

• The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt (2013)
• The Testaments by Margaret Atwood (2019)
• Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson (2019)
• Fleishman Is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner (2019)
• The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead (2019)

Favorite Nonfiction:

• Becoming by Michelle Obama (2018)
• American Wolf: A True Story of Survival and Obsession in the American West by Nate Blakeslee (2017) 
• The Education of an Idealist by Samantha Power (2019)
• Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity & Style by Benjamin Dreyer (2019)
• Beautiful Boy: A Father’s Journey Through His Son’s Addiction by David Sheff (2008) 
• Southern Lady Code by Helen Ellis (2019) 
• The Secret Race: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour de France: Doping, Cover-Ups, and Winning at All Costs by Tyler Hamilton & Daniel Coyle (2012) 
• My 25 Years in Provence: Reflections on Then and Now by Peter Mayle (2018) 
• The Path Made Clear: Discovering Your Life’s Direction & Purpose by Oprah Winfrey (2019)

Favorite Debut Novels:

• Fleishman Is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner (2019) 
• After the Flood by Kassandra Montag (2019)
• The Dearly Beloved by Cara Wall (2019)
• My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite (2018) 
• Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday (2018)
• A Prayer for Travelers by Ruchika Tomar (2019) 
• The Falconer by Dana Czapnik (2019) 
• American Spy by Lauren Wilkinson (2019) 
• Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams (2019) 
• We Cast a Shadow by Maurice Carlos Ruffin (2019)
• Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes (2019) 
• Miracle Creek by Angie Kim (2019)
• The Last Book Party by Karen Dukess (2019) 

Favorite Post-Apocalyptic / Dystopian /Speculative Novels:

• The Testaments by Margaret Atwood (2019) 
• After the Flood by Kassandra Montag (2019)
• Severance by Ling Ma (2018) 
• The Dreamers by Karen Walker Thompson (2019)
• We Cast a Shadow by Maurice Carlos Ruffin (2019) 
• Recursion by Blake Crouch (2019)

Favorite Memoirs

• Becoming by Michelle Obama (2018) 
• The Education of an Idealist by Samantha Power (2019)
• Beautiful Boy: A Father’s Journey Through His Son’s Addiction by David Sheff (2008) 
• Blowing the Bloody Doors Off: And Other Lessons in Life by Michael Caine (2018)

Classics:

• If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin (1974)
• Night by Elie Wiesel (1960) 
• The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (1959)
• A Separate Peace by John Knowles (1959) 

Literary Fiction:

• The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead (2019)
• The Red Daughter by John Burnham Schwartz (2019)
• The Dutch House by Ann Patchett (2019)
• Trust Exercise by Susan Choi (2019) 
• Inland by Tea Obreht (2019) 
• Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday (2018) 
• Rules of Civility by Amor Towles (2011)
• Normal People by Sally Rooney (2019)
• Those Who Knew by Idra Novey (2018)
• The Lonely Hearts Hotel by Heather O’Neill (2017)
• The Need by Helen Phillips (2019) 
• Elsey Come Home by Susan Conley (2019) 

Crime & Popular Fiction Novels:

• The Perfect Nanny by Leila Slimani (2018)
• Daisy Jones & the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid (2019)
• The River by Peter Heller (2019)
• Nothing More Dangerous by Allen Eskens (2019)
• Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo (2019)
• The Lost Man by Jane Harper (2019)
• The Current by Tim Johnston (2019)
• The Futures by Anna Pitoniak (2017)
• Recursion by Blake Crouch (2019)
• Descent by Tim Johnston (2015)
• The Mother in Law by Sally Hepworth (2019)
• The Last Book Party by Karen Dukess (2019)
• The Girl He Used to Know by Tracey Garvis Graves (2019)

Favorite Audiobooks

• Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson /read by Marin Ireland (2019)
• Daisy Jones & the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid /read by numerous actors (2019)
• Fleishman Is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner /read by Allyson Ryan (2019)
• Becoming by Michelle Obama /read by the author (2018)
• The Perfect Nanny by Leila Slimani /read by Finty Williams (2019)
• After the Flood by Kassandra Montag /read by Hillary Huber (2019)
• Little by Edward Carey /read by Jayne Entwistle (2018)
• The River by Peter Heller /read by Mark Deakins (2019)
• Southern Lady Code by Helen Ellis /read by the author (2019)

That’s all for now. What about you — did any of these make your favorites for 2019?  

Happy Holidays everyone. I hope your December has been festive and fun and that you’re able to close out the year with your loved ones. This might be my last post of 2019 since my husband and I will be leaving in a little over a week to spend the Christmas week with family in Southern California. We are looking forward to it and plan to brave a bit of Christmas shopping beforehand. Better late than never. 

We’ve had some good snow here lately and the cross-country ski trails are in prime shape. We’ll be out there this weekend, leaving the shopping behind. I never thought I’d like the winter season so much, but after almost 10 years here, I’ve pretty much adapted to the cold temps and white flying fluffy stuff — as long as it’s above single digits Fahrenheit. Meanwhile I’ll leave you with a few reviews of what I finished lately. 

Ahh yes, the sequel to Margaret Atwood’s 1985 dystopian classic “The Handmaid’s Tale,” drew me in and pleasantly surprised me (as it did my book assistant, pictured at left). I noticed that “The Testaments” was recently picked as Amazon’s #1 book of 2019 as well as earning the most votes as Goodreads Best Fiction choice of the year. Wow, I didn’t know this at the time I read it, but I’m glad I’m not alone in appreciating the sequel, which also co-won this year’s Booker Prize.

Perhaps it’s sort of a hard tale to actually “like” because of the harsh place it depicts, but you can see what Atwood was portending with her dystopian futuristic story about the Republic of Gilead, where the environment has gone to seed and a totalitarian regime rules in portions of North America that enforces strict social roles and enslaves fertile women. 

I had read the original novel in 2017 so I was acquainted with the horrors of living in Gilead. “The Testaments” takes place 15 years after this, and is told in short chapters among three alternating narrators. There’s Aunt Lydia:  Gilead’s top female enforcer, who we come to learn was taken in gruesomely at the Republic’s beginning and consolidated her power over many years; then there’s Agnes, who’s born into a well-to do Commander’s family and is trying to figure out her parentage and role within Gilead; and lastly there’s Daisy, a girl living outside of Gilead in free Canada, whose parents aren’t exactly who she once thought they were. Uh-oh.

The three characters’ stories unfold in interesting ways and I was impressed by how each gripped me from the get-go. None of them are really who you think they are at first and they each come to grapple with their own identities and roles in order to get what they want. They all have to bide their time, carry on with the harsh status quo, and hide their true selves … though eventually their motivations and worlds come to collide in a page-turning flurry. 

“The Testaments” is quite different than “The Handmaid’s Tale” in tone and style. For one, it seems quicker and faster paced with short chapters — and does not delve into all the harshness of the first one; it’s more escapist. And while the first one was basically Offred the Handmaid’s story, this one revolves around the lives of the three females and seems more hopeful. The sequel doesn’t continue Offred’s story, but it answers questions about her and Gilead. Some purists will probably continue to like just “The Handmaid’s Tale” and not the sequel …. but I ended up appreciating the follow-up as well because it seemed cleverly handled and resolved some things in my mind. I have to hand it to Atwood, who finished writing it at age 79, nearly 35 years after penning her thought-provoking original. 

I also loved Kevin Wilson’s novel “Nothing to See Here,” which was funny, quirky, and heartwarming too. As unlikely as it seems at first, Lillian (age 28) comes to work as a governess taking care of her rich former boarding school roommate’s stepkids — Bessie and Roland — who happen to catch on fire whenever they become anxious or upset. That’s right: they’re combustible kids. Say whaaa? It feels pretty normal when you experience the story, which says a lot about how good this novel is. 

It engaged me pretty much from the start, and I listened to it as an audiobook read by actress Marin Ireland who made the whole story come alive. It might even be my favorite audio of 2019! It’s a wonderful story about these unusual kids and Lillian, who had a rough childhood herself and becomes their protector and caregiver — as her former roommate Madison marries the kids’ father — a rich US Senator — who keeps the kids at a distance in his guest house on their mega estate. Luckily Lillian really takes to the kids and it’s a transformative journey and ending. You can’t fully explain this one — it’s funnily told and heartwarming without being saccharine. (It’s not exactly Maria in the Sound of Music.) You just need to get it and tap into the fire of these kids. Kudos to author Kevin Wilson.

Lastly I finished the audiobook of Ann Patchett’s recent novel “The Dutch House,” which I liked well enough but did not love. I know I’m in the minority since many seemed gaga over this one. I was keen on the beginning with the big estate that their real estate investor father purchases outside of Philly and Danny and his sisters’ youths and caregivers there. But once their fortunes change, the story seems to spin its wheels a bit about Danny and Maeve’s long lost mother and their stepmom who keeps the mansion for herself and throws them out. It’s a book with a lot of reminiscing in it and is a lot about Danny and Maeve, a brother and sister who rely closely on one another as they grow up, age, and commiserate about their parental circumstances. 

It’s a sad, regretful and nostalgic story, but I didn’t find a lot more necessarily happened in it. I listened to the novel as an audiobook read by Tom Hanks and I thought he was wonderful narrating as Danny. Towards the middle though I found it a bit slow and had to push myself a little to finish it. There’s some development at the end that changes the dynamic about the mother and stepmother in the siblings’ lives … so that made me wake up a bit but didn’t fully redeem much about them for me. It seems a novel about family mistakes, forgiveness, and the bonds of a sister and brother. I commiserated with them and wish their lives in the Dutch House, a mansion worthy of their strong childhood bonds, had never changed. 

That’s all for now. What about you — have you read these, and if so, what did you think? Wishing you all very happy holidays!

Greetings. I want to wish everyone in the U.S. a very Happy Thanksgiving holiday ahead. It’s hard to believe it’s already upon us. Last week I was away visiting my parents in Southern California (see the photos attached) so I’ve  been off the blog for awhile and since then a lot in book news has happened. Particularly you probably heard that author Susan Choi won the National Book Award for fiction for her novel “Trust Exercise,” which I read back in April and found ambitious and a bit challenging.

Now I’m curious about Sarah M. Broom’s memoir “The Yellow House,” which won the National Book Award for nonfiction. It’s said to be about her New Orleans home and how her family scattered after Hurricane Katrina. It sounds good and I’m looking to get my hands on it. Also I was a bit surprised to see that Ian Williams beat out various authors including Michael Crummey to win Canada’s Giller Prize for his debut novel “Reproduction.” Set over three decades, it’s about a family living in an economically mixed and diverse Toronto neighborhood. I don’t know much more about it than that, but I plan to check it out in the future. 

Meanwhile a few publications I follow have already put out their 10 Best Books of 2019 lists, which are pretty interesting. Here they are below: 

The New York Times
The Washington Post
Publishers Weekly
Amazon Books

There doesn’t seem to be a lot of overlap among their fiction picks, but two of these publications share the pick of “The Topeka School,” two others share “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous,” and two share “The Nickel Boys,” so there you have it. Did you get to any of these? I was impressed with “The Nickel Boys,” which I read in August, but I likely won’t put my list of favorite books of 2019 out until early January. There’s still plenty of reading left to do. Meanwhile I’ll leave you with a few reviews of what I finished lately. 

I liked the setting of Leigh Bardugo’s first adult novel “Ninth House,” which has to do with Yale’s secret societies and their hidden rituals and elite members in the city of New Haven. And the protagonist, too, Alex Stern is quite cool. She’s gone from a druggy teenage past that left her the sole survivor at a multiple homicide scene in L.A. to being offered a full ride at Yale U from a benefactor who knows of her ability to see ghosts and wants her to monitor the activities of Yale’s secret societies. So when a town girl involved with the societies is killed, Alex becomes determined to find her killer, even if it means dodging attempts on her life and making bargains with spirits. 

So far, so good. I was able to hang with it — even though I’m not typically a reader of fantasy novels. As with many such books, there’s a lot of setup and explanation to get the plot to where it’s going and fill you in on what the heck is going on amid its societies and rituals. It can be a bit involved — all the explanation and setup — but the beginning also kept me interested. I  liked Stern’s secret society mentor Darlington who seems to be a neat character but he mysteriously disappears … which is a bit too bad for the story. Towards the end, all becomes sort of crazy and I had to roll my eyes a few times throughout. Certainly, “Ninth House,” which is the first in a series, will keep you on your toes with its various twists and secret magic to get to the bottom of its murder mystery — check it out if you’re up for a gritty, lively fantasy. (There is some violence & a bit of strong language involved.)

“My Twenty-Five Years in Provence: Reflections on Then and Now” is a charming slim travelogue-kind-of book — the final volume by Englishman Peter Mayle who died in Jan. 2018 — of his recollections and anecdotes about his life in Provence, France, where he moved to upon retirement in the late 1980s. In it, he writes about how he came to live there (so much more sun!); the wines and food; the seasons, weather and tourists; how he learned the language; what the locals are like; how fast they drive; buying real estate there; the melons and asparagus; dogs; his time on the set with director Ridley Scott while making his book “A Good Year” into a film; and his receiving France’s Legion of Honor. 

I found Mayle to be a pretty endearing guide throughout and listening to it as an audiobook read by John Lee was enjoyable. It reminded me of the time I briefly spent in Provence on my honeymoon visiting the area (hooray). I don’t think I ever read Mayle’s 1989 bestseller “A Year in Provence” (my husband did), but I’d like to someday in the future. Apparently Mayle never liked the TV series that was based on his book — he thought the actor who played him always seemed to be in a bad mood whereas he said he was delighted by his new life in France.

It is quite sad Peter Mayle has now passed away. My only qualm with his last book was that it seemed a bit redundant in places, such as about the seasons and weather, and it skips around quite a bit, but certainly it is a celebration of the Luberon area of France, which made me want to jump on a plane and just go. 

I can now check John Knowles’s 1959 classic “A Separate Peace” off my list. I know it has often been required reading for students in junior high or high school, but somehow I missed it and was always curious. It’s set at a boys boarding school in New England during the early years of World War II and is said to be a “parable of the dark side of adolescence.” The two prep school boys Gene (the studious one) and Phineas (the athlete) become close friends, though Gene feels jealous and competitive with Finny, which in time leads to a misfortunate accident, or is it? 

The atmosphere of the New Hampshire prep school during the summer of 1942 with the war going on interested me. It wasn’t the heroic tale you often hear about of the Greatest Generation with boys going off to fight valiantly in WWII, but it is more grim and felt like impending doom. Themes of male bonding and coming of age permeate the story, and the accident with Finny leaves Gene, who narrates it, with feelings of guilt and sorrow. It’s hard to totally like Gene because of his early behavior, but it seems he comes around and learns a painful lesson in the end.

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