The Cue Card

Oh, July has gone by quickly! Next week sometime I’ll be putting together my August preview of new releases, but for now I just wanted to add a few reviews below of what I’ve been reading lately. It’s safe to assume I’m sort of behind, but summer is a busy time. I’m convinced we have our best weather of the year here now and tomorrow my husband and I will head to the mountains for a lovely day of bicycling. It should be exquisite.

Besides that, it’s house repairs, yard work and various tennis matches and events that I’ve got going.  And if you don’t know, our official flower of the province is the wild rose, which I come upon often while walking my dog out on the trails. See its beauty pictured here.

Meanwhile checking in with book news, I see that Delia Owens’s novel “Where the Crawdads Sing” has just surpassed one million print copies sold in 2019, Wow!  It’s huge, and the biggest seller in fiction this year, which is good because fiction apparently has been losing sales steadily over the past few years.

Nonfiction has been king during these crazy times. But Crawdads has helped save the day, and hopefully fiction is back! I read and liked “Crawdads” just dandy in 2018, and then apparently in March this year it took off like the wind and has been selling gobsmacks ever since. It’s probably all over the beaches this summer. And it’s definitely selling the most in the South Atlantic, near the coastal marshes, where it takes place. Way to go Crawdads!

The other book news to report is perhaps not as happy. It was announced that Macmillan publisher — and perhaps others to follow — will begin to embargo new Library e-books, making it harder for readers to get new e-book releases in a timely manner from their library. Apparently publishers have been changing the terms of their digital content in libraries in recent months, angering various library administrators. To read more about it see here. It sounds like libraries plan to fight back … surely embargoes violate the access to information. If you already sit on long wait lists for e-books at libraries, beware — it could get worse. And now for a few reviews: 

A Prayer for Travelers by Ruchika Tomar / Riverhead / 352 pages / 2019

Synopsis: This debut novel is about a bookish loner named Cale, age 19, who’s been raised by her beloved grandfather, Lamb, in a small desert town near the California-Nevada border. She has no other relatives or friends (just two dogs), but as she finishes high school, she becomes close to a charismatic, glamorous girl named Penny, who gets her to work with her at the local diner. They start hanging out and it appears Penny has stuff going on on the side, like selling drugs to truckers and mixing it up with men at casinos to fund her dreams of leaving town. All is under control, until one fateful night, an act of violence shatters their worlds … and the next day Penny is missing. Cale sets off on a mission to find her, employing the town cop too, but meanwhile Cale’s grandfather’s health takes a downward turn, which sets Cale adrift at the same time Penny is missing.

My Thoughts: There was much I liked about this coming-of-age, first person narrative debut, which features a mystery due to the missing friend. Its grittiness and desolate desert setting were tangible, and the writing captured Cale’s home life as well as her friendship with Penny — who is her  opposite — as they both try to find some spark in their dead-end town. I could sense lonely Cale’s eagerness for such a friend, and its desert surroundings were relatable to me, growing up in California. 

What happens on their fateful night is pretty hair-raising, and I was keen to find out about Penny — and see what would happen to their friendship — but after much searching by Cale — a few parts a bit cryptic to me — the ending sort of fizzled a bit. I was expecting a big denouement but it felt a bit less than that. Still the story piqued my interest and seemed to speak to the processing of traumatic experience by two pretty different female friends in the West. How it went about that was pretty admirable.    

The only weird thing was the author’s choice to number the book’s chapters out of order (from 31 to 2 to 5 to 3 to 32 etc.) to represent parts of Cale’s past and present being told. I’m not sure it was that necessary, or needed to be mapped. I alternated pretty seamlessly through Cale’s life fine without going haywire over time and numbers. Despite that quibble, I liked how the author conjured their world and put me in Cale’s shoes. 

Normal People by Sally Rooney / Hogarth / 268 pages / 2018

Synopsis: You know what it’s about: a young Irish couple: Marianne and Connell and their relationship through high school and college. They come from different backgrounds: Marianne’s family is wealthy and Connell’s is not; his single mom works for Marianne’s family, which is awkward at best. Marianne is unpopular and nerdy in high school, and he’s popular, and then she is popular in college and he isn’t. Are you paying attention? 

Marianne and Connell are never really exclusively girlfriend/boyfriend in a conventional sense but start hooking up and become bonded over time. They seem frustratingly right for each other but through missteps and miscommunication hurt each other time and again, and never seem fully ready to commit. 

I liked Rooney’s writing for its observations, adolescent insecurities, and dialogue, but for readers who like a lot of plot or action this story will likely not be for you, nor if you don’t care to hear much about the sex lives of adolescents. The novel’s everydayness might drive readers to wonder what the big deal is about Sally Rooney’s books. This one received so much hype and recognition. I had to wonder myself. I guess in a coming-of-age kind of way, it’s interesting to see if these two characters will evolve, or what will happen to them. Maybe it’s a nerdier, much more mundane Fates & Furies? I liked Connell much better than Marianne, for sure, but I likely won’t hold my breath to find out if they return in Rooney’s next installment. 

The Mother-In-Law by Sally Hepworth / St. Martin’s Press / 347 pages / 2019

I enjoyed this novel as a light summer mystery audiobook and liked how its premise touched on mother-in-laws and their relationship with their kids’ spouses, which has such potentially fraught possibilities, either wonderful or frightful. 

In this story set in Australia, the wealthy matriarch Diana appears at first to be a stone-cold (SOB) mother-in-law … and yet she runs a charity for immigrants, is a pillar in her community, and appears to have feelings after all, especially for her husband Tom and her grandkids, just not exactly for her daughter-in-law Lucy. And Lucy so wants to be liked by Diana and her husband Ollie’s family, which includes his sister Nettie and her spouse Patrick, but nothing is easy. Money is an issue — Diana doesn’t want to give handouts to her married son, who is starting a business, or her daughter, who is seeking fertility treatments, nor does she appreciate Lucy at first — who is a stay-at-home mom to three kids. 

But Diana’s life has been harder than you think — as you come to find out by the chapters being alternately told by Lucy and Diana in the past and present. Both sides are compelling — neither one being all good or all bad — and I liked its entertaining look at the mother-in-law dynamic — which is more attenuated once Diana is found dead along with a suicide note. Uh-oh. Did she do it, or was it someone else? You’ll have to keep on till the end to find out. 

Granted, Diana was the opposite of my beloved mother-in-law, who I lost in 2013. She would’ve been Lucy’s dream MIL from the very beginning.

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

July has been busy. Last week I was in a town a couple hours north of here officiating the junior provincial tennis tournament for 18- and 16-year-olds, which meant long days outside on the courts. Some days were freezing, and other days were frying. Ha, it’s one of my retirement jobs and I’m enjoying it so far. The kids are good and competitive and I just need to make sure the matches are played by the rules and fairly … that all line balls are called good etc. I survived a week’s worth and now I’m glad to be home again. 

We’ve been back just a few weeks from Montana, so I thought I’d include a couple more photos (at top, and left) from the trip. It’s still on my mind how great Montana is, so if you get a chance, check it out. 

I hope everyone is enjoying their summers so far, amid all the earthquakes, hurricanes, floods and heat waves: take care out there. Meanwhile I’ll leave you with a few reviews of what I finished lately. 

American Wolf: A True Story of Survival and Obsession in the West by Nate Blakeslee / Crown Publishing / 2017 / 300 pages 

Admittedly I’m an animal person, whether wild or domesticated, large or small, I’m an admirer, but you don’t have to be to get hooked by this nonfiction book. Wow I had no idea it was this good— I just picked it up to read while at my brother’s house in Montana recently and I’m so glad I did. 

It tells the story of the U.S. government’s reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park in 1995 and the decades that followed for the species in and around the park. It does so in a way that grippingly zeroes in on the lives of one such wolf pack in the park’s Lamar Valley led by a dynamic alpha female known as O-Six, for the year she was born. Holy smokes, she’s something to behold: a mother, fighter, protector, hunter, and glue who holds her pack together. From early on she becomes beloved by a group of avid wolf watchers that includes park ranger Rick McIntyre, who meticulously note the pack’s lives on a daily basis. It’s thanks to them that her story unfolds. 

And it’s not an easy one. O-Six and her pack must fend off other wolf packs that will kill to get their territory, and must contend with cattle ranchers and hunters if they cross the park’s boundaries who also want them dead. It’s a gripping narrative that as it goes on ropes you more into the intricacies of O-Six’s pack dynamics and the wolves’ lives while at the same time revealing such interesting information about the animals that you never knew before. In a wolf pack, for instance, there’s just one alpha male and alpha female pair and usually they’re the only ones who mate within the group; they breed once a year; and are said to mate for life unless their partner is killed. Both female and males take care and hunt for their young and they depend on the pack for survival. 

The book also delves into the politics surrounding the Endangered Species Act and the states of Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho that have delisted and re-listed the species from time to time and have allowed annual hunts for the wolf. The protected Yellowstone packs haven’t been immune, many — even the ones wearing tracking collars — have been killed upon crossing the park’s boundaries. The narrative, though appreciative of the wolf, includes the anti-wolf side as well not shying from hunters and the killing that goes on. For any wolf fan, the story will infuriate you and break your heart on numerous occasions. I’m not a typical crier, but this one moved me to tears. 

Miracle Creek by Angie Kim / Sarah Crichton Books / 2019 / 355 pages

Synopsis: It’s a novel about a group who’ve been seeking help at a special treatment center — an oxygen chamber operated by a Korean family — for afflictions ranging from autism and other developmental disorders to infertility. But when an explosion at the chamber occurs and two are killed, a court case a year later ensues  to get to the bottom of who was responsible. 

My Thoughts: I know everybody loved this immigrant family and courtroom drama but for whatever reason the story wasn’t a huge hit with me like I thought it would be. To me, the crime or accident was horrific, and the cast of characters was unlikable in their flawed ways … the swirl of lies was nonstop, and it went round and round with everyone having a motive to possibly causing what happened to happen or playing their part in it. Usually I like having lots of suspects but not particularly this time.

It’s good the story highlighted the care of special needs children who were taken by their parents to sit in the chamber multiple times a day for months on end — though it was mostly about the lengths mothers will go to treat their kids and how they are driven crazy by the health needs and their kids’ disorders. I kept thinking about the kids sitting in the submarine chamber and autistic Henry in particular and it disturbed me what happened, along with various other things with the characters as well, such as between the infertile patient Matt and the Korean owners’ daughter Mary, and the relationship of the Korean owners. I might have felt for their situations, but I did not exactly like these individuals and spending much time in their wakes.

The Futures by Anna Pitoniak / Little Brown/ 2017 / 320 pages

This novel is about two recent college grads, Evan is from a small town in Canada and Julia from an affluent family in Boston. They meet at Yale, Evan plays on the hockey team and they become a couple. Afterwards they move in together in NYC and find jobs — Evan at a hedge fund and Julia an assistant at a foundation. They try to make a go of their young lives together but they become more separated as time goes on. 

The financial meltdown of 2008-2009 in NYC plays prominently in the book as a backdrop, as huge layoffs are happening and Evan’s boss makes a shady deal with the Chinese. Both Evan and Julia, who narrate the story in alternating chapters, are pretty selfish and unlikable characters yet I still found the story an interesting look into young adulthood and the mistakes that are made in one’s early 20s. 

You can sort of see where the story will lead before it gets there but it’s a train wreck that you keep watching. What happens between Evan and Julia seems real and affecting, but the later transformation of the characters in the year or so that follows, I wasn’t totally sold on. Still I thought the debut author did a nice job with all the young, privileged angst in the story and the feelings that were prevalent during the financial meltdown of 2008/09.

I hope to read the author’s new novel “Necessary People” sometime so I thought I’d start with this one, which I listened to as an audiobook. 

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 / Bantam / 2012 / 290 pages

Next up is a memoir my husband and I listened to as an audiobook while on our road trip to Montana. We were headed on a week’s bike ride, so I thought it’d be sort of inspiring to hear what’s cycling is like on the pro tour … going up long mountain passes and over hill and dale racing, but it’s a lot — more than I realized it’d be — about the doping shenanigans that went on in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Still it’s quite a potent story. Even this many years later, after the whole doping scandal of Lance Armstrong and the U.S. Postal team has been revealed, the memoir opened my eyes to elements I hadn’t known before. Just the scope of doping within professional cycling seemed universal at the time, it wasn’t just one team doing it, it was rampant among all the top cycling teams. This memoir was actually published a year before Lance’s 2013 confession so the lowdown of all that was going on behind the scenes is explosive stuff. The author was a teammate of Lance’s for three years when Lance won the Tour in 1999, 2000, and 2001.  

Whoa. Tyler tells the story from the beginning of his cycling life in the 1990s and gives an insider’s view of his career and wanting to compete at the Tour de France. It all started out so innocently just being an athlete and cyclist — but then he got roped in like so many others — basically given the ultimatum: you either dope or go home. 

The story unfolds chronologically of Tyler’s years at the Tour de France and the teams he doped with, revealing the secrecy and lengths of hiding the doping, the types of drugs — EPO and blood transfusions — the shadowy doctors, and the team players. It was quite an operation and is unreal they were able to beat the drug tests for so long and so often — before testing was adequate enough to detect most of it. It’s still not 100 percent; there could be various dopers today trying to beat the odds of being caught. 

In Tyler’s memoir, Lance Armstrong comes off as quite the nutcase with no longterm loyalty to friends and with a vengeance toward anyone who’d stand in his way or taint his reputation. It’s disconcerting and illuminating. Tyler also seems to hold himself accountable; he could’ve stopped or told the truth or blown the whistle so many times years earlier but he covered the doping up just like so many others in pro cycling. There was an unspoken oath of secrecy among all the cyclists to keep quiet. It was only when Tyler was subpoenaed in 2010 did he finally tell the truth, which led to him writing this book. So while the general knowledge of doping has been known now for several years, I found parts of this memoir still quite riveting and revealing about the whole operation from racing to behind the scenes. It’s a train wreck that’s quite hard to fathom. 

What about you — have you read any of these, or have any thoughts on them?

Greetings. I hope everyone’s June is going well. Things are very green here now and in bloom. My book assistant, at left, and I are especially enjoying the lilac bushes in the park. Don’t you love the smell?  So far these past couple of weeks I’ve been completing some wacky books, not really wacky per se but books outside my normal reading zone. Do you ever do that — finish several outside your usual reading genre — and you think oh that was different.

I didn’t exactly plan to read them, they just came to me like that from the library. One was sort of a motivational book, another was from a movie actor, another was sort of a romance-y novel, and one was a pivotal holocaust memoir. Talk about varied, these jumped some hoops for me but served their purpose as well … so I’ll leave you with some thoughts about them below. 

But first the latest in book news is that I scored some tickets to hear Margaret Atwood speak when she comes to town to talk about her new novel in late September. I think the event sold out in a couple hours, so I was lucky to get two seats. She’s like royalty in Canada so you must move quickly … and I mean quickly.

As you know, her new novel “The Testaments” — due out Sept. 10 — is the long-awaited sequel to her dystopian novel “The Handmaid’s Tale” from 1985. It takes place 15 years after the end of “The Handmaid’s Tale” and will feature the “explosive testaments of three female narrators from Gilead.” Gulp.

Meanwhile, Season 3 of “The Handmaid’s Tale” TV series has started up … though I stopped watching after Season 1. It was just too grim and I needed all the handmaids to escape pronto. Season 1 featured the story in the novel, but the other seasons have gone beyond that. So I will wait for “The Testaments” to come out in September. And now for the reviews: 

 I first read Elie Wiesel’s 1958 memoir “Night” when I was in junior high school and I’m sure it blew me out of my shoes, just the sheer terror of it. But it had been a long time and I was foggy about its details, so when I saw the audio download available at the library, I started it with trepidation. It seemed timely as the 75th anniversary of D-Day was approaching then, and who better than the late Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel to put what was at stake into context. Gulp. 

Who remembers that it was so late in the war — 1944 — when Wiesel, his family, and fellow Jewish villagers from Transylvania were rounded up and deported to the concentration camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau. I wish they had run away sooner, but Wiesel says many still did not believe it would happen to them, or they thought the war would end before then. They either did not believe the death accounts or thought they could avoid them. Elie was just 15 years old when he arrived at Auschwitz (as was Anne Frank incidentally), he and his father were selected for forced labor, while his mother and one sister went to the gas chambers, two other sisters survived. 

Much of this slim book tells of Elie and his father’s days at the camp, struggling to survive many months of hard labor with hardly anything to eat. The scenes of torture, camp dentistry, and the hanging of a child shape them in unimaginable ways. Finally with the Allies getting close, the SS decides to abandon the camp and force Elie, his father, and the remaining inmates on a death march first to Gleiwitz, some 50 miles away, then to be put on a train to Buchenwald, where Elie somehow manages to keep alive until the camp’s liberation on April 11, 1945. 

Oh it’s not an easy book to revisit — the death march and ending are particularly horrifying and tragic — but it seemed necessary to return to this account of what the Wiesel family experienced and millions of others. I had not recalled how unsparing Elie Wiesel is of himself and others in the camp about when they failed to help those in need, despite their very desperate conditions. The destruction of the beliefs in humanity and God and the self and soul are all in this one memoir. It’s downright shattering, even surmising what’s coming the second time around.

By the way I have not read Elie Wiesel’s two other books in this trilogy: “Dawn” and “Day,” but I plan to in the future.

After that, I listened to the audiobook of Oprah Winfrey’s recent book “The Path Made Clear: Discovering Your Life’s Direction and Purpose,” which lays out in 10 chapters about how you can go about doing that. In part Oprah shares her own experiences and advice on living a life of significance and she interviews other renowned figures about their paths and beliefs.

I’ve never been an Oprah TV show follower, but I found the book pretty engaging and motivational though I’m not sure I got too many concrete tips out of it. Boiled down, it seemed a bit like such advice as: follow what you love and contentment will follow, or have faith and belief in who you are, or don’t let fear stop you etc. But there are various life lessons in it that I felt were well worthwhile visiting, and her guest stars of theologians, philosophers, authors, athletes, and celebs offered useful insights into life and one’s purpose pretty articulately.  

Next up, I read actor Michael Caine’s 2018 book “Blowing the Bloody Doors Off: And Other Lessons in Life.” (What is it with me and “lessons” this month?) I started it as an audio but then switched to the print version when the audiobook was due. I thought this book would be a memoir of his life in the movie industry, but it turned out to be just part memoir and part words of wisdom and advice to actors and others.

I didn’t really know much about Michael Caine’s poor working-class background, and his youth during WWII, but I enjoyed hearing about it in the first part of the book — along with finding out about his service in the Korean War. He’s an eloquent and charming storyteller. 

The rest of the book jumps around quite a bit about his roles in movies —like how he got into acting in the 1960s, starting out small then getting his first breakout role in “Alfie” in 1966 — as well as the advice he has to share for others. Most of the tricks of the trade he shares seems to be wise common sense: such as be prepared and on time; know your lines inside and out; use the difficulty life throws you; do your research; stay focused; learn your craft; give 100 percent; be flexible and respectful of others; learn from your failures, etc. It’s all fine to read but towards the end the chapters seemed to get a bit repetitive. 

Still Michael Caine includes some entertaining anecdotes but nothing too dishy and talks about actors he’s worked with and directors he’s liked, such as John Huston and Christopher Nolan. He speaks of his movie successes and duds (such as “The Swarm” from 1978) but he says he has no regrets. He seems respectful, hardworking, and grateful about his career and family. I’ve gone to renting a few of his movies to relive what he’s been in.

Recently I’ve seen him in “The Italian Job” from 1969, “The Man Who Would Be King” from 1975; “California Suite” from 1978; “Educating Rita” from 1983; and I plan to rewatch “Hannah and Her Sisters” from 1986, for which he won his first Academy Award. His second Oscar was for his role in “The Cider House Rules.” Certainly some of his movies seem quite dated, but still he comes off quite appealing and gifted. And by now, I almost have his cockney accent down.  Which is your favorite Michael Caine movie?  

Last up, I listened to the audiobook of Tracey Garvis Graves’s recent novel “The Girl He Used to Know,” which by now having a title with “Girl” in it is almost enough to make one run. It was also a bit out of my typical range — more romance-y than I usually pick up, but I thought the storytelling was pretty engaging. It’s about two people (Annika and Jonathan) who re-connect after 10 years time and pick up where their relationship left off. They meet in college in 1991 at Illinois, date there, and then run into each other years later in 2001 in Chicago. The girl has a developmental disorder (I’d rather not say which) and learns how to navigate things in college with the help of her roommate Janice and the boyfriend Jonathan, who like Annika is on the chess team.

It seemed a bit hard to believe Annika’s parents didn’t test her or seek treatments for her when she was young, but otherwise the story seems to portray her pretty realistically. There is a touch of saccharine to the story and later a bit of melodrama, but still it made for a pretty enjoyable audiobook. As the story goes along, you begin to wonder how Annika and Jonathan will bridge their gap and get back together, and also what had happened in their past that broke them up to begin with. The author does well tying the  story together and researching the character’s life and disorder. I like how Annika must overcome various challenges and grow along the way to reach where she wants to be.

That’s all for now. I will be away starting on Saturday — we are going on a bicycle trip in Montana with a group, so I hope it goes well. I won’t be back for a couple weeks … as we will take some time there afterwards. I look forward to chatting with you then.

Let me know if you’ve read any of these — and if so, what you thought. 

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? 

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?

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?

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.