The Cue Card

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

— Michelle Obama in “Becoming,”  Page 295

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Greetings from the cold frontier. It appears February does not really want to cooperate with being friendly. Has your polar vortex disappeared yet?  Ours is still ongoing and we look to have our second weekend coming up with well below 0F temps. I’ve been donning my winter space suit to walk the dog, which appears to be working until I have to use my hands and take off my big mitts for brief moments. That can be ouch-worthy. Best bet is to have the husband do the dog-walking on the weekends. As for our yellow Labrador Stella — aka the book assistant — she never fully admits it’s cold outside and duly wants her walks as previously scheduled. She must have some insulation about her. After all, Labs like her are built to retrieve in cold water.

In book news this week, it appears that author A.J. Finn — aka Dan Mallory — sure took a beating after a New Yorker article revealed that the author of the bestselling thriller “The Woman in the Window” has lied about a whole lot of things in his own life …. including that he had cancer, that his mother had died of cancer, and that his brother had taken his own life. All of which are apparently untrue. Yikes. Why does one try to elicit sympathy in such a way? It seems a bit ill. I guess Mallory has admitted his lies and apologized now, but the uproar sure has lit up social media and the like. I wonder if it will put a damper on the movie adaptation of his book due out in October 2019, starring Amy Adams and Gary Oldman. Egads you can’t be too happy if you’re putting up the money for the film. And now I’ll leave you with a few reviews of what I finished lately.   

Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday (2018) 271 pages, paperback, from the library

Synopsis:  The novel has three separate parts to it: The first is about a young American editor (Alice) who’s an inspiring novelist — and her relationship with a famous, much older writer named Ezra Blazer (based loosely on Philip Roth who the author once had a relationship with). The very different second part is narrated by Amar, an Iraqi-American post-doc who, on his way to visit his brother in Kurdistan in 2008, is detained by immigration officers and spends the weekend in a holding room in Heathrow having flashbacks of his family’s past. And the last part is an interview of the same Ezra Blazer that along the way indirectly confirms how the parts of the story correlate.

My Thoughts:  This novel — hailed as one of the 10 Best Books of 2018 by the New York Times and various other publications — is quite a puzzle about how the three parts link together. I guess I didn’t really know that going in, so I wasn’t really on the lookout, hunting for subtle clues like I should have been in high school English class. So alas I blew it a bit … that indeed it’s a bit of an exercise or look at the creative process. 

Instead I was pulled in by the first section, about this young mid-20s girl — Alice (as in Wonderland) — who’s working in publishing and seeing this famous older author (Ezra) who must be like late 60s or 70. Gosh all I could think about was the author’s one-time relationship with Philip Roth and whether this all was true. Though apparently the author has cautioned against reading this section as total autobiography … so much was invented she says … but still (!) It’s a bit endearing and funny their banter — these two writers of mixed ages who seem to fit well with their preoccupation with fiction, old tunes, baseball watching, and sex. A bit icky or weird though too with their ages and his health issues, and he being a mentor.

The second part of the novel is totally different about this Iraqi-American post-doc (Amar) stuck at Heathrow Airport having flash backs to days with his family in Iraq and the war — I didn’t really see how this fit, but I really felt for him. And the third part about an interview with the author Ezra was interesting too but once again I was a bit clueless to its link… though there are clues, some of which I questioned along the way. 

Still it wasn’t till after reading about the novel that its main mystery was revealed to me and what the novel was seeking to do. In retrospect, in understanding it more, I liked it better and thought it was quite clever … about writing and how it can transport one across boundaries. That’s all I will say, if you like literary puzzles then go for it. As one reviewer  at the New York Times said: “Asymmetry is not complicated, but it cannot be read complacently. Like it or not, it will make you a better reader, a more active noticer. It hones your senses.” It’s enough to make me want to watch for her next book.

Descent by Tim Johnston (2015) 384 pages, hardback, from the library

Synopsis:  The story follows the fracturing of a family following the disappearance of the 18-year-old daughter during a Colorado vacation. Caitlin is about to enter college on a track scholarship when she fails to come back from an early morning run with her brother who is found injured. Over the course of the next two years, the parents and the brother each go through their own troubles as no sign of Caitlin is found. 

My Thoughts:  This is another missing person/abduction kind of story, whose genre I’m sort of tiring of. I think I picked this one up because of the hype and because the author has a new novel out called “The Current” to compare it with. I was also interested in its Rocky Mountain setting, where I once lived. I read the novel pretty quickly though it does jump around a bit among the characters and the italic parts (some of which it has throughout) are always a bit of a chore on the eyes. 

I thought it was a decent thriller though a couple things bugged me along the way: for one, the brother and father stay in Colorado to apparently keep searching for their sister/daughter yet they never seem to do any searching or none is described. I understand the story comes after the initial months of searching, still I was freaked about keeping up the search. I would’ve torn that mountain apart, from top to bottom. Meanwhile the characters sort of whine, meander, get in trouble, and fall apart. 

Another thing, there’s so much smoking in the book; everyone is smoking though the missing girl apparently was a great runner and was granted a college scholarship for track, yet all of her relatives are big smokers. Really? I guess it’s to show stress. But blah, one more mention of lighting a cigarette by so-so in the book and I would’ve tossed it across the room into the fire. There’s your cigarette.

Though I guess I liked the part about the town bully guy, Billy, doing some good toward the end of the story, which felt a bit redeeming. The novel has some things going for it that I liked — a suspense that builds around some definable family characters, but I also felt it had some things that hindered it. So for me it was half and half.  

My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite (2018), 240 pages, audiobook

 Synopsis:  You guessed it, the novel is about two sisters in Nigeria — the pretty, younger sister Ayoola is the one who has a habit of killing her boyfriends (the last three) and the older sister Korede (a nurse at the hospital) is the one who cleans up the mess and keeps it under wraps. But when a doctor, Korede is in love with, falls for her sister, she must reckon with what her sister has become and how far she’s willing to go to protect her.  Uh-oh.

My Thoughts:  Yes this novel has made the round on blogs already and I’m on the bandwagon about it being favorable as well.  I thought it was clever and I liked its ending. The older sister narrator, Korede, has a sardonic world-weary voice that makes the telling of this “black widow” tale appealing. It’s hard to even explain — how something so awful and serious of a novel about a sister’s killings — can be construed as light and refreshing as well. Say what??? There’s various degrees and emotions in this story, from: deadpan humor to guilt and heartfelt truth-seeking and love. Korede is trying to save the day and come up with answers. She sure can clean a car transporting a body better than those guys did in “Pulp Fiction.” I know I’ll never look at bleach the same way again. 

All the while the novel is told in short snappy chapters that keep things moving. By the end, you find out why these sisters are so bound together …. from their childhood. They really have each other’s backs. I was impressed by the sibling aspect of this novel, as well as the story’s wit and its turns, and its Nigerian setting. 

What about you — have you read any of these novels — and if so, what did you think? 

Greetings. I hope you are enjoying your January. My book assistant at left is staying nice and warm; she particularly likes lying on the couch next to the portable heater, often stealing my seat to get closest to it. Meanwhile I was sad to hear that prize-winning poet Mary Oliver passed away last week. Her poems often featured nature and animals and I recall reading her 2013 collection called “Dog Songs” just last year, which made me happy she seemed a kindred dog person. I haven’t read many of Mary Oliver’s collections, but the couple I have read are quite beautiful. I’m sure she will be missed by many.

Also in the news was the Oscar nominations in which the Netflix movie “Roma” and the period-drama “The Favourite” led the pack with 10 award nominations each. I have not seen either so I need to remedy that — as well as see the movie “Green Book” and a few others before the Oscar broadcast on Feb. 24. Do you have a favorite nominee? I’m still thinking it through. For now I’ll leave you with reviews of a few books that I finished back in December. Yes, I’m playing catch-up….  

Paris Echo by Sebastian Faulks (2018) 320 pages

Short Synopsis:  The lives of two unlikely characters cross paths as they come to share a lodging in Paris. The chapters alternate in first person narration between: Hannah who is a 30-something American historian researching women’s lives under the Nazi Occupation in Paris (1940-44); and Tariq, a 19-year-old Moroccan boy, who comes to the city to find out where his deceased mother once lived. Both undergo self-discoveries as they navigate the streets of Paris and their lives there, searching for clues in the foreign City of Lights.

My Thoughts: I liked the premise of this novel, which I read in print as well as listened to as an audiobook, and how it meanders the streets of Paris and its history. As Hannah is delving into women’s histories from WWII, Tariq learns a bit working at a fast-food joint with fellow Muslims about France’s colonial war with Algeria. Both are undergoing personal changes too, Tariq is coming of age and fantasizing about a girl back home, while Hannah is visiting with a former professor, and still overcoming a past relationship that she had while she was in Paris a decade earlier as a student. Though dissimilar they become friends and Tariq helps Hannah with some translations of French recordings of women who experienced WWII.   

The novel reads a bit like a love letter to Paris and that appealed to me— as well as its glimpse into the Occupation — since my husband and I visited the city last June touring World War II sights. (We ate lunch at the hotel that was the German headquarters in Paris and saw the bullet holes at the front entrance put there when the Free France forces stormed it in 1944.) Hannah’s research unearths recordings of a few different women’s voices who were informers, Resistance members, and those who were retaliated against after the war for their ties to German troops. 

These parts to me were the most interesting in the novel. Other parts with Tariq and his adventures around the city didn’t work as well or were not as compelling to me. I pressed myself a bit to see the two characters’ self-discoveries to the end as the story sort of meanders and ebbs and flows. Still the setting and exploration of Paris seemed well worth the read. (This was my third Sebastian Faulks’ novel over the years after reading “Birdsong” from 1993 and “Charlotte Gray” from 1998, which are WWI and WWII tales respectively.)

Disclaimer: Thanks to Henry Holt Books for sending me a copy of this novel to review.  

The White Darkness by David Grann (2018) 160 pages

Short Synopsis:  This nonfiction story — first published in the New Yorker in Feb. 2018 then made into a book — captures the life of Henry Worsley who was a British special forces officer that so idolized 19th-century polar explorer Ernest Shackleton that he set off in 2008 to trek with two others the route across Antarctica that Shackleton failed to finish. Worsley succeeded that arduous journey, only to be drawn back in 2015, at age 55, to try a dangerous trek across Antarctica alone.  

My Thoughts:  Oh how I love reading about the polar explorers and their journeys. And for fans of such gigantic excursions, this slim but moving book is not to be missed. This story takes you through what Henry Worsley faced on his Antartica treks and what happened on both. I could imagine it — under Grann’s skillful words — the cold and the pull of the heavy sled behind him for hours and days on end, as well as being in the tent on the frozen landscape at night. The book includes many awesome photographs that draws you in further — to a place that is on average the coldest, driest, windiest continent on Earth — as well as the highest. It isn’t any wonder it’s nearly impossible to walk across. 

I came away being so impressed by what a person and explorer Worsley was. He seemed to emulate the very leadership and qualities of Shackleton that he so admired. A devoted family man and officer — Worsley was regarded so highly by all who knew him. If you don’t know from news reports about his life, I won’t tell you what happened. But it’s worth reading about his journeys in this small gem of a book. I won’t soon forget Henry Worsley and what he accomplished.  

The Story Hour by Thrity Umrigar (2014)  317 pages

Short Synopsis:  Set in an unnamed U.S. northeastern university city, the story follows the friendship between two dissimilar women who meet when one of them as a psychologist takes on the case of the other who has tried to commit suicide. Maggie is the black psychologist married to an Indian man who takes on Lakshmi’s case. Lakshmi’s a young immigrant from India who’s in an arranged marriage to a man who doesn’t love her.  Maggie and Lakshmi meet as doctor and patient but later become friends outside the office.

My Thoughts: I enjoyed the author’s 2017 novel “Everybody’s Son” so I thought I would try this 2014 novel of hers and it did not disappoint. Like that novel, this one explores themes of race, class, identity and isolation in an engaging domestic drama that in due time is hard to put down. 

Sure both women have faults and secrets — Maggie is having an affair, which she can’t seem to break off, and Lakshmi is weak and lonely and won’t stand up to her abusive husband who was supposed to marry her sister — that might fray your nerves but you get too involved in their connected story to slowdown where this is going. 

It’s no wonder Maggie and Lakshmi’s lives end up colliding in an explosive occurrence that unravels their friendship and has consequences that changes their lives in detrimental ways. Only years later something happens that leaves open the possibility of redemption and forgiveness. 

Hmm, if you like domestic dramas, this one will take you for a ride. It’s sort of like the kind of novel that Celeste Ng writes if you like those. This is only my second Thrity Umrigar novel (she’s pretty prolific), but I plan to continue to read her in the future. She’s usually an engaging storyteller who often writes about the lives of women from India.  

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

Happy sunrise everyone. I captured this shot while walking my dog early one morning down near the tracks. It makes me think that we will see spring hopefully in a few months time. Already the days are staying lighter longer. Below are reviews of my first three books of 2019, yea!  I’m on a good, even pace right now, though I still need to post reviews of my last three books of 2018 that I finished in December, uh-oh. I was going to include them in this post, but I think I will wait. It’s too much to cram in six book reviews, no matter how succinct. Meanwhile I hope everyone is enjoying the start of their new year and liking their first reads of 2019.

The Dreamers by Karen Thompson Walker (2019) 320 pages

Short Synopsis: (edited from Publishers Weekly’s blurb) Set in an isolated college town in the hills of Southern California, the story follows a handful of characters who become quarantined in the town after a mysterious illness causes its victims to fall into a deep, dream-laden sleep from which they cannot be woken and which sometimes leads to death.

My Thoughts: Uh-oh this malady starts at a college and spreads to the surrounding town. I fell into the story from the get-go and liked its small cast of regulars, especially the college freshman Mei who teams with her eccentric classmate Matthew to help others during the chaotic days of the illness; and a young couple who try to protect their newborn baby from it; as well as two adolescent sisters left on their own after their survivalist father succumbs and is taken away. 

It’s a daunting premise and I didn’t really know what was going to happen. The ending might have been slightly a letdown for me as it didn’t really answer all my questions about the mystery or go out with a big finale, but instead it seemed to raise other questions about consciousness and time and whether the victims were dreaming about the past or the future — as well as it highlighted what binds individuals together under such dire circumstances. All in all, I found it kept my interest and its apocalyptic vision and feelings of alienation felt pretty real. I thought the author infused it with some insightful and inspired writing and passages.

So I was a bit surprised to see Dwight Garner rip it apart in his review of the novel in the NY Times. He called the author “a limited and sentimental novelist” and critiqued the characters for being nearly all “exceedingly nice”; he wrote: “None of these characters says or does an interesting thing. Anarchic instincts and impure thoughts are kept to the barest minimum. … Reading this book’s bland dialogue is like watching players on center court use dead tennis balls.”  Yikes, a tennis analogy too — that’s my game. I guess call me limited and sentimental then as I thought it was worthwhile and at times astute. I decided to include Dwight Garner’s thoughts here just to see what others might think.

Disclaimer: Thanks to the publisher Random House for the free e-galley of this book that I received to review via Netgalley.

Those Who Knew by Idra Novey (2018) 248 pages

Short Synopsis:  (edited from publisher’s version) It features a small circle of characters on an unnamed island country 10 years after the collapse of a U.S.-supported regime. Lena, once a student activist during those days, is now a teacher who comes to suspect that a female aide to a powerful progressive senator named Victor is being taking advantage of by him. When the aide winds up dead, Lena, who once was involved with Victor, suspects he’s had a hand in it.

My Thoughts: I listened to this as an audiobook and was easily hooked from the start. Along with Lena, there’s also her best friend Olga, a bookstore owner, and Freddie the senator’s gay brother who suspects him too. I liked the story’s themes: about Lena’s guilt and complicity over her silence about what happened to her decades earlier; her helplessness about the current situation; and its focus on power. 

It’s a timely story considering these #MeToo days, though I believe the author started her novel years earlier. Surely, Victor is a misogynistic, violent guy whose recent marriage to Christina is only for political convenience — wow he’s dreadful throughout this. The story has three parts to it and I guess I just wish it hadn’t jumped so much in time between Part 1 and 2. The writing is well done though a bit scattered in time and among the characters. While it won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, I liked its self-discoveries and final reckoning.

If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin (1974) 197 pages

Short Synopsis: (edited from publisher’s version) Set in Harlem, N.Y., it’s about a wrongly imprisoned African American, 22-year-old Fonny, and his pregnant fiance, Tish, who tells the story.  Their families fight to clear his name and spring him from prison while the young lovers experience a kaleidoscope of emotions. 

My Thoughts: Oh thank goodness for James Baldwin. I read this before seeing the movie, which I hope to see soon. I love Baldwin’s outrage of America’s wrongs in this, his truths, and how he lays it on the line. He tells it like it is and his thoughts about racism in America are keen. This is a potent story and the writing propels one along through the streets of New York in the early 1970s. Tish’s family tries their damndest to raise money for lawyer expenses and they make sacrifices to try to free Fonny but every step of the way seems thwarted and it ends with tragic consequences.

The novel’s story reminded me a bit of Tayari Jones’s “An American Marriage,” which I read last year, and I wondered if she took the idea — of lovers kept from one another by a false imprisonment — from Baldwin’s book or not. Hers is a bit different — perhaps with a more modern-day spin on it. Still as good as Tayari’s story was, I felt Baldwin’s “Beale Street” was a bit more potent and hopeless.

Lastly, we saw the movie “Vice” last night, which is a pretty dark satire about the story of Dick Cheney’s early life and rise leading to his incredible power within the George Bush administration and his unique role in the war with Iraq. I usually like Washington political kinds of movies but this one is so infuriating and overbearing — and even though I suspect the assertions in it are mostly true — it’s just yuck. It’s not a thing you really want to see or re-live about your country.

Yet the performances in it are all quite incredible — Christian Bale as Cheney; Amy Adams as his wife, Lynne; Sam Rockwell as George W. Bush; and Steve Carell as Donald Rumsfeld. Indeed Bale should get an Oscar for nailing Cheney’s annoying mannerisms. The movie makes it seem like it was all about power and perhaps it oversimplifies things and is quite scathing in its delivery, yet it seems brave to have been made too. Surely the movie is about 15 to 20 minutes too long and I’m not sure it will entice the average viewer outside of political junkies. I guess it’s not a movie that endeared me or I totally liked, but I’m glad I saw it.

What about you — have you read these novels or seen this movie — and if so, what did you think?