The Cue Card

I was sad to read of Harper Lee’s death yesterday. I had reread her 1960 classic “To Kill a Mockingbird” last year and had re-watched the 1962 movie version of it too — all in preparation for the 2015 release of her book “Go Set a Watchman,” which is generally considered to be an early draft of “Mockingbird” written in 1957. But — ugh – everything in “Watchman” seemed to turn “Mockingbird” on its head.  I didn’t like it much and thought the writing in it to be fairly forgettable too.
 
And now with Harper Lee’s passing, I wonder: do I wish “Watchman” had never been released?  Probably, yes.  I sort of always liked the idea of Harper Lee having written just one novel, one classic – sort of like Ralph Ellison did with “Invisible Man,” which I loved too.  But now with “Watchman” out there, it muddies the waters and presents more of a complex picture of what Harper Lee wrote and how “Mockingbird” came to be, which I guess isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  I too was eager at first to reacquaint myself with an older Scout but sometimes prequels or sequels don’t always turn out to be what’s best.  I’ll always be fond of the 1960 story and characters, but now I’ll just know that they grew out of something else. What about you – do you feel it was too bad that “Watchman” was released when it was?
 

Meanwhile this week I’ve been working my way through Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s 588-page novel “Americanah,” which I’m reading for my book club.  I’m not done with it just yet, but I’m marveling at how readable the novel is and how the story hasn’t sagged for me yet despite how long it is.  I’m usually not a fan of overly lengthy, thick novels so I’m pleasantly surprised by this one. It flows and entertains and keeps me wanting to find out what will happen at the end to the two main characters.  It also offers an interesting commentary on race and class along the way. I plan to finish and review it sometime next week.
 

I did finish the audiobook of Bich Minh Nguyen’s 2015 novel “Pioneer Girl” this week and enjoyed it quite a bit. It’s about an American Vietnamese girl (Lee Lien) who upon finishing her Ph.D. in literature returns home to the  Chicago area for awhile to help out in her immigrant family’s restaurant. But while there, her brother steals their mother’s jewelry and takes off for California, leaving Lee with their mother’s gold leaf brooch that was left behind in their family’s Saigon restaurant years ago by American reporter Rose Wilder Lane, the daughter of author Laura Ingalls Wilder. Soon Lee begins investigating Rose and Laura’s histories and whether the brooch is indeed an heirloom of the famous author’s, whose books were a favorite of Lee’s as a child.
 
It’s neat that the story explores both the Asian American experience of growing up in a strict, hard-working immigrant family in the Midwest, as well as being part literary mystery into the details of Rose and Laura’s lives. In their own ways, Lee and the Wilders are all “pioneer girls,” or at least Lee is drawn to Rose and Laura as being such. Lee’s life with her own tough mother and deceased father alternates chapters of Rose and Laura’s fractured lives. It’s an interesting parallel and one I found quite insightful and engaging.

I hadn’t thought of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “Little House on the Prairie” books in a long time. I had read and liked them as a kid, and sometimes watched the TV show based on the books, but this novel brought them back to me — and left me wondering about Laura and Rose’s collaboration on the books — with Laura as the writer and Rose the editor. Bich Minh Nguyen’s novel makes me want to read “Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography” by Laura Ingalls Wilder with editor Pamela Smith Hill, which came out in 2014 and apparently has a lot of new details into the family’s pioneer and writing lives.

It’s cool when a novel such as Bich Minh Nguyen’s can tell an interesting story about a girl’s immigrant roots and self-discovery and espouse a love of literature at the same time. What’s not to like?! For those who loved the stories of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s this book is especially for you.

Ps. I didn’t realize beforehand that Nguyen was married to fellow novelist Porter Shreve. I had met him many years ago in D.C. where he signed a copy of his debut novel “The Obituary Writer” for me. It’s quite a fun novel as I recall.

What about you — do you have any thoughts about Harper Lee’s legacy, or Adichie’s novel “Americanah,” or Nguyen’s novel “Pioneer Girl” and if so, what are they?

I’ve had a great week visiting old friends and playing tennis in the Virginia/D.C./Maryland area, but I’ve been “on the Go” quite a bit so I haven’t read much of anything this week (other than restaurant menus, LOL) but I look forward to diving more into Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novel “Americanah” on the plane ride home. That’s a book I picked for my book club, so I hope it’s a good one to discuss with others.

Meanwhile last week I finished two slim but interesting novels. The first being Elizabeth Strout’s latest book “My Name Is Lucy Barton,” which like her first novel “Amy and Isabelle” involves a mother-daughter relationship. Strout seemingly loves this dynamic and is awesome at exploring its ties. Over the years, I’ve read all of her novels except her 2006 one “Abide With Me,” which must have slipped past me, though I’m sure I should rectify that.

Her latest one is a melancholy novel narrated by a thirty-something wife, mother, and writer named Lucy, who after an operation spends nine or so weeks in the hospital in the mid-1980s recovering from an infection she gets post-surgery. While there, she is visited for five days by her estranged mother who she hasn’t been in touch with much in many years but still loves dearly. In trying to reconnect, Lucy is flooded with memories from her lonely childhood, growing up in poverty with her parents, sister, and brother outside a small farming town in Illinois, and from her married life since then in New York City.

It’s a book in some ways that feels more like observations or reflections than a full story. You may keep waiting for the story to begin when in fact these memories of her life and interactions with her mother from her hospital bed are what make up the book. Many writers probably couldn’t pull it off, but with Strout there’s various layers going on that drew me in — notably the subtleties of the mother-daughter reconciliation; the fact that Lucy in her married life has risen above her upbringing but is still marked by it; and by how the advice she receives from an author while attending a writer’s workshop pertains to her life.

These things and the fact that Strout is a writer that often hits upon heart and bone when exploring family ties and class — is what makes me pick up her books each time. There’s a truth in her writing. Maybe in some slight ways she’s a bit like author Anne Tyler that way but also different too. Strout’s character Lucy is surely a ways apart from her character Olive Kitteridge, yet both are no strangers to loneliness and sadness. This book though has a different arc and scope than that one — narrower but with a few layers that kept me going.

My second book last week was Nicola Yoon’s very popular 2015 young adult novel “Everything, Everything,” which I listened to as an audiobook. I don’t pick up many YA novels — perhaps my last one was John Green’s “The Fault in Our Stars” or Suzanne Collins’s “Hunger Games” trilogy, but I can see why this one engaged so many readers.

I might be one of the last bloggers to get to Yoon’s book — as it was checked out at the library for months — but for those who haven’t heard the novel is about a whip-smart 18-year-old biracial girl named Madeline who has an immunodeficiency condition and can’t leave her sealed, air-filtered house where she lives with her physician mom and a full-time nurse. But then a boy, Olly, moves in next door and she falls for him (mainly over the internet and through her windowpane) and begins to want to risk her health to be with him in the outside world.

I was pretty entertained by the start of the book. Madeline is a bright and avid book reader, and the story creatively includes in its telling some of her small books reviews, quotes, emails, and instant messages with Olly. Her narration too is pretty upbeat for someone stuck inside house-bound for so many years whose heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing are constantly monitored. Though you can’t help but feel sorry for her since she’s alone a lot without much interaction except for a couple tutors, her nurse, and playing games with her mom at night. That is until she meets Olly, whose world is complicated too because of an abusive father.

As their friendship grows you begin to wonder: what will happen, and if Madeline and Olly will take a risk outside their worlds. The story seems to be building along just fine, but then a major twist happens toward the end, which I didn’t think worked and felt pretty creepy to me. It was like Ick. The twist bummed me and the story never really recovered for me after that, which is too bad. I did like the metaphor or moral of the story which I took away to be that: living an overly protected life can often be worse than the risks, and that it’s better to risk heartbreak then be trapped inside your house by fear. I appreciated that part of story, but just not the twist it used in getting there.

What about you have you read “My Name Is Lucy Barton” or “Everything, Everything” and if so what did you think?

I wish I could say that I have some distant relation to the famous Wright brothers but all I can say is that we share a surname. Still this was good enough for me when I was little when I could pretend these inventors of the airplane and the first successful pilots of powered human flight were of some distant relation to me. Though of course Wilbur and Orville were lifelong bachelors, so they couldn’t exactly be my great grandpa or some such, but still their mother’s married name was actually Susan Wright, so that’s pretty cool. For these and other reasons, I’ve always been curious about these famous Wrights so I’m glad to have plowed through David McCullough’s 2015 book about them.

There’s so many details in the book that I had either forgotten from my grade school days or never knew about the Wright brothers. All I recall was that the Wright brothers owned a bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio, starting in 1892, which was cool of them to begin with, and eventually began experimenting on building a flying machine along the beaches of Kitty Hawk, N.C. First they piloted gliders above the sand dunes and then eventually they equipped their plane with an engine, and made four history-changing flights in Dec. 1903 and more a couple years later, leaving behind some really neat photographs of their flying days there. Voila that’s most of what I knew.

But it’s clear from McCullough’s book that the Wrights were much more impressive than I had thought or had taken for granted. For one thing, as the book makes evident: the brothers were high school dropouts, they had no formal technical training, no financial backers, no government subsidies, and little money of their own. To emulate flight, they watched and studied the wings of birds, read books, and made things from scratch. They were industrious, brilliant, and persistent to the core; they worked on their projects from sun up to sun down, using the little profit from their bike store to buy supplies. Almost six years older Wilbur was their leader, but both brothers worked, lived, and spent all their time together. Holy smokes in comparison to the Wrights, most of us seem pretty darn lazy.

I guess I didn’t realize that after their flights in 1903 and more in 1905 that the brothers accomplishments were quite overlooked or ignored, especially by the U.S. government, which showed little to no interest in their invention. Most couldn’t believe their machine could actually fly, and in France as in other places they were accused of bluffing. They were ridiculed to a great extent for quite awhile. Then came the official trials where Wilbur went to France to demonstrate their Flyer and Orville flew another at Fort Myers in Virginia. At each place they were successful, setting flying records and wowing crowds with their planes. But during one flight Orville crashed and broke various bones, and a passenger onboard was killed. His sister Katharine, a teacher, would spend many months nursing Orville back to health.

Who knew? And who knew: they made various flights in Europe in 1909, spent so many hours in the air, and that Wilbur flew over the ocean liner the RMS Lusitania in New York harbor, circled the Statue of Liberty, and continued up the Hudson River to Grant’s tomb and back. Moreover who knew their family was so close-knit (though their mother died when they were young) and that both Katharine and their preacher father would fly as passengers on their plane on at least one occasion, and that they would all continue to live together in Ohio when they weren’t traveling. Katharine didn’t marry till she was 58! (Apparently Orville stopped talking to her after that. He must have wanted her to remain unmarried like they did as bachelors, or some such nonsense.) Wilbur tragically died so early in 1912 at age 45 from typhoid fever. Curiously the book doesn’t dwell or elaborate on how that affected Orville who outlived him for another 36 years! The book also doesn’t go into a lot about the lawsuits that the Wrights were involved in over patents, their accomplishments, and planes. It merely mentions that aspect.

All in all McCullough’s book was enlightening in its details. I never realized how much the brothers overcame in doing what they did, and how much work went into it. How patient they seemed with the public. This book paints the Wright brothers not as two guys out for fame or glory but rather as two brothers wanting acceptance for what was rightfully theirs — for something they had done. One caveat I had with the book is that although it follows their story chronically with many facts and interesting details, sometimes I wished it breathed more life into them. It often quotes the brothers’ letters but still I felt a bit distanced from the Wrights, like they were cut-outs. Sure they could be enigmatic, modest, and shy but something seemed a bit missing in McCullough’s account. I guess it goes to show we often can not fully know such iconic historical figures.

Meanwhile this past week I finished British author Sarah Waters’s 2014 novel “The Paying Guests” on audiobook after a couple of friends had told me about its wonderful narration by actress Juliet Stevenson. They weren’t kidding! Stevenson expertly breathes life into each character and Sarah Waters’s storytelling is masterful in this absorbing post-Edwardian tale. I know the novel made positive waves when it came out a couple of years ago but for whatever reason I hadn’t taken the plunge till just now. And boy, did it transport me. I was caught up in the story’s setting of a big house in 1920s London that had seen better days, in which a widower (bereft of her sons and servants) and her 26-year-old spinster daughter take in a married couple as lodgers. In time an illicit love affair begins and eventually a crime (or accident?) happens which changes everything.

It’s an intense love story and period drama (Sarah Waters’s most potent novel so far!) that seems to hit its dialogue, descriptions, and interactions just right. Many of Waters’s novels spotlight lesbian protagonists and this one is no different — for those who need a warning. It’s a book with plenty of atmosphere, high anxiety, and suspense, but my only criticism is that it goes on far too long. Towards the end, the investigation into the crime and trial goes repetitively round and round a bit too much. (The audiobook is 21.5 hours long, which I could have listened to on a drive perhaps from here to Vegas.) I only wish the novel had been shorter and tauter, but still it’s a tale whose characters and haunting predicament get into one’s bones and one that I won’t soon forget. Bravo to the author.

What about you — have you read “The Wright Brothers” or “The Paying Guests” and if so, what did you think?

I’m off to a pretty good start in 2016, recently finishing Mary Lawson’s 2002 novel “Crow Lake” followed by Paula Hawkins’ runaway 2015 bestseller “The Girl on the Train” and completing the audiobook of Elisabeth Elo’s 2014 mystery-suspense novel “North of Boston.” All of them were quite decent in their different genres.

Mary Lawson’s 2002 debut novel “Crow Lake” was given to me by my S-I-L (sister-in-law) who said it had been one of her book club’s favorite reads of all time. In fact my book club — before I joined the group — liked it a lot too. Apparently it’s a universally popular book-club choice (if you’re in need of one), especially in Canada. And now I can see why.

It’s about four kids living in a remote farming community along a lake in northern Ontario, Canada, who struggle to stay together after their parents die in a tragic accident. The two teenage boys try to cope, sacrificing to make ends meet to raise their two younger sisters. One of the girls, the narrator, idolizes one of her older brothers who passes along to her a passion for the natural world and the pond beyond their house, inspiring her later educational and career pursuits, but eventually things come between them and she must fight her disappointment over her brother’s fate.

It’s a poignant, quiet story about family dynamics, sibling rivalry, and sacrifice in which the northern landscape and poverty are prominent. The girl’s narration cuts to the bones over her thoughts looking back over her childhood, her family’s struggles, and where she came from. The farming aspect and tone slightly reminded me of John Williams’s novel “Stoner,” which I just read last year, but “Crow Lake” is more about the relations between siblings that can affect one forever. It was published apparently when the author was in her mid-50s and is a bit biographical. I admired its rich authenticity and look forward to reading Mary Lawson’s other two novels sometime.

As for Paula Hawkins’ 2015 psychological thriller “The Girl on the Train,” everyone knows what that one’s about, right? The runaway bestseller has sold four million copies in the U.S. and more than 6.5 million globally. I’m surely the last blogger to read it. I put it off for as long as I could because I wasn’t really looking for another “Gone Girl” type of book, but now I’m glad to have finally read it for my book group, which plans to discuss it soon.

It’s a quick page-turner no doubt and pretty well constructed. I only wanted to throttle the main character Rachel Watson a few dozen times. She’s purposely flawed to the max and continually getting involved where she doesn’t belong. She’s annoying too. But then the character of Meagan seems a bit worse. She’s morally devoid. And Anna is no great shakes either. All of the characters are pretty inept or contemptible (guilty of something), but I guess that’s what makes the book’s motive and killer more up for grabs.

The big reveal though at the end sort of petered out for me. I don’t know what I was expecting but I guess I was expecting something else or a bit more. Regardless I’ll hand it to the author for coming up with Rachel — the sad sack alcoholic who regularly blacks out — as a possible witness and suspect. Is Emily Blunt really going to play Rachel for the movie, which is due out in October? She’s seemingly so sensible! For this character, she’ll have to forswear sobriety (and her looks?) in 2016. I’m not sure whether I liked “Gone Girl” or “The Girl on the Train” better for this genre. “Gone Girl” was crazier and more diabolical but perhaps “Train” more rooted in everyday realities (?) — which one did you like better?

Lastly Elisabeth Elo’s 2014 crime suspense novel “North of Boston” made for a pretty good audiobook listen this past week. I liked the main character Pirio Kasparov, a sharp-witted sarcastic Boston girl who’s involved in a collision at sea when the fishing boat she’s on is rammed in the fog by a freighter. She somehow survives four hours in the water before being rescued, but her friend, the boat’s owner is killed. In time she becomes suspicious that the boat’s sinking and her friend’s death were no accident. With the help of a journalist, she begins unraveling a lethal plot involving the whaling grounds off Baffin Island.

Like much crime or suspense fiction — I often get weary mid-way through as the plot’s intricacies unfold and I find parts quite unbelievable, which I did a bit with “North of Boston.” It reminded me a bit of a Nelson DeMille novel with more to it. It’s not exactly my favorite genre but nonetheless these types of books often make good audios and this one did as well. Marguerite Gavin does an excellent job of narrating it. The sharp-witted lead character Pirio (of Russian descent) and the setting of Boston and northern whaling waters made the book worthwhile for me, and it had enough action to keep the pace flowing. If the author continues with Pirio for her next book, I plan to tune in again.

What about you — have you read either “Crow Lake,” “The Girl on the Train” or “North of Boston” — and if so what did you think?

Hello. Just a quick post as we are still visiting family in Southern California and there’s no time to be on the computer or blog … in this land of milk and honey. I hope everyone had a lovely holiday break and are continuing their festivities with a very happy New Year’s.

Last week I finished F.Scott Fitzgerald’s 1934 novel “Tender Is the Night,” which I was reading with Ti over at Book Chatter. Thanks Ti, I’m glad to make it through this famous book, which was Fitzgerald’s last completed novel and apparently his most autobiographical. Interestingly, Fitzgerald considered the novel to be his greatest work. As he wrote to a friend: “If you liked The Great Gatsby, for God’s sake read this. Gatsby was a tour de force but this is a confession of faith.”

For those unfamiliar with it, “Tender Is the Night” tells the story of a glamorous American couple living at a villa in the French Riviera in the late 1920s — Dick and Nicole Diver whose marriage over time hits the rocks. Dick is this brilliant guy, a promising psychiatrist who makes the fatal choice of marrying one of his patients; Nicole is beautiful and wealthy but also mentally unstable. She’s left a treatment facility but still has episodes, and Dick is floundering with work and feels trapped by Nicole’s wealth into a lifestyle that is not his own. Into this comes the hot young actress Rosemary Hoyt who is enamored by Dick and whom he can’t resist. Oh sorry day! What once seemed so idyllic and glamorous — Dick and Nicole’s life together (along with their two kids) — turns out to be a recipe for demise.

I wanted to like “Tender Is the Night” as much as Fitzgerald’s novel “The Great Gatsby,” but alas, I struggled through parts of it and found it uneven and episodic. There were sections that I thought were brilliantly written and other parts that I found quite tedious. I had trouble getting into and sticking with the story, which starts with an array of expatriates staying and partying at a hotel along the beach.

It’s slow-going at first, but luckily “Tender Is the Night” picked up for me half way through and towards the end as I wanted to find out how Dick and Nicole’s lives would play out — if they would they stay together, or if they would go their separate ways — and what would become of the fling with Rosemary. I needed to see if the characters would find happiness so I stuck with it and plunged further on toward its final dark horizon.

It wasn’t exactly easy reading, but I found the novel quite interesting in how it apparently mirrored Fitzgerald’s own life at the time — with his mentally ill wife Zelda, his troubles with alcohol, and the real-life affair he carried on with a teenage actress. The social milieu the novel describes of the times is also rather fascinating. It includes little details about expats and different nationalities, about rich and poor, blacks, gays, women and children — and marriage. You definitely get a glimpse into Fitzgerald’s 1920’s world and what was going through his mind during the last stages of his life — and I, for one, couldn’t pass that up. He’s too intriguing and talented a figure in literary history to miss reading, even if it’s not my favorite work of his — the story of the Divers is illuminating.

Meanwhile, I listened to Garth Stein’s 2014 novel “A Sudden Light” on audiobook this past week and quite enjoyed it. A multi-generational tale set in the Pacific Northwest, it’s about a 14-year-old-boy (Trevor) who comes to unravel the mysteries of his father’s rich timber baron family when he visits their decaying old mansion — Riddell House — for the first time in the summer of 1990. Trevor accompanies his father who’s supposed to resolve a family dispute over what to do with the large Northwest estate.

Part coming of age tale, part historical logging expose, and part mansion-ghost story, this family drama held my interest till the very end. It has a few twists along the way and an ending that crashes with a crescendo. I guess I liked it just as well as Stein’s prior novel “The Art of Racing in the Rain” and found it more intricate and slightly more interesting than the first in its larger scope. Like “Racing in the Rain,” the narration is easy and lured me in. Kudos to Seth Numrich for a terrific job in his narration of the audiobook.


 “A Sudden Light” is one of those novels you can’t say too much about because it will give it away. Suffice it to say, I liked hanging out with the book’s protagonist, Trevor, who’s a bit of a truth and mystery seeker and is as determined as the boy detective in the series Encyclopedia Brown. By the end, he gets to the heart of the mysteries of his timber baron family and what’s behind the selling of the mansion — and it’s not exactly pretty. Stein is an entertaining author, and I look forward to seeing what he writes next.

What about you — have you read “A Sudden Light” or “Tender Is the Night” and if so, what did you think?