LOVING DAY

Shop Indie Bookstores


Loving Day, Mat Johnson, Spiegel & Grau, 2015, 287 pp

Summary from Goodreads: "In the ghetto there is a mansion, and it is my father's house."

Warren Duffy has returned to America for all the worst reasons: His marriage to a beautiful Welsh woman has come apart; his comics shop in Cardiff has failed; and his Irish American father has died, bequeathing to Warren his last possession, a roofless, half-renovated mansion in the heart of black Philadelphia. On his first night in his new home, Warren spies two figures outside in the grass. When he screws up the nerve to confront them, they disappear. The next day he encounters ghosts of a different kind: In the face of a teenage girl he meets at a comics convention he sees the mingled features of his white father and his black mother, both now dead. The girl, Tal, is his daughter, and she’s been raised to think she’s white.

Spinning from these revelations, Warren sets off to remake his life with a reluctant daughter he’s never known, in a haunted house with a history he knows too well. In their search for a new life, he and Tal struggle with ghosts, fall in with a utopian mixed-race cult, and ignite a riot on Loving Day, the unsung holiday for interracial lovers. 

My Review:

If ever there was a year to read novels about racial issues in America, this would be it. So I am. I read The Sellout in March; Homegoing in July, and now Loving Day.

Set in Philadelphia and in some ways similar to The Sellout, this one is more focused on the mixed race experience. Of course, if we didn't suffer so severely from racism in this country, being racially mixed would not be a problem.

Mat Johnson is a versatile writer who can move effortlessly between humor and serious heartfelt stuff. Loving Day mostly pokes fun at the issues it raises but this author is not as relentless in his satire as was Paul Beatty in The Sellout.

Warren Duffy is an Irish/African American mix who does not look black. He is also a less than successful comic/graphic novel artist and recently divorced from his Welsh wife. His Irish father has died and left him a rundown mansion, once a historic landmark, that now lies in the heart of Philadelphia's ghetto.

He returns to the City of Brotherly Love with plans to complete the renovation his father started and sell the house, because naturally he is nearly broke. One thing you learn pretty early on is that planning is not Warren's strong suit. Soon enough he learns he has a half-Jewish teenage daughter he never knew he had. The disappointing wreckage of his life so far begins trending toward disaster.

As this confused guy decides he should be a responsible father to Tal, ensuring she learns about her black heritage and gets an education, he changes the plan to burning down the house and collecting the insurance. If you read the book, you will find out how that works out for him.

The plot takes off on the first page and never sags. However it is the nuanced particulars of his mixed race characters (the Sunflowers, the One-droppers, the Oreos, the multiracial humanists, and the militants) that give this novel depth as well as intelligence.

It also has ghosts! 

(Loving Day has just come out in paperback and is available by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

AURA

Shop Indie Bookstores


Aura, Carlos Fuentes, Farrar Straus and Giroux, 1962, 38 pp

Summary from Goodreads: Felipe Montero is employed in the house of an aged widow to edit her deceased husband's memoirs. There Felipe meets her beautiful green-eyed niece, Aura. His passion for Aura and his gradual discovery of the true relationship between the young woman and her aunt propel the story to its extraordinary conclusion. 

My Review: I loved this novella by an author I have also come to love. I read it on my Nook, as it is not currently in print except for the bilingual edition pictured above. At first it seemed a rip off to have to pay $9.94 for such a slim volume. About three pages in I did not care.

Written like a fable, it took me into a strange dreamlike story involving a starving writer, an old woman, the green-eyed Aura and a crumbling old house.

It is spooky. It is somewhat supernatural. It is almost a deal-with-the-devil tale. Not quite like anything else I have read by Fuentes but utterly enchanting.

THE GIRLS

Shop Indie Bookstores



The Girls, Emma Cline, Random House, 2016, 355 pp

Summary from Goodreads: Northern California, during the violent end of the 1960s. At the start of summer, a lonely and thoughtful teenager, Evie Boyd, sees a group of girls in the park, and is immediately caught by their freedom, their careless dress, their dangerous aura of abandon. Soon, Evie is in thrall to Suzanne, a mesmerizing older girl, and is drawn into the circle of a soon-to-be infamous cult and the man who is its charismatic leader. Hidden in the hills, their sprawling ranch is eerie and run down, but to Evie, it is exotic, thrilling, charged—a place where she feels desperate to be accepted. As she spends more time away from her mother and the rhythms of her daily life, and as her obsession with Suzanne intensifies, Evie does not realize she is coming closer and closer to unthinkable violence, and to that moment in a girl’s life when everything can go horribly wrong. 

My Review:

I was on the fence about reading this one. Would it live up to the hype? But I like to read novels set in the 1960s, (as well as ones written then), even if the author was not born yet when the story took place. So I broke down.

In the summer of 1969, my new husband and I turned our honeymoon into a cross-country road trip, camping our way from Ann Arbor, MI, to the West Coast. It was part homage to Jack Kerouac, part cliche (many midwestern kids our age made the trek west in those years), and part career choice.

Our goal was San Francisco where we intended to join a group of hippies who were starting a Free School in the Mission District. We arrived in the city just after the Manson murders had occurred and found that several of the parents involved in the Free School were junkies! In response to both I freaked out and demanded that we return to Ann Arbor. To this day, I have been afraid to read Helter Skelter. 

Emma Cline has done her research and she can write, though I found her style a little bit pretentious. I felt she tried to be literary and hip at the same time which did not always work for me.

What did work was her main character, Evie. Just out of ninth grade, on the cusp of turning 15, from a broken home, Evie is equal parts bored and horny. I remember that state well. When she meets Suzanne in a park that summer, she is immediately infatuated as only a young teen can be when meeting a slightly older, worldly, and mysterious girl. Eventually she is invited to the fictional hippy cult residence, created by Cline as a stand-in for the infamous Manson conclave.

They called it The Ranch and that whole scene worked for me too because I spent years hanging out with such people. I wasn't quite as wild as Evie but I was just as innocent.

Though Evie was not present when the murders were committed, her life is irrevocably changed. The author does an excellent job contrasting Evie's later adult life with that summer. Many of us were involved with happenings in the late 1960s that virtually poisoned the rest of our lives even while the goals and hopes of the times also blessed us with a unique view of life.

My favorite novel about this period is Dana Spiotta's Eat the Document. I don't think The Girls lives up to the greatness Spiotta created in her novel, but it is a worthy addition to the literature. As David Crosby said somewhere, "We were right about the peace and love, but we were wrong about the drugs."

I think I can read Helter Skelter now.

(The Girls is available in various formats by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

LETTING GO

Shop Indie Bookstores


Letting Go, Philip Roth, Random House, 1962, 630 pp

Summary from Goodreads: Newly discharged from the Korean War army, reeling from his mother's recent death, freed from old attachments and hungrily seeking others, Gabe Wallach is drawn to Paul Herz, a fellow graduate student in literature, and to Libby, Paul's moody, intense wife. Gabe's desire to be connected to the ordered "world of feeling" that he finds in books is first tested vicariously by the anarchy of the Herzes' struggles with responsible adulthood and then by his own eager love affairs. Driven by the desire to live seriously and act generously, Gabe meets an impassable test in the person of Martha Reganhart, a spirited, outspoken, divorced mother of two, a formidable woman who, according to critic James Atlas, is masterfully portrayed with "depth and resonance." 

My Review:

This was the fifth of books published in 1962 I read in August. I had set out to read 10 but a couple were as long as two or three books put together including this one. I enjoyed every page and found it easy to read. Letting Go was Roth's first novel, preceded by Goodbye Columbus (a novella and story collection.)

I know there is a contingent of readers who balk at reading novels by "old white men" and I sort of get it. But the fact is these old white men are still read because they could write well.

In Letting Go we again get a picture of life in 1950s America. This novel is from the perspective of two non-practicing Jewish men in their 20s and 30s who are carrying the weight of their upbringings including the expectations of their parents, and are perhaps the first generation from Jewish immigrant families to be moving into social assimilation in what was a deeply antisemitic society.

Gabe Wallach is a comfortably well off young man, teaching English on the faculty of the University of Chicago, though he has enough money left to him by his mother that he would not really need to work. He feels guilty about his relative good fortune, guilty about not wanting to spend much time with his aging father back in New York City, guilty about being attracted to the wife of his colleague Paul Herz; guilt is his driving force. Because of that, he keeps getting himself into ill-advised situations.

Paul Herz, another tormented character, is a Jew who married a Christian woman, though neither of them are religious in the least. Both sets of their parents cut off all support and connection due to the interfaith marriage. The couple is struggling financially and emotionally so Gabe tries to help them with devastating results.

I was reminded of Stoner by John Williams, especially by Paul's wife Libby, who in her own way is as neurotic as Stoner's wife was. Letting Go however has quite a bit more humor in between the pathos.

My favorite character is Martha Reganhart, the woman Gabe considers as a prospective wife. She is by far the strongest person in the story. While Roth is often charged with misogyny, I would say that he presents believable female characters from the viewpoint of a man who is clearly trying to figure them out.

All in all, one of the best novels I have read from 1962. 

(Letting Go is available in paperback by special order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

IN EVIL HOUR

Shop Indie Bookstores


In Evil Hour, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Harper & Row, originally published in Spain by Premio Literario Esso in 1962, (translated from the Spanish by Gregory Rabassa), 183 pp

Summary from Goodreads: Written just before One Hundred Years of Solitude, this fascinating novel of a Colombian river town possessed by evil points to the author's later flowering and greatness. 

My Review:

Book # 4 of those read from my 1962 list in August. Most of the time I read for pleasure and most of the books I read do give me pleasure. Sometimes I read because of learning goals I have set for myself. That second reason is why I read this one.

The great and wonderful Gabriel Garcia Marquez's first novel was not great or wonderful to me. If I hadn't already read and loved One Hundred Years of Solitude as well as Love in the Time of Cholera, this short one might have put me off the author for good. But in the interest of watching a great author develop it was a worthwhile read.

Originally published in Spain in 1962 while the writer was living in Paris, there is some lore associated with it. His first title was Este Pueblo de Mierda (This Town of Shit). He disowned the first version, rewrote it, and garnered a literary prize for La Mala Hora in his native Colombia.

In any case, I had a hard time with it. I could tell it was political in nature, a send-up of various troubles with the government of Colombia and its repressive policies in the 1950s. (In his memoir, Living to Tell the Tale, I learned that as a student Garcia Marquez was involved with radical politics.)

I found the story hard to follow even though I have read early novels by Jorge Amado that deal with similar periods in Brazil. Perhaps the difference is that Amado wrote "social realism" while Garcia Marquez preferred "magical realism." After I wrote that last sentence, I thought that possibly in this first novel, Garcia Marquez was trying to do social realism.

He does create some characters that show promise of better things to come, including a number of corrupt individuals. The plot involves attempts by the town mayor to put a stop to those who are posting broadsheets around town revealing the secrets of it inhabitants. There are both humor and intrigue.

Still, I didn't figure out the point of the story until the last few pages. It was a slog despite its short length. One Hundred Years of Solitude came just five years later and I look forward to rereading as it has been 17 years since I first encountered and loved it.

(In Evil Hour is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

THE CRADLE

Shop Indie Bookstores


The Cradle, Patrick Somerville, Little Brown and Company, 2009, 200 pp

Summary from Goodreads: Marissa is expecting her first child and fixated on securing the same cradle she was once rocked in for her own baby. But her mother, Caroline, disappeared when Marissa was a teenager, and the treasured cradle mysteriously vanished shortly thereafter. Marissa's husband, Matthew, kindly agrees to try to track down the cradle, which naturally means finding Caroline as well.

In another family, Adam has just joined the Marines and is off to Iraq. His mother, Renee, is terrified of losing him, and furious at both Adam for enlisting and her husband for being so mild-mannered about it all. To further complicate matters, Renee is troubled by the resurfacing of secrets she buried long ago: the memory of her first love, killed in Vietnam, and the son she gave up at birth.

Matt's search for the cradle takes him through the Midwest, and provides an introduction to a host of oddball characters who've been part of Caroline's life in the intervening years. When he finds the cradle, he also finds an unloved little boy, who will one day reunite a family adrift. A lovely debut novel, The Cradle is an astonishingly spare tale of feeling lost in the world, and the simple, momentous acts of love that bring people home.  

My Review:

I loved this short and bittersweet novel. A young man, Matthew, and his wife, Marissa, are expecting their first child. I knew I was going to like Matthew when he thinks that he knows his wife is a little bit crazy but he loves her anyway.

Marissa is the daughter of a mother who took off. Matt is virtually an orphan because his mother gave him up at birth. Something about all this makes it understandable that Marissa asks him to find the cradle in which she slept as a baby and that Matt agrees to try.

Off he goes on a quest for said cradle with only an address for the aunt Marissa doesn't know she has. Her dad, Glen, a guy who hangs out with them and is prone to tearing up, gave that address to Matt. 

The Cradle is a first novel filled with that wonderful innocence a first novel sometimes has. Patrick Somerville shows himself already a master of character and of the odd detail that places the reader right in the location and action of the story.

Most of the characters are quirky, some in humorous ways and some who are clearly insane. Then there is the female children's author who writes poetry on the side and has a near breakdown when her son enlists to go fight in Iraq. She turns out to be Matt's birth mother.

As Matthew continues his search he meets all of Marissa's missing relatives including a half brother she also never knew of. Not one of these people is even remotely normal. Every time he decides he is done and can go home again, he finds another loose end he feels he must tie up. I truly began to worry something awful was going to prevent him from ever making it back to Marissa.

There is however a happy ending, though not without its own sorrows. That is why I call the novel bittersweet.

In my Bookie Babes reading group, we take turns compiling a list of books to be voted on for our next read. On my last turn, I decided to make a list composed of novels set in the hometowns of each member. One of those towns was Milwaukee where The Cradle is set. I discovered it while searching for novels set in Milwaukee, learning that not many are. Otherwise we may have never heard of this gem. Patrick Somerville has three other novels. I will be reading them.

(The Cradle is available in hardcover or paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

GIDEON'S FIRE

Shop Indie Bookstores


Gideon's Fire, J J Marric (pen name of John Creasy), Harper, 1960, 208 pp

Another of the five books read from my 1962 list in August was this Scotland Yard mystery, winner of the 1962 Edgar Award. J J Marric was a pen name used by John Creasy, who was so prolific that he wrote under 18 different pseudonyms and published over 600 mysteries! Gideon's Fire is the eighth of 22 books in his Gideon Series.

George Gideon is the Commander of the Criminal Investigation Department at Scotland Yard. He has a wife and four children, all of whom he loves dearly and who also feature in the book, but it is his job that he devotes himself to and that defines him. Conscientious, honest, a good leader, but perhaps a bit overly hands-on with the cases.

He arrives at work an unusual 30 minutes late to learn that a terrible fire the previous night had killed an entire family, leaving many other tenants burned and in shock after their whole tenement building was consumed. Adding in the rape/murder of a 14-year-old girl and two other time sensitive investigations, the man has his hands full.

As the story progresses, the fire turns out to be one of many, probably set by a psychotic arsonist. One of the murder cases begins to look like the work of a serial killer. In fact, the plot blows up like a raging fire. By the third chapter the reader is living all the stress right along with Gideon.

Though it is a rather standard police procedural, Gideon's Fire has a couple unusual features. The criminals in each case are included as characters with their own actions and thoughts covered by the same third person narrator. Thus the reader gets the story from both sides, adding even more tension.

In the end the Yard's Criminal Investigation Department prevails but there are deaths and disasters along the way. Gideon feels bad about those, as any good law enforcement professional would. In fact, the author makes you feel bad too as he takes you into Gideon's mind.

Another different feature though is that this man is not cynical, he is not being beaten down by his job or any of his superiors or even by the prevalence of crime in the vast city of London. He knows what the odds are, he knows he is competent, and he stays on top of the game. Refreshing I thought.

(Gideon's Fire is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

ALL THE UGLY AND WONDERFUL THINGS

Shop Indie Bookstores


All the Ugly and Wonderful Things, Bryn Greenwood, Thomas Dunne Books, 2016, 352 pp

Summary from Goodreads: As the daughter of a meth dealer, Wavy knows not to trust people, not even her own parents. Struggling to raise her little brother, eight-year-old Wavy is the only responsible "adult" around. She finds peace in the starry Midwestern night sky above the fields behind her house. One night everything changes when she witnesses one of her father's thugs, Kellen, a tattooed ex-con with a heart of gold, wreck his motorcycle. What follows is a powerful and shocking love story between two unlikely people that asks tough questions, reminding us of all the ugly and wonderful things that life has to offer. 

My Review: (Originally published at Litbreak.)

 

Wavonna Quinn, known as Wavy, born in the backseat of a car to drug addicted and drug dealing parents, is the heroine of Bryn Greenwood’s third novel. That she fell in love at the age of eight with a man who was twenty and pursued him through years of trial and trouble is the (some would say) inappropriate subject of a novel so full of ugly and wonderful things. The truth is the inappropriate people in Wavy’s life were her parents and while doing the best she could, she found the perfect person for herself.

Besides being a druggy, her mother also suffered from a form of OCD that included a horror of germs. Wavy did not eat, except in solitude where no one could watch her, she could keep a place clean, and due to other traumatic times with mom, she did not talk. The celestial bodies were her company and she knew all the constellations by heart from a young age. Whenever her parents got violent with each other, which happened regularly, she mostly kept her little brother from harm.

The love of her life, Joe Kellen, is no prince charming. He’s been in prison, he is an enforcer for Wavy’s father, meaning he has to do what he has to do when a deal goes off the rails, he is part Native American with no living parents, and he comes riding into Wavy’s life crashing his motorcycle.

If you haven’t heard of the novel yet (that in itself would hardly be believable because it is a hot summer release), I think you are getting the picture. Except you won’t have the essence of it until you read it. Yes, Wavy’s life was trash, yes it is a lot to swallow, but it is in the telling that you see how such a thing could happen and not be ugly but wonderful.

Bryn Greenwood was born and raised in Kansas. There was drug addiction in her family. She is living proof that such a beginning does not rule out making a good life. Her first two novels, published by an indie press, were notice to me that here was a unique kind of novelist. She does not sugar coat anything but moves through her plots and creates her characters with huge amounts of humanity because she looks beneath the surface. Though she has said in interviews that Wavy’s story is not autobiographical, she’s got the credibility and she also can write books that you want to read in one sitting.

Having worked as a bookseller, being a member of several reading groups, and having read thousands of book reviews, I know that people read novels for all different kinds of reasons. Some readers just don’t like anything that would upset them or offend what they think is right or moral. Such a reader would not like this one. But I have one question and would be happy to get feedback on it.

In light of what seems to be a never-ending Presidential election year, with all its vitriol, hatred, conflict, and sensationalism, I have come to realize that the country I thought I was living in is not the country I am living in. I know that democracy is hard to practice but it seems to me that possibly we Americans have been just a tad delusional about our country. If we really are one nation (under God or not), indivisible, with liberty and justice for all, wouldn’t it be a good idea to know at least a little about all our citizens? How they live, what they deal with day by day, and who these many varied people are.

For sure drug dealers, child abusers, murderers, and thieves are not admirable citizens. Wavy’s mother and her sister, Wavy’s aunt, came from the same family and circumstances but grew up to live lives that were polar opposites. We don’t actually know how that happens but it does, all the time. Wavy’s intelligence and courage bring her through every terrible thing as also happens perhaps more times than we realize. When Kellen finds Wavy to be a person he can truly protect and love, he still has to go through unthinkable anguish to reconcile what his self worth requires. Even if I hadn’t loved the novel, which I did in a huge way, I think I could have learned some new ways of looking at the problems confronting Americans every day.

Of course, I would never dream of forcing someone to read something they did not want to read. I just wish everyone would read All the Ugly and Wonderful Things.

Bryn Greenwood's earlier novels:

Last Will 

Lie Lay Lain

(All the Ugly and Wonderful Things is available by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

A SHADE OF DIFFERENCE

Shop Indie Bookstores


A Shade of Difference, Allen Drury, Doubleday, 1962, 773 pp

Summary from Goodreads: The sequel to the Pulitzer Prize winning bestseller Advise and Consent. From Allen Drury, the 20th Century grand master of political fiction, a novel of the United Nations and the racial friction that could spark a worldwide powderkeg. International tensions rise as ambassadors and politicians scheme, using the independence of a small African nation as the focal point for hidden agendas. A cascade of events begun in the General Assembly Hall of the United Nations could lead to the weakening of the United States, the loss of the Panama Canal, and a possible civil war. 

My Review:

This endless tome was the #3 bestseller in 1962. This review is the second installment of the 1962 reading challenge I set for myself in August. (For background on why 1962, see My Big Fat Reading Project.) Finishing the novel also marked the completion of my list of Top Ten Bestsellers for that year. 

I read Drury's first novel, Advise and Consent, a couple years ago. That one was the #1 bestseller of 1960 and also won the Pulitzer Prize. In any case, I knew what I was getting into this time.

Drury practically invented the Washington, DC, political novel genre, though thankfully his successors have not written in such wordy and dense prose. A Shade of Difference adds the United Nations to the mix and, as foreshadowed by the title, has racism as the underlying theme, making it a timely read. It is set during a year when Civil Rights was a contentious issue in America and when many African nations were seeking independence from colonial masters. 

Since you might decide to read the book, I don't want to waste your time with a wordy and dense review. Believe me, you will need that time.

Of note to me was the tension Drury built between individuals who believed that change takes time and is best done within the systems of government as opposed to those who advocated force and violence to either achieve change or prevent it. One of the moderate characters is a Black member of the House of Representatives.

I was also interested in the author's portrayal of the United Nations. That made me want to learn more about both its history and current state. Any suggestions for good books, non-fiction or novels, about the UN would be welcome.

One other thing: both of Drury's novels were written a few years before their timescapes, so all the characters are fictional, including the POTUS. I find that somewhat disorienting and have to make myself stop trying to relate the novels to actual historical events. It is eerie though how prescient he was.

In 1962 I was beginning my sophomore year in high school. Though I was mostly interested in boys, it was a time when I began to be aware of political issues, especially Civil Rights. Reading books from the 1960s that deal with what was going on, particularly behind the scenes in government, is compelling and is also filling in gaps for me, showing me the issues that have loomed so large in my adult life.

SEPTEMBER READING GROUP UPDATE

I am beyond excited about what my groups are reading this month. Aside from LaRose, which I have already read and reviewed but am looking forward to discussing with real live people, all the rest are books high up on my TBR lists. I want to read all of them. Here goes:


Laura's Group:

Shop Indie Bookstores

Tina's Group:

Shop Indie Bookstores  

One Book at a Time:

Shop Indie Bookstores

Bookie Babes:

Shop Indie Bookstores

Tiny Book Club:

Shop Indie Bookstores

Have you read or discussed any of these books? If you are in a reading group, what are you discussing in September? 

 

 

BOOKS READ IN AUGUST

My image this month is a photo of my own. That weird lump on the tree is a swarm of bees that visited us for three days in August. We studied up and learned that honeybees swarm when their hive is compromised in some way. They bring the Queen, keeping her in the center of the swarm while the workers search for a new location. They have only three days worth of food in their bellies, so the pressure is on. True to form, exactly three days later the swarm was gone and we knew they had founded a new hive. It was the most exciting thing that happened all month!

I made a plan for my August reading that was to include 10 books from the 1962 list of My Big Fat Reading Project. Well, I read 5 of those. It was actually kind of great to spend hours out of the present madness of 2016, but I also feel that despite how much different life seems now, not that much has changed politically, socially, or otherwise for us humans. Well, except for climate change and media.

Stats: 8 books read (two were incredibly long), 8 fiction, 0 written by women (oh boy, that explains a lot), 1 mystery, 2 thrillers, 5 from 1962.

Shop Indie Bookstores



Shop Indie Bookstores

 
Shop Indie Bookstores



Shop Indie Bookstores



Shop Indie Bookstores



Shop Indie Bookstores



Shop Indie Bookstores

How did your reading go in August? Is there anything I missed and must read now! 

GINGER, YOU'RE BARMY

Ginger, You're Barmy, David Lodge, MacGibbon and Kee, 1962, 215 pp

 

 

Summary from Goodreads: Conscription has made Jonathan Browne and Mike 'Ginger' Brady prisoners of the British Army. But reckless, impulsive Mike and pragmatic Jonathan adopt radically different attitudes to this. Then one day Mike goes too far, with consequences that threaten to overturn Jonathan's cultivated detachment from the idiocies of military life.

 

 

My review:

My plan for August was to read primarily books from the 1962 reading list of My Big Fat Reading Project. This was the book with which I began said marathon.

 

When I was formulating that Big Fat Project back in 2002 (have I really been working on this for 14 years already?) I consulted a 1998 book, The Reading List: Contemporary Fiction, a compilation of 110 authors who were both commercially and critically acclaimed at the time. That is how I learned about David Lodge, British novelist, professor, and critic.

 

Between 1960 and 2011, he published 15 novels and this one is his second. It is a bit better than his first (The Picturegoers.) I decided after finishing it, there is benefit in reading him because his novels give a glimpse into middle-class British life in the odd and boring decade that was the 1950s. It was a time that included the last gasps of the British Empire as well as the final years of the dominance of the aristocracy.

 

Jonathan, the main character, is relaying the incidents of his time in the National Service, a postwar development meant to keep the British military going during peacetime. All males were required to put in two years of training and busywork as soldiers.

 

Conscripted just after his college graduation, Jonathan ran into an acquaintance from school on the train to his first day of basic training. Mike carries the nickname Ginger because of his Irish red hair. They form a friendship just because when you are ripped out of your life by something as soul killing as the army, you've got to have a buddy. 

 

Although Jonathan is a quiet, methodical and self-centered type, he becomes strangely devoted to the anti-authoritarian Ginger. However, he also manages to steal the guy's girlfriend and to figure out how to get around the inconveniences of National Service while Ginger butts up against the whole setup and lands in terrible trouble.

 

I have read plenty of books about American servicemen during this reading project and only a few about their British counterparts. While the United States was having a boom in the 1950s, England was still mostly in tatters from the war. Much of the story in Ginger, You're Barmy is spent on tales of army life with its drilling, regulations, shoddy quarters and inefficiency, and those parts are humorously done.

 

The misadventures of Jonathan, Ginger, and Pauline (the girlfriend) are fraught with guilt and the competition between the two men. Pauline is not religious but insists on refraining from intercourse until marriage, making for quaint scenes and occasionally more humor.

 

In the end, the dashed dreams, the settling for less than any of these characters hoped for, makes it a melancholy book. I didn't find it great, but David Lodge paints a realistic picture of life in that time and seems to be saying that no matter what people go through, character doesn't change much.

 

I wonder what he will do next. 

THE KILL ARTIST

Shop Indie Bookstores


The Kill Artist, Daniel Silva, Random House, 2000, 423 pp

Summary from Goodreads: Gabriel Allon is an art restorer persuaded out of retirement by Ari Shamron, Israeli spymaster, to kill Palestinian Tariq before he assassinates old comrade Yasir Arafat.

Tariq's role in the murder of Gabriel's wife and son draws in Gabriel and his mistress, French model Sarah Halevy. Sarah infiltrates Tariq's inner circle. Before Gabriel can rescue her, tables turn. 

My Review:

I learned about Daniel Silva from my blogger friend Carmen at Carmen's Books and Music. She has read and reviewed his entire Gabriel Allon series and since all the books are connected in some way with Israeli intelligence, I was curious. My husband is the thriller reader in our house, so I initially tried out this first book in the series on him and he liked it. 

Gabriel Allon's work as an art restorer brings him income and peace of mind, but is actually a cover for his assignments carrying out assassinations of Israel's enemies. He has been away from the spy work for some time due to having lost his wife and son during an act of Palestinian revenge. The irresistible and indestructible Ari Shamron has called him back for another act of revenge and help in restoring the credibility of the Israeli intelligence office.

Though the novel took a while to get going, it turned quite tense and exciting, then raced to the end. Like most fictional spies, Gabriel is a troubled man with plenty of baggage including a former bat leveyha. This was a new term for me and means a female agent who poses as the lover or spouse for a field agent. She is also called back to assist Allon in his assignment, providing romantic interest, but is maybe an even more interesting character than the spy himself.

Because the action takes place during the Middle East Peace Talks of the Bill Clinton administration, it makes for a good piece of historical fiction, if you think of the 1980s as history. I feel that Daniel Silva writes under a heavy John le Carre influence and at least in this first of a 16 book series did not quite measure up. 

For providing non-Israeli readers a look into the Israel/Palestine conflict though, it is quite good. Husband and I decided to keep reading the series.

(The Kill Artist is available in various formats by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

BEFORE THE FALL

Shop Indie Bookstores


Before the Fall, Noah Hawley, Grand Central Publishing, 2016, 390 pp

Summary from Goodreads: On a foggy summer night, eleven people—ten privileged, one down-on-his-luck painter—depart Martha's Vineyard on a private jet headed for New York. Sixteen minutes later, the unthinkable happens: the plane plunges into the ocean. The only survivors are Scott Burroughs—the painter—and a four-year-old boy, who is now the last remaining member of an immensely wealthy and powerful media mogul's family.  

My Review:

I began my August reading with this bestselling mystery/thriller, read for one of my reading groups. It seems to me that books written by TV writers (Hawley wrote the Fargo series) have similarities: lots of action and dialogue makes them page turners and are so entertaining I forgive them certain literary lapses.

Before the Fall features uber rich people, financial crime, the horrors of our now commonplace 24 hour news cycle, a plane crash, and an anti-hero who is also a painter. Another painter!

There were eleven people on the private jet that mysteriously crashed after only 16 minutes in the air. The painter and a seven-year-old boy were the only survivors. An investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board, the FAA, the FBI, and the Treasury Department all get involved in solving the mystery. The painter, who rescued the boy, is tormented by most of the investigators as well as by a crazy right wing cable TV commentator. 

You also get more or less extensive back stories on all the passengers and personnel on the plane. The tangled threads of all these individuals provide plenty of tension and juicy details. I felt like my life is tame in comparison.

It was an entertaining read all the way up to an unexplained ending which pretty much ruined the book for me. All I could think was, what? But I have to hand it to Noah Hawley for creating an accurate picture of life in America in the 21st century.

UPROOTED

Shop Indie Bookstores


Uprooted, Naomi Novik, Del Rey, 2015, 435 pp

Summary from Goodreads: Agnieszka loves her valley home, her quiet village, the forests and the bright shining river. But the corrupted Wood stands on the border, full of malevolent power, and its shadow lies over her life.

Her people rely on the cold, driven wizard known only as the Dragon to keep its powers at bay. But he demands a terrible price for his help: one young woman handed over to serve him for ten years, a fate almost as terrible as falling to the Wood. 

My Review:

I don't read large amounts of fantasy. I read Uprooted because it won the 2016 Nebula Award for Best Novel. It is great and was the last book I read in my July month of reading fun.

Agnieszka is a stellar heroine, as cool and brave and well-intentioned as Katniss Everdeen of The Hunger Games or Beatrice of the Divergent series. She lives in a quiet village with her family and loves foraging in surrounding forests. But at a certain border the forest becomes the Wood, a place of great evil known to capture villagers who are never seen again, to cause dreadful diseases, or harm livestock and crops.

To keep them safe and undo the Wood's evil acts, the village has its own wizard. The Dragon expects and takes a 16 year old female once every 10 years in exchange for his protection, in an event called 'the choosing." Agnieszka is the right age but she is plain and clumsy. She assumes the Dragon will take her best friend, the beautiful and accomplished Kasia. Surprise! He take Agnieszka.

So begins her adventures in which she discovers she is a witch with her own unique magical powers and therefore a necessary partner for the Dragon in upcoming political and wizardly troubles.

Though there are many deep and wonderful ideas in Uprooted about magic, evil, power, and healing, those come at you right along with constant heart stopping action. The only reason I could put the book down was to catch my breath once in a while.

I loved, loved the way Agnieszka came into her powers, the relationship between her and the Dragon, and most of all the last section where she found the proper use of those powers to help her family and village.

Even if you think you don't like fantasy, you could like Uprooted. If you do like fantasy, you could love it.

(Uprooted is currently available in paperback on the shelf at Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!

Today is my birthday. In the interests of combating ageism, I will reveal that I am 69 years old. Sounds pretty old to me but I don't feel that old, yet. When I was a kid, I always said I wanted to live to be 100. Not sure about that now. But in case my wish comes true, I do my best to eat healthy food and work out. It seems to be paying off.

What I wanted in my 30s was to be wise by the time I was old. I have been through some trying times personally in the past five years but it must have been life giving me lessons because I do feel a bit wiser now.

So I have received flowers, a pastry, a homemade omelette, and a bottle of fancy vodka from my husband. Tonight I will celebrate at one of my reading groups, in which we have 4 Leos! A pride of Leos I would say.

It is always reading, especially good novels, that gets me through. Since I have all the time I want to read now, I do! They are the most satisfying hours of my days. But also, through my reading groups and this blog and Goodreads, I have made so many great reading friends. I feel lucky and blessed.

Thank you for reading my blog, whether you comment or not. But special thanks to you if you do!

I plan to have my favorite food sometime today, as seen in the picture above.

THE ECLIPTIC

Shop Indie Bookstores


The Ecliptic, Benjamin Wood, Penguin Press, 2015, 467 pp

Summary from Goodreads: On a forested island off the coast of Istanbul stands Portmantle, a gated refuge for beleaguered artists. There, a curious assembly of painters, architects, writers and musicians strive to restore their faded talents. Elspeth 'Knell' Conroy is a celebrated painter who has lost faith in her ability and fled the dizzying art scene of 1960s London. On the island, she spends her nights locked in her blacked-out studio, testing a strange new pigment for her elusive masterpiece.

But when a disaffected teenager named Fullerton arrives at the refuge, he disrupts its established routines. He is plagued by a recurring nightmare that steers him into danger, and Knell is left to pick apart the chilling mystery. Where did the boy come from, what is 'The Ecliptic', and how does it relate to their abandoned lives in England?  

My Review:

I don't know how I heard about this book. It was just published in the United States in May (Benjamin Wood is British) and as I recall, I read a review or two and instantly requested it at the library. I loved it completely.

It is about the lives of contemporary artists, a painter, a novelist, a playwright, and an architect. These four characters reside in an artist colony on a Turkish island. Becoming a resident involves a torturous path to acceptance but one requirement is that the artist must have had success and then somehow lost the muse of inspiration. 

Artists at Portmantle live there all expenses paid, though not in luxury, until they finish a new work. It is an insular existence framed by strict rules while putting no time limit on any given artist to produce something he or she feels good about sending out into the world. But when that happens, the artist must leave.

The main character, Elspeth Conroy, who also narrates the tale, is a painter. (Painters are springing up all over in the fiction I have been reading lately.) She is the only one at Portmantle who rails against the rules and when an obviously disturbed 17 year old boy arrives she finds herself compulsively drawn to him and risks much to help him.

Eventually we learn her history, a study in the uncertain life of a painter and the pressures of commercial success. As much as I was enthralled with the whole setup at Portmantle, I became even more invested in Elspeth's life story.

Then came the most outlandish twist at the end and I was in awe of the talent displayed by this fairly young author. If you or someone you know has ever toiled in the trenches of any of the arts, you will love The Ecliptic.

 

VINEGAR GIRL

Shop Indie Bookstores


Vinegar Girl, Anne Tyler, Hogarth Shakespeare, 2016, 235 pp

Summary from Goodreads: Kate Battista feels stuck. How did she end up running house and home for her eccentric scientist father and uppity, pretty younger sister Bunny? Plus, she’s always in trouble at work – her pre-school charges adore her, but their parents don’t always appreciate her unusual opinions and forthright manner. 

Dr. Battista has other problems. After years out in the academic wilderness, he is on the verge of a breakthrough. His research could help millions. There’s only one problem: his brilliant young lab assistant, Pyotr, is about to be deported. And without Pyotr, all would be lost.

When Dr. Battista cooks up an outrageous plan that will enable Pyotr to stay in the country, he’s relying – as usual – on Kate to help him. Kate is furious: this time he’s really asking too much. But will she be able to resist the two men’s touchingly ludicrous campaign to bring her around?

My review,  originally posted at Litbreak:

(Please excuse the formatting. Sometimes Blogger and I just do not get along.)

 

Anne Tyler’s opening line: “Kate Battista was gardening out back when she heard the telephone ring in the kitchen.”

 

My opening line: The third book in the Hogarth Shakespeare series is hilarious!

Last December when I took on the project to review each retelling for Litbreak, I was innocent but hopeful. I hoped I was old enough now to appreciate the Bard and tripped gaily into the series like a fairy from Midsummer Night’s Dream. I read a pastoral comedy with darker undertones, Winter’s Tale, a story of what jealousy can do to a marriage. The Gap of Time, a retelling by Jeannette Winterson ( sounds like a Shakespeare gag right there) rather stressed the darker undertones but was entertaining nonetheless. This March I read the controversial tragedy The Merchant of Venice, followed by Howard Jacobson’s retelling, Shylock is My Name, in which he took up for Shylock and gave Portia a minor position.

 

Now it is truly midsummer and I almost gave up the project as with pounding head and drooping eyelids, I read The Taming of the Shrew. If good old Will knew he would live on through his plays for centuries, it would seem he also knew that controversy makes for good box office receipts. Should a shrew be tamed? How is that best accomplished? Is a wife to be under the thumb of her husband or is that just pandering to the beliefs of early 17^th century England’s Christian culture? Certainly the wooing of a fair maid or even a shrew is fraught for the man to this day. Think Meet the Parents. And just last year I read the 1957 Japanese classic The Makioka Sisters where daughters had to be married according to birth order.

I’m not even going to go into the slapstick that ensues from the play’s several sets of mistaken identities, another Shakespeare trope that he overdoes in this case to ridiculous proportions. Anne Tyler didn’t fall for that. Nor did she employ dowries or inheritance potential. Her shrew is aging out of the marriage market and working as a Teacher’s Assistant in a daycare center while being a surrogate mother for her annoying teenage sister.  Her father is a mad scientist with no attention left over for the two daughters he is raising alone. And Petruchio, the shrew tamer? He is about to become an illegal alien as his work visa expires so the mad scientist comes up with a scheme to marry off Kate to Pyotr and prevent losing the best lab assistant he’s ever had. Did I mention that Pyotr is an orphan from an Eastern European country with an accent that the author makes LOL funny?

I have always enjoyed Anne Tyler’s wry humor even when it borders on slapstick. In Vinegar Girl she allows for just as much outrageous silliness as Shakespeare does with Pyotr showing up disheveled and late for the wedding ceremony and both of them neglecting to dress for the wedding banquet put on by the bride’s fastidious aunt. Best of all she places the reader squarely in Kate’s head and emotions. Riding along on the seesaw of her thoughts and feelings the reader is shown, as I feel Shakespeare failed to do, her evolving love for Pyotr. The vinegar girl thinks she is getting out of her menial position in her father’s house, supposes she will be able to find out who she is, and finds herself in the best life she could have imagined.

Tamed she is not. Tyler rewrites Katherine’s speech at the end of the play. (Jacobson rewrote Portia’s speech too. Hm.) She preserves Shakespeare’s idea that the two have met their match but instead of becoming tamed she gains insight. To cap it off, Tyler gives us a funny but touching Epilogue. I can see this novel as a movie with a laugh a minute. Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton will have to step aside. This is 2016.

(Vinegar Girl is available in various formats by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

 

LADIVINE

Ladivine, Marie NDiaye, Alfred A Knopf, 2016, 276 pp (translated from the French by Jordan Stump

 

 

Summary from Goodreads (spoiler removed): On the first Tuesday of every month, Clarisse Rivière leaves her husband and young daughter and secretly takes the train to Bordeaux to visit her mother, Ladivine. Just as Clarisse’s husband and daughter know nothing of Ladivine, Clarisse herself has hidden nearly every aspect of her adult life from this woman, whom she dreads and despises but also pities. Long ago abandoned by Clarisse’s father, Ladivine works as a housecleaner and has no one but her daughter, whom she knows as Malinka.

After more than twenty-five years of this deception, the idyllic middle-class existence Clarisse has built from scratch can no longer survive inside the walls she’s put up to protect it. Her untold anguish leaves her cold and guarded, her loved ones forever trapped outside, looking in. When her husband, Richard, finally leaves her, Clarisse finds comfort in the embrace of a volatile local man, Freddy Moliger. With Freddy, she finally feels reconciled to, or at least at ease with, her true self. But this peace comes at a terrible price.

 

 

My Review:

Marie NDiaye's second translated novel is not as raw as Three Strong Women but is equally powerful and disturbing.

 

Malinka is the daughter of a Black African immigrant, Ladivine. Her mother is poor, she works as cleaning woman and gives her entire life and self in service to her daughter. Malinka is so fair she can pass as white and she feels deeply ashamed of Ladivine. In fact she calls her "the servant."

 

After leaving home, she changes her name to Clarisse, falls in love with a white French man and marries him. Though she loves him and their daughter, she never assumes any identity as Clarisse except as wife and mother. She strives for perfection in those roles but it is impossible for her husband or daughter to really know her. 

 

Once a month she sneaks away to visit her mother. The story opens during one of those visits and then circles back to the story of her life up to that point. Already as a reader you are disturbed and filled with anxiety.

 

Eventually the husband leaves her, frustrated with his inability to ever penetrate his wife's polished exterior, yet still completely in love with her. Clarisse is devastated with loss. Her daughter, whom she named Ladivine after her mother, goes away to school and then marries a German man.

 

After all this, the story gets weirder than weird. Strange inexplicable things happen, tragedy strikes Clarisse/Malinka while Ladivine, the daughter, has her own crisis of identity. As a reader, I was never prepared for what happened next and could not imagine how the story would end.

 

I was right. I never imagined any of it. I was putty in the hands of a master story teller, compelled to suspend my disbelief over and over. I loved every minute of it! 

 

 

(Ladivine is available in hard cover and audio book by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.) 

AUGUST READING GROUP UPDATE

First off, I have been having a bit of trouble keeping the blog going lately. Renovations on our house, keeping up my yard in the face of relentless heat, and feeling more like reading than blogging. Hats off to bloggers who post every day. I truly don't know how you do it. My goal is three times a week but I have even been falling down on that. So that is why this post is a week late.

Once again I have a light reading group schedule this month and have already read two of the books. This is fortunate for my August reading plan: to read as many books as I can from the 1962 list of My Big Fat Reading Project. I have been having such a great time reading new fiction that I have neglected the project, so I hope to make up for that this month.

Here is what my reading groups are reading and discussing this month.

Laura's Group: 

Shop Indie Bookstores

One Book at a Time:

Shop Indie Bookstores  

Bookie Babes:

Shop Indie Bookstores

Molly's Group:

Shop Indie Bookstores  

If you belong to one or more reading groups, what are you reading this month?