THE SOCIETY OF RELUCTANT DREAMERS

The Society of Reluctant Dreamers, Eduardo Jose Agualusa, Archipelago Books, 2020, 264 pp (originally published in 2017, translated from the Portuguese by Daniel Hahn)

 

This novel was as amazing as it was treacherous. Once I figured out it was set in the African country, Angola, and once I did some research into that country's horrific history and horrendous struggle for independence from European colonizers (mainly Portuguese but also all the major colonizers of the 19th century) then at least it was located for me. I understood why the Angolan author wrote it in Portuguese.

 

The other challenge was the story of Daniel and his dream lover Moira. When the book opens, Daniel has just been divorced by his wife of many years. He is a journalist; she is descended from a family who collaborated with the Portuguese. His daughter has stayed with her conservative mother, but is just as radical as Daniel.

Daniel dreams. He writes down his dreams as though he were reporting the news.

 

"I woke very early. Through the narrow windows, I saw long black birds fly past. I'd dreamed about them. It was as though they had leaped from my dream up into the sky, a damp piece of dark-blue tissue paper, with bitter mold growing in the corners."

 

The above is the opening paragraph of the book. It is a modern novel set in an extremely foreign place. The fight for Angolan independence took at least half a century and the current ruling party as well as its President, though Angolan, are an unstable oligarchy dealing in repression of freedoms.

 

Eventually Daniel's daughter lands in prison for demonstrating against the government. She is only about 18 years old but leads a hunger strike from within the prison! By this time Daniel has met an old soldier from the wars for independence who is half mad from his experiences.

 

The two men spend hours together and share the dreams they have had the night before. Enter Moira, an artist from Mozambique, who stages her dreams in her artwork. All of the dreamers seem to merge into a collective unconscious, while Daniel works to get his daughter out of prison. In that way they seek to unravel the lives they have lived and the political reality of their country.

 

I just had to let go of any preconceived notions I harbor, knowingly or unknowingly, and enter the dream state that constitutes the basis of Jose Eduardo Agualusa's writing. Truthfully, it was not hard to do so. Life in America has become so surreal. What, after all, are happiness, freedom, love, goals? For what do we fight as human beings?

Like Daniel and his daughter, the old soldier and Moira, we yearn for happiness, freedom, love and achievable goals. Sometimes we get those dreams. Sometimes we get nightmares, awake or asleep.

A LONG PETAL OF THE SEA

A Long Petal of the Sea, Isabel Allende, Ballantine Books, 2020, 314 pp

 

For the third time this year I was once again immersed in the effects of the Spanish Civil War. The first was Serge Pey's The Treasure of the Spanish Civil War. The second was The Labyrinth of the Spirits by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. And now Isabel Allende has told another branch of the story. 

 

Through these novels I have finally gotten a better understanding of the causes of that war. I think the first time I read about it was in Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls. When I read that in 2002, I did not understand why so many Left Wing people from the Americas and Europe became so passionate about the struggle. I am finally getting the picture.

A Long Petal of the Sea is quite simply a wonderful story. I think Allende is always at her best when writing historical fiction. Victor Dalmau was a young medic in the war. He and his brother's pregnant lover Roser, a gifted pianist, along with his mother are finally driven to escape from Spain. How many stories have I read about desperate journeys across the Pyrenees Mountains? Certainly a few. That border between Spain and France has hosted many refugees going in both directions, not to mention advancing and returning armies.

Victor Dalmau's mother does not make it, but Victor, Roser, and her baby do. They end up in Chile, thanks to Pablo Neruda who chartered a ship to bring 2000 refugees to his country. Though these people were not wanted there, Neruda was so beloved in Chile that he pulled it off.

Each chapter of the book begins with some lines from Neruda's poetry. In fact, Victor and Neruda become friends. The lives of Victor and Roser in Chile span decades, with numerous developments and adventures where politics and art are always intertwined, where the opposing forces of freedom and fascist tendencies battle.

Though it is such a long and involved tale I was never lost. Allende's sure hand with history and her deep but somehow lighthearted fascination with the power of love are the anchors. Definitely one of her most wonderful novels.

THE POWER OF THE DOG

The Power of the Dog, Don Winslow, Alfred A Knopf, 2005, 542 pp

 

I have been intending to read Don Winslow for many years. Now I finally did and I am hooked.

 

The Power of the Dog is the first of his three books about Mexican drug cartels. If you are curious about this scourge of criminality your curiosity will be entirely rewarded. It is a fairly long book but I read it in a little over three days. Winslow can do propulsive, addictive plot with the best of them.

Art Keller, DEA agent, began with a loyal commitment to the US War of Drugs. His concurrent disillusionment with the agency and obsession with taking out the key family in Mexico's drug empire contribute equally to the demise of his marriage and his success in the mission he sets for himself.

Just as in real life, the development, the evolution from pot to heroin to cocaine to crack is complex, driven by greed for wealth and power. The Power of the Dog could have been just another thriller about organized crime. In addition to his serious writing chops though, Winslow manages to convey the intricate intersections between the criminals, the law, and the citizens who dance around each other.

He shows us the violence that is as big a part of life as the hopes and dreams of mankind. I was impressed and left with much to ponder.

THE NIGHT WATCHMAN

The Night Watchman, Louise Erdrich, HarperCollins, 2020, 444 pp

 

This is the best book I have read so far this year. Three of my reading groups chose it so I am having the experience of discussing it with a total of 14 women. In the two discussions I have had so far, everyone loved it and a common statement is, " I didn't want the book to end." This is a testament to how much Louise Erdrich gets the reader involved with her characters.

 

She based her story on her grandfather, a factory night watchman and resident of the Turtle Mountain Reservation in North Dakota. His fictional name is Thomas, he is a Chippewa, a man of great courage and intelligence but most of all persistence.

Thomas learns of a new "emancipation" bill on its way to Congress, a bill that will terminate the rights of his people to land "given" to them by a United States treaty that stated it was to last "for as long as the grasses grow and the rivers run." It is 1953. Should the bill pass not only will they lose their land but also their identity as Chippewa people.

Thomas spends his hours at night on the job, between regular inspections of the factory, reading the bill until he understands its words and its intentions. He then involves the people of the reservation in a bold plan to go before Congress and fight against the bill's passage.

Despite their poverty and the forces that have driven some to alcohol, have driven a daughter to run away to Minneapolis and become lost, the tribe includes characters who work against terrible odds to better their families and keep them together. One of these is 17 year old Patrice, who goes in search of her lost sister and sets in motion events that will affect the entire tribe, including a ghost!

Louise Erdrich writes with such smooth yet fiery storytelling. She shows how an oppressed people can use skills forced on them by the White man to their advantage in overcoming that oppression without losing the beliefs and understanding of their connection to their land and each other.

She gives new meaning to intelligence, compassion and courage. All the while she injects humor and a certain kind of magic trickster into this incredible tale of survival and triumph.

THE LABYRINTH OF THE SPIRITS

The Labyrinth of the Spirits, Carlos Ruiz Zafon, HarperCollins, 2018, 805 pp (translated from the Spanish by Lucia Graves)

 

I have now read all four books in the Cemetery of Forgotten Books series. Thanks to blogger friend Marianne in Germany at Let's Read, whose review of this book reminded me that I had never finished the series. This is the longest of the book but I did not mind. I wanted to stay with those characters for as long as I could.

 

In The Labyrinth of the Spirits, Zafon introduces a new character, Alicia. She is as badass as they come and works for Spain's secret police in Madrid. She wants out so her handler says if she does one more assignment, she can walk away. 

 

Of course the assignment is tough beyond any she has ever had and will test every strength she has. It leads her to Daniel Sempre (the central character in The Shadow of the Wind) and to Daniel's best friend Fermin, who we learn for the first time saved her life during the Spanish Civil War when she was nine years old. Her assignment is to find the former director of the Montjuic Castle prison, featured in the third book, The Prisoner of Heaven. In that prison were certain authors and the one who is still alive may hold the key to the mystery of that former director's recent disappearance. 

 

Alicia is a fascinating and complex character who puts most spies I have read about to shame and also loves to read. Spain is still under the autocratic rule of Franco meaning that crime and oppression wait at every turn.

 

By the end, every mystery in the Sempre family has been solved. The bad people get what is coming to them. Best of all Daniel finally finds out what really happened to his mother. As in every book, reading and literature and authors and bookstores and the librarian of The Cemetery of Forgotten Books play pivotal roles.

Should one read these books in order? Carlos Ruiz Zafon claims that is not necessary but I found that each book circles around to the previous ones, always expanding this wonderful tale. Many people read The Shadow of the Wind and then felt let down by The Angel's Game. I admit that was a dark and scary tale with no relief but now that I have read The Labyrinth of the Spirits, it makes complete sense why he had to write it as part of the series.

Here are my reviews of the first three books:

The Shadow of the Wind

The Angels Game

The Prisoner of Heaven 

 

Have you read any of these books?

JUNE READING GROUP UPDATE

I really couldn't use one of those cute reading group images this month. This is how all my reading groups begin these days. The good news is that four of my six groups are now meeting on Zoom, which isn't perfect but is way better than not meeting at all. I am so grateful for this user friendly technology and for the member of each group who manages the invitations and all that.

This month two of my groups are discussing the same book: The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich. It is such a wonderful read about Native American life that I am thrilled to have two chances to discuss it.

Here is the lineup:

The Tiny Book Club and Carol's Group:

 

One Book At A Time:

 

I have read and discussed this one in another group a few months ago, but since it is a book that seems to evoke many and various reactions in readers, I am sure it will be interesting to discuss it again.

 

Bookies Babes: 

 

This is a sequel to Attica Locke's earlier book, Bluebird, Bluebird, which I took the time to read first. The setting is East Texas contemporary times and delves into the precarious life of a Black Texas Ranger.  Heaven My Home follows with a later part of his story. Full of the complex tangles of racism, it is a pretty darn appropriate read to accompany the ongoing protests.

 

Have you read and/or discussed any of these books? If you are a member of a real life reading group, how are you coping? Do you meet on Zoom or discuss through email or text? And what books have you been discussing lately?

THE CITY WE BECAME

The City We Became, N K Jemisin, Orbit, 2020, 434pp

 

When I learned that N K Jemisin (author of The Broken Earth Trilogy, for which she won the Hugo Award three straight years in a row, a book a year) had a new novel, I was excited. Better yet, I was not disappointed.

 

Reading The Broken Earth trilogy was not unlike being taken somewhere you have never been by adults who drag you along without explaining anything. You are left with only your ability to observe the things and people around you while you try to figure out what is going on. Your hand is not held except to grasp it and pull you forward. The world she built in those books had only the barest resemblance to anywhere or any time period I had ever experienced.

 

The thing was, she also made me care and suffer along with her characters. She made me want to understand so much that I would not give up reading. I don't know that I have ever wanted the good guys to win more badly in any other fiction I have read.

 

The City We Became is different because it takes place in America's biggest and possibly best known city: New York. Then again, this novel is similar to those earlier books in that the stakes are just as high. Also, it is fantasy. Also, it is the first in a new trilogy she calls The Great Cities Trilogy.

 

The author takes her time introducing her characters, all the while creating an intimate picture of each of New York's five boroughs. You have heard of all five: Manhattan, Staten Island, The Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn. Unless you have actually lived in NYC though, you may not know that each borough has a distinct essence, one that has changed over time for sure but distinct like five siblings from the same family.

 

For each borough is a main character. By the time you have met them all and gotten a feel for their individual stories and wondered where all this is going, you have also realized, as each character did, that they are human avatars for their respective areas and that something very weird is going on. Something about a city being born. If these five avatars don't connect and unite, it will be a still birth and any hope for the good things of life, such as dreams, creativity, justice, safety and security will be overcome by nightmares, destruction, injustice and danger.

 

The climax of the story is exciting and tense and propulsive.

 

I won't say more because I don't like rehashing plots and if this sort of book doesn't appeal to you, it would be a waste of your time. If what I have told you so far does appeal to you, you are best off discovering the wonders of The City We Became on your own.

 

Here are links to my reviews of those earlier books:

The Fifth Season

The Obelisk Gate

The Stone Sky

BOOKS READ IN MAY

My reading in May was so wonderful, I hardly knew I was living through a pandemic. Of course, I did know but these novels took me away to other times, lives, and places even to the point of making some sense of it all. Possibly because eight of the nine books I read were written by women. What do you think?

Stats: 9 books read. 9 fiction. 8 written by women. 1 for my Big Fat Reading Project. 1 written for children. 2 translated. 1 speculative. 1 crime. 2 historical. 

Places I went: Columbia, Chile, Spain, United States.

Authors new to me: Juliana Delgado, Attica Locke

Favorites: All were wonderful, worthwhile reads. The Night Watchman and The Labyrinth of the Spirits stood out though.

Did your reading in May help you get through? Which were your favorites?

THE RECKLESS OATH WE MADE

The Reckless Oath We Made, Bryn Greenwood, G P Putnam's Sons, 2019, 434 pp

 

Bryn Greenwood is another author I have followed since her first book. This is her fourth novel and once again she writes about the often overlooked, often stereotyped people of Middle America. Her territory is Kansas.

I love her books because they are unflinching looks at these people and because she is one of them, one who bootstrapped herself up and is well on her way to creating her very own genre.

Zee is a woman with burdens, including an easily triggered temper, a housebound hoarder of a mother, and a gullible sister. She does what she must to cover the many expenses of her life as well as the huge holes in her psyche.

When she meets Gentry, a young man somewhere on the spectrum who sees himself as a medieval knight, she finds herself with a champion for the first time in her life.

Gentry actually speaks in Old English, is killer with swords, and lives by a code of honor pretty much lacking in our modern world. Of course Zee, with her long sad history of making a mess of everything she attempts, does not handle this well.

Reading The Reckless Oath We Made requires heaps of suspension of disbelief. It might not be for everyone. However, it is full of so much soul and compassion that I was not worried about trying to understand Gentry's weird language. I loved how Bryn Greenwood created such a hard ass, shoot-herself-in-the-foot female with a heart bigger than Kansas.

If you love a quirky kind of story that makes your own problems look puny in comparison, if you secretly wish there could still be fairy tales in this heartless world, this is the modern fractured fairy tale for you.

THE TREASURE OF THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR

The Treasure of the Spanish Civil War, Serge Pey, Archipelago Books, 2020, 135 pp (translated from the French by Donald Nicholson-Smith, originally published by Zulma, 2011)

 

This was another wonderful selection from my Archipelago Books subscription. The author, Serge Pey, is a French writer and poet. His parents fled Spain during the Spanish Civil War only to be interned in a concentration camp in France, due to the defeat of the Spanish republicans.

 

His book grew out of the stories told him by his exiled compatriots. The imagery and characterizations demonstrate his poetical skills and his political heart. He is for those who oppose oppression and fight for freedom.

He celebrates human resilience in the acts of resistance found in each of these interrelated stories. Children born and raised in the camp, old soldiers of the Spanish republicans, mothers, healers, and even some animals come to life. 

The magical infuses many of the incidents. Ghosts and spirits and mystical powers work right beside both brave and desperate humans.

It is the nature of concentration camps to practice brutality but Serge Pey balances atrocity with every possible type of life force in the human spirit.

ANATHEM

Anathem, Neal Stephenson, HarperCollins, 2008, 935 pp

Since I have not been working on my writing during the pandemic, I figure I can at least squeeze in a few more reviews. I know I have followers who like Neal Stephenson and this one was up there with my favorite reads lately, so here you go.

Another Neal chunkster read! Anathem followed the last one I read: The System of the World. After writing three novels set in the 17th and 18th centuries, he surged way ahead to the year 3000!

The book got mixed reactions when it was published in 2008, even from some of his most diehard fans. My husband advised me that I did not need to waste my time.

I felt my time was well spent, even though it included flipping to an extensive glossary of terms. All the scientists, philosophers and mathematicians are cloistered off in coed monasteries where they study and discuss endlessly their theories while maintaining a wobbly relation with the outside world.

That other world includes the illiterate, irrational, unpredictable people, living on fast food and glued to their devices. There are some exceptions though.

There is a system by which new generations are brought into the monastery setting, since the fras and surs take a vow not to reproduce. I liked the long view on how these new generations are selected and trained.  Various regulations cannot prevent rivalries and tensions, even rebellion within the walls, which made all those characters human after all.

Of course, this is Neal Stephenson, so there has to be more to the book than philosophical and scientific discussion, though despite some great ideas there is maybe a bit too much of that. Sure enough an alien spacecraft lands and the secular powers are so overcome with fear that they must call on the wise guys to help deal with the menace.

Wild adventures ensue including space travel and first contact and all manner of life threatening capers. Also the the scientists, philosophers and mathematicians of all ages get to put their knowledge to the test, including quantum theories as applied to other worlds. 

I found it all absorbing, original in many ways, and clever as can be.

THE GLASS HOTEL

The Glass Hotel, Emily St John Mandel, Alfred A Knopf, 2020, 301 pp

 

 

I have read and loved every one of Mandel's novels. She has certain preoccupations: young women, loneliness, travel, lost mothers, to name a few. The Glass Hotel places these topics in a story about the financial disaster of 2008.

 

Vincent began life on Vancouver Island and lost her mother at a young age. She has a troubled brother. One night while tending bar at the most grand hotel on the island, she meets the owner. Jonathan is a super wealthy "investment manager." A year later she marries him, not for love but to get her off the island. Her time with Jonathan takes place among the wealthy in New York City.

This could all have been a device to explore the financial depravity and devastation of the times. It was so much more because of the brilliance of Vincent as a character. Mandel circles through several viewpoints and reading the story is like watching a mirror ball rotating and reflecting the scenes from many facets.

Vincent (and to a lesser degree, her brother) are the everywoman and everyman. As in any great work of fiction they show us ourselves, our dangerous inattention to what goes on around us, our preoccupation with personal issues. It is a gently piercing wake up call just as much as Station Eleven was.

I got to the end, wishing the story could have gone on forever. I remembered how much I always get immersed in the worlds of Emily St John Mandel. The condition of melancholy wraps around me as a reader while at the same time making me feel less alone.

MAY READING GROUP UPDATE

Good evening at the end of a lovely Mother's Day. My three Zoom reading groups will meet this month. Two of the books are rereads for me but I am happy to reread them. I have already finished Little Women. Today I started The House of the Spirits. I am wild with excitement to read Louise Erdrich's latest, The Nightwatchman.


One Book At A Time:

Bookie Babes:

Tiny Book Club:

Are any of your reading groups going in some form or other? If yes, what will you discuss in May? Have you read or discussed any of these? 

THOSE WHO LOVE & A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES

Those Who Love, A Biographical Novel of Abigail and John Adams, Irving Stone, Doubleday & Company, 1965, 647 pp

 

 

 

A People's History of the United States, Howard Zinn, Harper & Row, 2015, 688 pp

 

 

 

Today I have two related reviews for you, because the first book led me to the next. I am ranting and I warn you that these are not cheerful reviews.

Those Who Love was the #6 bestseller of 1965 and took me eight days to read. Though it has a slant, Irving Stone did give a picture of the dreams and ideals of this couple as English settlers in Massachusetts. John Adams's dedication to create a balanced government of three branches that would ensure a true democracy was based on deep study of England and the history of other countries. He was trained as a lawyer, he put his wife through much hardship, she was a strong and understanding companion. He became the second President of the new nation, after George Washington, and already the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, on which he worked tirelessly with the Founding Fathers, was cracking at the seams.

The problem was they did not address all the issues. Only men who owned a certain amount of property could vote. The Adamses were not rich, they probably only squeaked by property-wise. They were not in favor of slavery but to get all the colonies to agree on the Constitution, compromise was in order. The rights of Native Americans, slaves, women and the workers of the new country upon whose shoulders the edifice stood, were left out.

I suppose that this is the trouble with a certain kind of idealist. They do not see or understand the 99% of humanity who do most of the work. To understand more about how we got to today, in the middle of a pandemic with a Federal government and a complete idiot of a President who appear to have no idea what they are doing, I decided to read the Howard Zinn book. In fact, I learned that John Adams was up against more than he knew.

I read A People's History of the United States by taking one chapter a day. It took me 25 days and some of it was a slog. He is not the greatest writer.

He does, however, tell the story of the forming and building of the American Empire from a different slant than Irving Stone; also a different slant than kids in school used to get in their American history studies.

In every chapter he contrasts the unrelenting drive of the monied class for expansion, growth, progress and more wealth with the realities of the lower classes. The crimes of our country are really no different than the crimes of any empire building country throughout history.

From reading historical fiction and also the Will Durant history books, I have been aware of what gets done when a nation has that drive towards power and aligns government with finance to achieve those aims. Since I was raised and educated to see America as the best and greatest country in the world, I don't think I ever until now truly confronted what my country has wrought to create that reputation. (I am also aware that not everyone would agree with what I am saying here.)

The other main point of Zinn's book is that the oppressed, be they Native Americans, women, Blacks, workers, immigrants or the people of other countries we have stolen land from or filled with our military bases or plundered for natural resources, will always tend to fight back. It might be inspiring to think that way, well actually it is. I, however, was left with the feeling that capitalism always wins, that our government is still allied with business and the rich, as it has been from its founding.

Perhaps because as I read the book, we were dealing with a pandemic that seemed to be worse here than in other places in the world, that was flattening but not lessening, I could not escape the idea that this is part of our payback, that we are hated by the people we have abused (called terrorism), that we have damaged the world almost to the breaking point (called climate change) and that if my fairly comfortable, deluded and ineffectual middle class goes on this way, we deserve everything that we have coming. I don't feel completely hopeless. I feel mostly enraged.

Sorry to be a downer. I advise reading Zinn's book, if you haven't, if for nothing else than to understand the actual mechanisms of power, money, the military and our politics. Mechanisms that keep us placated and unaware while the military/industrial complex and the bankers continue on their destructive path. He does a good job delineating how that works. I have wondered for a long time how those in power think that money will protect them if the world goes down.

So, I leave you with yet another quote from a Joni Mitchell song: "Who you gonna get to do the dirty work, when all the slaves are free?" The song is "Passion Play" from her 1991 album, Night Ride Home. You can find it on YouTube.

BOOKS READ IN APRIL

April had a bit of everything: rain, clouds, sun, heat, virus, flowers and ended up with a green world in my neighborhood. Similarly my reading was all over the place, a good thing since I was stuck at home. I just fell into reading and had a good time!

Stats: 12 books read. 10 fiction. 6 by women. 2 thrillers. 3 for My Big Fat Reading Project. 1 poetry. 1 speculative. 2 translated. 1 history.

Places I went: Russia, Turkey, Vietnam, Canada, Saudi Arabia, Spain, France, United States.

Authors new to me: Alex Gilvarry, Serge Pey

Favorite books: The Glass Hotel, The Robber Bride and Unsheltered.

Least favorite: None, I liked them all.

I hope you are surviving this brief breath in eternity, however long it may seem. I hope reading was a solace or escape or even a source of wonder in April. We will get through this.

FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE, EASTMAN WAS HERE AND LULLABY FOR SINNERS

THREE MINI REVIEWS

I have been reading like crazy in a wide range and sometimes a deep range. Here are three books I read in April, each of which took me away from it all in various ways. I apologize for the mashed up formatting. Sometimes Blogger has its limits.

From Russia With Love, Ian Fleming, Jonathan Cape, 1957, 268 pp

I don't know why I keep being surprised that each of these James Bond books gets better than the last. Most authors get better the more they write. It must be because the movies are so stupid, so lacking in what made the books great.

007 collides with SMERSH again (that is the Russian Intelligence branch) when they send a beautiful agent to seduce him and lead him to their assassin. In fact, the first half of the book takes place in the Soviet Union, setting up the lure, Tatiana Romanova, and the assassin, Red Grant, and the caper. All of that reminded me of Red Sparrow.

Even when Bond comes on the scene, he does not do much except meet and bed Tatiana in Turkey, and accompany her on the Orient Express as they travel to London. They pass through many Balkan cities, the very ones I have been reading about in Black Lamb, Grey Falcon.

Then in the last 20 pages the trap is sprung. Of course Bond survives to die another day. 

Eastman Was Here, Alex Gilvarry, Viking, 2017, 356 pp

I grabbed this off my Nervous Breakdown Book Club backlog pile in a fit of COVID19 angst. The cover was intriguing and it had blurbs from Tea Obreht and Gary Shteyngart.

I found plenty to enjoy. Alan Eastman is a cleverly created unreliable narrator, the kind of self-involved male who later showed up in Shteyngart's Lake Success, except that Eastman's story takes place in 1973.

He is a washed up writer with a disintegrating marriage. I had no idea while reading it that the character is loosely based on Norman Mailer. In hindsight, I see it. Self-centered, creates his reputation out of provocative statements and unique takes on contemporary issues, all the while tolerated with amusement by his male contemporaries and even a few women.

I have read quite a bit of Mailer and, aside from his views on women, have usually found him quite intelligent about American absurdities. In contrast, I felt sorry for Alan Eastman despite his infidelity (he maintains a mistress while going ballistic over his wife being unfaithful to him.)

When he goes off to Vietnam with an assignment to cover Saigon as the Americans pull out, he gets his comeuppance from a younger female reporter. I enjoyed that part the most!

Actually I enjoyed Gilvarry's dissection of the late 20th century older male who totally missed the point of mostly everything. The ending where Eastman and his wife try to work out their differences in front of their two young sons just made me sad.

Lullaby For Sinners, Kate Braverman, Harper & Row, 1980, 88 pp

I finished another volume of poetry. Last year I read Palm Latitudes, one of Braverman's novels, after learning that she had been Janet Fitch's writing teacher. I was impressed, so I decided to try her poetry.

Lullaby For Sinners is her second collection. It is stark with dark emotions, both beautiful and horrific images, and though I am no expert on poetry, it seemed to lie on the experimental side of the poetry spectrum.

I felt she was writing about the deep secrets of female emotional and mental trauma. Her poems reminded me of Sylvia Plath and Francesca Lia Block. Probably not for everyone but I liked it.

How has your reading been going? Today is Day 52 for me of staying home and I feel blessed to have everything I need (except a haircut) and so much time to bury into books. For others who have to work in dangerous venues or be stuck inside with small children day after day, I can understand how they must wish this would be over soon. 

THE ROBBER BRIDE

 

The Robber Bride, Margaret Atwood, Nan A Talese, 1993, 528 pp

Do you have a nemesis? Or have you had one at some point in your life? I currently have a nemesis who also clearly feels that I have been her nemesis. 

The Robber Bride is built around a nemesis named Zenia. She is a complex character who fits both definitions of the word: 1) "one that inflicts retribution or vengeance" and 2) "a formidable and usually victorious rival or opponent" Merriam-Webster.com.

Zenia's special power is stealing men from the women who love them. She is a con woman who outdoes Patricia Highsmith's Talented Mr Ripley. Her victims in The Robber Bride are three women, all quite different from each other, who met in college and have bonded through the years over Zenia's predatory actions. 

The novel begins a bit slowly as Atwood builds the back story and character of each woman, then takes off and never lets go as the three victims engage Zenia in battle. 

The author is as brilliant as she always is because, 1) she knows her classics so well (the novel is loosely inspired by the Grimm's fairy tale, The Robber Bridegroom), 2) she is so facile at moral ambiguity (neither Zenia nor her three victims, nor the men she poaches are completely wonderful or horrible), and 3) she has a sense of humor that does not quit.

I first read The Robber Bride in 1998, an astonishing 22 years ago. I was not a blogger then but I had started a reading log in 1991. Looking back at that I saw that I found the novel good but had a problem with the ending. This time I read it for a reading group. I loved it unconditionally and understood why she ended it the way she did.

I would say that if you have a nemesis (def #2) or wish to become a nemesis (def #1), The Robber Bride could serve as a handbook. Recommended for all readers of any sexual orientation or age.

APRIL READING GROUP UPDATE

Oh how I miss the reality of the image above. None of my reading groups met in March due to COVID19. This month a few of the groups have switched over to Zoom, so I have something to report. The Bookie Babes were the first to manage a Zoom meeting early in the month. It worked well. We will meet again this way later in the month and that will put us back on schedule. 

Bookie Babes:

 

 

One Book At A Time:

 

Tiny Book Club:

 

 

How are your reading groups managing? How are you doing over all? Hoping this finds you well and coping decently with staying at home and wondering what comes next.