WHAT NOW

 In these final days of the 2020 Election campaign, as I talk to friends and acquaintances, it is clear that worry is a big part of many people's emotional equation, including mine. So I am reposting here what I had to say after the last election, because no matter what the outcome is this time, I stand by my conclusions of four years ago. 

Here is a link: https://keepthewisdom.blogspot.com/2016/11/what-now.html

Here is a copy of the post: 

What Now?

I feel bad. I feel abused. I feel like taking to my bed with a bottle of vodka. I feel outraged at my country. I feel like I am suffering from a great loss and cannot think straight. I feel apathetic. I feel afraid. I feel guilty. I feel small. I feel confused. 

All through this Presidential election campaign, I felt a growing awareness that the country I am living in is not the country I thought I was living in. Now I know for sure that I have not really been looking at my country as it is. I was lulled into a feeling of hope and security by evidence that change was truly happening: change for women, minorities, and the under-represented people in our society. I thought we were ready for a woman to be our President, a woman who had the experience, the courage, and the will to continue the fight for true freedom of all people in our land but who could navigate the treacherous waters of the world as it is, who could continue to redeem our country in the eyes of the world. 

I did not realize the extent of the anguish many of my fellow Americans are going through everyday as they try to make a living. I did not realize how very angry are the white, straight, conservative Christian men and women of this country. How ripe this segment of our society, who are still a slim majority, were for the con game of a demagogue who has played on their fears and insecurities to advance his own hunger for power and recognition.

I could not bring myself to post a blog about a book I read three weeks ago before this rude awakening was forced on me. Even though this morning, when I checked my reading log, I see that the next book I was to post a review about is actually completely apropos: The Big Green Tent by Ludmila Ulitskaya, a novel about Soviet Russia in its latter days. 

I watched Hilary Clinton’s address to her campaign team yesterday morning and once again admired her courage, her clear thinking, and all the other qualities she has for leadership. I went to my reading group last night to discuss Last Days of Night by Graham Moore, a wonderful piece of historical fiction about the early years of electric power in America; the intersection of science, finance, and the law. We discussed, we drank wine, we got to giggling about pussy grabbing. The gloom began to lift.

This morning I read a great article on Lit Hub: Literary Voices React to President Donald Trump. Again I went through the whole spectrum of emotions. I started making decisions about my future reading. At one point I decided to read only books by women of all races, creeds, and nationalities. At another point I decided to drop the blog and just work on my Big Fat Reading Project and my memoir. I jotted down a quote from Dan Peipenbring of the Paris Review: “And read as often and as violently as you can.”

As always, I was restored by writers. 

Lately, in my life, I have been pondering the concept of rebalancing. It is an ecological, Buddhist, Tao Te Ching, long-view concept. Human beings get out of balance due to all kinds of factors that are part of daily life but some cosmic force works always to bring the dichotomies of life back into balance. All of those emotions I cited in the first paragraph of this essay are brought about by the terror of things getting so out of balance that life or the universe will end. 

My conclusion today is that I had not totally been facing how out of balance the world and the human race truly is at this time. It is not that I did not know that. It is that I thought things were improving. And I think they are but not as much as I had thought. A huge factor in the cosmic force towards balance is sentient beings. When the storm is over, when the fire is out, when the smoke clears, it is up to sentient beings to come out of disaster mode and start thinking, planning, setting things to rights. 

The best sentient beings I know are people who read and write, clearly and as truthfully as they can. That is us! Bloggers, readers, authors, publishers. We dare not give up, give in, or stay silent. We need to read it all, even the words of white male chauvinist bigots. Everyone in a free society gets to have a say, we need to know the enemy and understand him, and we need to be in conversation with him. 

So, I will read, I will write, I will attempt to be in concert with the forces of balance, I will not pander, I will not be silent. I will be back tomorrow with my next review. 

Thank you for visiting and reading my blog. Take heart, carry on, be the change you want to see in this world, keep the faith, and all that good stuff!

NOT WITHOUT LAUGHTER

Not Without Laughter, Langston Hughes, Random House, 1930, 299 pp

I read this for my Bookie Babes reading group. It was hard to believe that it was published in 1930! I will tell you why.

The story concerns Black lives centered around a family living in Lawrence, Kansas. Sandy is a growing boy living with his grandmother, his mother and two aunts. Grandma is a widowed washer woman, supporting three daughters and Sandy. Each daughter eventually goes her own way, but Sandy stays with his grandma until she dies, though he is influenced by the widely differing life styles of his mom and aunts.

The novel finally made me understand why so many Black women were deep into religion and church. They needed to believe in an afterlife that is not full of hardship, loss and suffering. It was also made clear why others look for good times and laughter or believe in education as a way to be able to compete with white people.

I always thought Langston Hughes was a poet, but he was also a wonderful novelist. His writing is lyrical, his characters are deep and rich with life, and the story kept me on the edge of my seat wondering what would become of everyone.

What struck all of us in the reading group was how much life is still the same for Blacks. Maybe a bit less harsh but still not really free, not really playing on a level field with the rest of society. It is now 90 years since the book was published. 156 years since emancipation. Etc, etc.

Yet, Langston Hughes brought major good things to his race. He came to recognition as a key player in the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s with his support of other Black writers, his poetry, plays, novels and a special kind of hope and lightness of heart. 

POSTCOLONIAL LOVE POEM

 Postcolonial Love Poem, Natalie Diaz, Graywolf Press, 2020, 100 pp

I received this poetry collection as the June selection of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club. I had not known about Natalie Diaz previously. I followed my usual practice of reading a poem each night before bed.

The poet is Native American, born and raised in the Fort Mojave Indian Village on the edge of Needles, CA. In other words, on the reservation, which sits on the banks of the Colorado River. She is a member of the Gila River Indian Tribe. She teaches and holds the Chair in Modern Contemporary Poetry at Arizona State University. Her book has been shortlisted for the National Book Award for Poetry. This is a woman who gets things done!

The poems cover Native American issues, legends, relationships with land and air and water and animals. They also reveal the depth of Natalie's passion for her partner--sensual, sexy, hot! Survival, oppression, freedom, philosophy, love and humor are her subject matter. ("Top Ten Reasons Why Indians Are Good At Basketball" is an example of some of her humor.)

I humbly admit, in many of the poems I could only guess at the meanings of some of her words and lines. However I was never in doubt about her intensity, her passion. After I came to the end of the poems, I discovered she had written notes for some of the poems. So now I need to go back and read those again.

I also listened to her interview on the Otherppl podcast where I learned much about her life so far. You can listen to Natalie reading some of her poems here.

TOP TEN FICTION BESTSELLERS OF 1965

 Over the summer I completed reading the 1965 bestseller list for fiction. If you have followed my blog for a while you are familiar with what I call My Big Fat Reading Project. If you are new, go to the link to learn about why I read these best selling novels of long ago.

I have only reviewed three of the ten books here and I will provide the links to those reviews. Otherwise I will give you a brief synopsis of the other seven. The purpose of this post is to give my thoughts on how these books shed light on the events of 1965. It is my theory that in the 20th century the bestseller lists, which are based on sales, give evidence of the interests and concerns of fiction readers in any given year.

#1: The Source: Michener used the framework of an archeological dig at an ancient site in Israel to cover the vast history of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Religious themes always sold well in the early years of the 20th century, but had not been as popular in the 1960s. I would think this one was of interest because of the growing tensions in Israel in the decade. 

Michener shows the connections between the religions and provides a history of their major conflicts. He made me think about religion, why humans need the idea of God, how religion had brought both order and chaos to our lives. An excellent read.

#2: Up The Down Stair Case: Bel Kaufman's book about her first year teaching in a public NYC high school is both hilarious and cautionary. The rules, the disorganization, the lack of supplies but most of all the challenges of making learning important to inner city teens, give what I was quite sure was an accurate picture of the scene. I wonder if LBJ's War on Poverty spiked an interest in this one.

#3: Herzog: This novel was also the #3 bestseller in 1964 and then won the National Book Award in 1965. It is his 6th novel but the first to make the top ten bestseller list. A middle aged intellectual is betrayed by his best friend who steals his wife. Bellow had cashed in on the midlife crisis plot before and since men still read fiction in the 60s, he did it again. 

#4: The Looking Glass War: The Cold War produced the spy fiction genre and Le Carre first hit the bestseller list in 1964 with The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. By his own admission, after that success , le Carre wanted to tell the real truth about the state of British intelligence in the early 1960s. The novel is grim. He shows a nation no longer the world power it was. Intelligence has become a political endeavor inside the offices of the military and intelligence branches. He became the antidote to Ian Fleming and James Bond.

#5: The Green Berets: These guys were the sexiest of military intelligence operatives during the Vietnam War so it is no surprise that this revealing but patriotic inside look at how they did the job would be a bestseller. I was appalled.

#6: Those Who Love: Irving Stone's biographical novel of Abigail and John Adams and their roles in founding American democracy must have had high appeal to readers still reeling from the assassination of JFK. For me, reading it in 2020, it was an indictment of how we have failed to keep those ideals. To his credit, John Adams as portrayed here had his doubts about that very thing at the time.

#7: The Man With the Golden Gun: This was the final James Bond novel. It takes place in Jamaica, though begins with Bond being brainwashed by the Russians after his capture in the prior book, then being given electric shock therapy by MI6 to make him fit for another mission. Again, the Cold War makes for bestsellers.

#8: Hotel: Arthur Hailey made his career with this first top ten bestseller. It is set in a famous New Orleans hotel which has seen better days and is now facing a hostile takeover by a hotel chain. Racism plays a large part in the story and that made it ripe for the times in 1965.

#9: The Ambassador: This was Morris West's third top ten bestseller. The second book on this list set in Vietnam, it is a fictionalized account of the months leading up to the CIA backed coup and assassination of South Vietnam's President Ngo Dinh Diem. The CIA giveth and the CIA taketh away when their implanted rulers stop playing by US rules. The novel does a fair job at showing the complexities of Vietnamese politics at the time and the toll this took on an American ambassador to the country. It captures that moment when LBJ began to plan his major escalation of the war.

#10: Don't Stop the Carnival is one of Herman Wouk's whimsical novels. A Broadway promoter decides to get away from the constant pressure of his job and the harsh New York winter by buying a hotel on a fictional Caribbean island that feels a lot like Jamaica. What was it about Jamaica in 1965?. It is a rip roaring read with some cringe inducing views of the natives who of course are Black and the many gay people who have taken refuge there from the homophobia of America. 

So there you have it. Have you read any of these books? I felt they gave me a pretty good picture of some of the major issues and concerns in America in 1965. I am now reading the novels that won awards in that year and will create a similar post when I finish those.

BRIDGE OF CLAY

Bridge of Clay, Markus Zusak, Alfred A Knopf, 2018, 534 pp

This is the second novel by Markus Zusak, following The Book Thief. I read it for the One Book At A Time reading group.

From the title I thought it would be about a bridge made of clay. Instead it is about a character named Clay who builds both a literal bridge made of stones and a figurative bridge in order to heal his broken family.

Clay is the fourth of five brothers living in Australia. Their father married a refugee from Eastern Europe and it was one of those wonderful marriages full of love. The eldest brother, Matthew, narrates the story of his family. Weaving back and forth in time, he reveals the tragedy that shattered the love and closeness between two parents and five boys. To tell what form that tragedy took and the effects it had would be nothing but a spoiler.

The writing is as imaginative as that in The Book Thief. Because of how convoluted the plot is, some of my reading group members were so baffled that one did not finish, one was quite bitter about the time spent reading it. This provided quite a raucous discussion!

I read all 534 pages in three days. I grew to love trying to figure out the many mysteries presented and to care for all the characters, even the unlikable ones. Zusak covers a large amount of time, a multitude of incidents, and many characters. The antics and adventures of the five brothers were never dull. 

Clay is a sort of Christ-like figure though it is not a religious story at all. Instead it proclaims the power of love to overcome tragedy and misunderstanding.

OCTOBER READING GROUP UPDATE

Yes, my reading groups are still meeting on Zoom. We may be doing so for a while yet. It is still better than no reading group meetings at all. As you will see, in this month of impending doom and desperate hope for better days ahead, the books this month are all in some way political.

One Book At A Time:

Carol's Group:

Bookie Babes:

Have you read or discussed any of these books? What are your reading groups discussing this month? If you were in a reading group what books would you want to discuss? 

WHITE MASKS

 

White Masks, Elias Khoury, Archipelago Books, 2010, 303 pp; (originally published in Lebanon, 1981, translated from the Arabic by Maia Tabet)

This was the translated book I read in September. Elias Khoury is Lebanese. I have read two other novels of his and loved them both: Gate of the Sun and As Though She Were Sleeping. Like those two books, White Masks takes place in Beirut. Since that country had been in the news, I thought it might be appropriate.

Though the novel was published in the United States in 2010, it was originally published in Lebanon in 1981, making it one of his early novels. It covers a period of months during the Lebanese Civil War which lasted for 15 years, 1975-1990. The war was religious, political, and devastating to the country.

The corpse of Khalil Ahmad Jaber, a civil servant, was found in a mound of garbage. He had been missing for weeks before he was found. A journalist, who narrates the story, sought to piece together what had happened to Jaber. He interviews many people, including the man's widow. Thus the reader gets a sense of life in Beirut during the early part of the war.

I won't tell you this was easy to follow. Each person interviewed has their own particular story to tell about Jaber, about his or her own life and about the violence around them. I got a sense of what it was like for everyday people, for the police and the soldiers. Hard times for all and quite a bit of brutality. Khoury shows the breakdown of society typical of any area where war is being waged.

It was a brilliant way to portray all of that and it was also a mystery. I was interested in the effects of civil war on the psyches and inner lives of men, women and children. The front cover blurb speaks of the resilience of people. I did not get that. I got that such an amount of chaos and uncertainty breaks people. It certainly broke Khalil Ahmad Jaber.

Some American pundits claim we may be heading for civil war in America. I sincerely hope we do not come to that.

BOOKS READ IN SEPTEMBER

 

My reading in September was all over the place. I had a plan but instead I picked up whatever looked good on my shelves. Of course I read the picks for my reading groups and finished both a poetry collection and a book of essays I had been reading for a while. All in all I had a feeling of freedom.

Stats: 13 books read. 10 fiction. 5 by women. 1 historical fiction. 2 thrillers. 2 children's books. 2 nonfiction. 1 translated. 1 poetry.

Countries visited: United States, Lebanon, Italy, Australia, Ireland, Spain.

Authors new to me: Beatrice Schenk De Regniers, Maia Wojciechowska, Natalie Diaz, Langston Hughes.

Favorites: Deacon King Kong, The Just City, Not Without Laughter, High Country

Least favorite: The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby

The new Blogger has forced me to retrieve book cover images in a new way. I cannot seem to control the size of each image which bothers me. Hopefully it won't bother you. I am behind on my reviews, as usual, so if you want to find out more about a given title you will have to go to Goodreads or somewhere else on the web. If you have any tips for me on this matter, please let me know.

Have you read any of these titles? What were your favorite reads in September?

THE JUST CITY

 

The Just City, Jo Walton, Tor Books, 2015, 280 pp

What a wonderful surprise this was! The goddess Pallas Athene creates an experiment to build a planned community where Plato's Republic will be brought to life. She gathers adult teachers from all eras of history and various countries. 10,000 children, bought from slavers, will be raised and taught Plato's principles and allowed to become their best selves.

Apollo joins in, having arranged to become a human child. Socrates shows up to question everything and keep Athene on her toes.

It is a brilliant story with plenty of fault lines built in, leaving the reader in suspense as to the success of the experiment. Since I have read Plato, the Illiad and the Odyssey, I was just knowledgeable enough about Greek mythology and philosophy to hang on to the tale by my mental fingertips.

I have only read two of Jo Walton's books previously: Among Others and My Real Children. Each time I am delighted, so I must read more.

Are any of you fans of Jo Walton? If yes, which of her books have you read?

DEACON KING KONG

 

Deacon King Kong, James McBride, Riverhead Books, 2020, 365 pp

I read this for the reading group I call Carol's Group. I was excited because my husband loved it and it got great reviews. Well, I had a hard time getting going with it. Lots of characters and and time shifts.

Deacon King Kong is a deacon in a predominately Black neighborhood church located near the projects in 1960s south Brooklyn. He is also a drunk who stays mildly intoxicated all day long on a concoction his best friend brews up and calls King Kong.

The entire neighborhood scene is humorously chaotic with some sad overtones. Many of the characters have nicknames. The Deacon's is Sportcoat. Mixed in are Latinos and Italian mobsters. Plus there are drug dealers, a murder or two, cops, love affairs and at least two mysteries.

That was a lot to keep track of but once I got past the feeling that the story was just spinning its wheels, I came to enjoy it and wanted to find out how it would end.

James McBride does not simplify what life is like among these people for the reader. I approve of that. Life in any community is messy. His characters are not stereotypes, but rich and complicated. Nothing is black and white for anyone and that is not a pun. However, Black lives are unique in their own way and the novel makes both of these truths quite clear.

I am glad I read it. I feel I understand some things I did not have clear before. 

THE BOOK THIEF

 

 

The Book Thief, Markus Zusak, Alfred A Knopf, 2005, 550 pp

I may be the only person who never read this book before. One of my reading groups will discuss the author's next book, Bridge of Clay, this month. Since I had The Book Thief on my shelf I decided to read it first. 

When I started The Book Thief once before, I just got creeped out at the idea of Death as a narrator. Somehow it now makes sense to me and I found it a good, if quirky, device.

The setting is Germany, 1939. Hitler has full power over the people with his Nazis. We all know that story. Liesel Meminger is being taken by her mother to a foster home in Berlin, the mother being too poor to take care of her two children. On the way, Liesel's brother dies. She finds a book in the snowy graveyard where he is buried, The Gravediggers's Handbook. She cannot read yet but wants it as a talisman.

Liesel's foster family is kindly enough, though her foster mother is gruff and borderline abusive. When the girl has nightmares, her foster father sits with her through the rest of the night and eventually teaches her to read. He and her book are her best companions, along with a neighbor boy, so she begins to steal more books. These people are almost as poor as Liesel's mother, whom she never sees again.

It is an awfully sad story interspersed with bittersweet moments. I guess because there are so many kids in the book, the publishers decided to market it as a teen read. What? I would have kept a ten foot pole between myself and this book as a teen. Heck, I did so for the past 15 years.

I will say though that Zusak does a wonderful job of portraying what war, anti-semitism and poverty is like for kids growing up. His style is unusual but his characters are people you come to know and care about. The depth of oppression in Nazi Germany is palpable and he shows the different effects it has on both children and adults.

 

 

 

THE THRALL'S TALE

 

The Thrall's Tale, Judith Lindbergh, Viking, 2006, 446 pp

This well-researched and meticulously written novel is historical fiction set in Greenland at the end of the 10th century AD. Erik the Red it was who led 25 ships and 400 settlers of Vikings from Iceland to the new land of Greenland.

A thrall was the name for a slave in the Viking world. Thrall originally meant someone bound to a landowner. It has come to mean any way a person can be under the control of someone or something. I like to say I have been enthralled by a book but never knew the word originally meant enslaved!

I have had The Thrall's Tale in my possession for many years but when I first attempted to read it, I could not make any headway. Recently I read a collection of Norse Tales.

The Norse Myths, Kevin Crossley-Holland, Pantheon Books, 1980, 236 pp

From it I learned the cosmology of the Norse people, came to know all the gods, goddesses, giants, dwarves and monsters. The tales, in the collection retold by Kevin Crossley-Holland, cover the entire breadth of Norse mythology from its creation tale to Ragnarok, its destruction tale and vision of the future. 

Thus I felt ready to try The Thrall's Tale again and it all suddenly made sense, especially enhanced by the maps provided in the front of the book. If that sounds like a lot of work and study, it was. It was also so worth it.

Katla is a thrall who traveled to Greenland on one of those 25 ships I mentioned above. She had lost her mother, who was her master's lover and also an early Christian. Once her master and his family were settled, Katla was brutally raped by the master's son. Being completely traumatized, her master sent Katla to Thorbjorg, a prophetess of the Norse god Odin. Thorbjorg had been brought to Greenland to serve as a link to the gods, a healer and a seer who could determine the future of the settlers. She does heal Katla and keeps her as one of her own thralls.

In a sense this is a pioneer tale. The wild and unpredictable weather in Iceland, the encroaching inroads of Christianity, and Katla's inability to accept the daughter she bore from the rape, make this a story filled with extreme hardship and brutality.

Thorbjorg truly had powers to heal, divine the future and protect the people. Once Christianity began winning converts from both the lords and the common people though, her powers diminished.

So many conflicts of love and faith, so much violence, even a plague. Through it all was the influence of Odin, of the Norse myths, and of forces for good and evil. Katla's daughter walks the razor's edge between those forces.

It was not an easy book to read but it was "enthralling." I looked forward to reading it everyday, taking my time to understand such a foreign culture. Judith Lindbergh goes beyond the grand themes of the Vikings and into the details of ordinary life behind the sagas, the battles and the feuds. She provides a thrilling tale of adventure giving equal attention to women and men.

IN THE COUNTRY OF WOMEN

 

 

 In the Country of Women, Susan Straight, Catapult, 2019, 358 pp

 Susan Straight is another one of my favorite authors. I have read all of her seven novels. This book is a memoir that almost reads like a novel.

She is a petite blonde whose novels feature an extended Black family in Rio Seco, CA (her fictional name for Riverside.) Many years ago when I read her first novel, I've Been in Sorrow's Kitchen and Licked Out All the Pots, I along with others wondered what gave her the right to explore so deeply the life of a Black single mother.

Soon we learned that Susan Straight married into a Black family. In the Country of Women tells how she met and fell in love with her husband, how she grew up relatively poor with a Swiss immigrant mother, how she learned to read at the age of three, and how she became a writer shortly after she learned to read.

When she met Dwayne Sims, she found a huge extended family who accepted her unconditionally (after making sure she could cook.) Dwayne's mother provided the warmth that Susan's own mother was too embittered by life to give to her daughter.

I have a special affinity for girls who grow up reading every book they can get their hands on and then go on to write their own. Though Susan Straight is a decade younger than I, as kids we read all the same books!

Once she became an in-law to the Sims family and once she took a writing class with James Baldwin at Amherst College, she determined to research the history of both her family and the Sims. She also had three daughters with Dwayne and wanted to give them particularly the stories of all the strong women who came from Europe and the American south to California. Women who overcame incredible hardships and did whatever was needed to provide for and protect their children.

Hence the title: In the Country of Women. It is a beautiful, deeply emotional yet somehow lighthearted memoir. It is a gift to the world in which she proclaims the triumphs for which most women are left unthanked and unrecognized.

Most of all, it is a tribute to family, to taking care of your own as well as welcoming in those who are uncared for. It is full of hope. 

NIGHT. SLEEP. DEATH. THE STARS

Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars, Joyce Carol Oates, Ecco, 2019, 787 pp

 

Note: This is one of the longest reviews I have written in a while. It is a plea for the benefits of reading outside one's comfort zone. I hope you understand.

 

I think it is safe to say that readers are divided into devoted fans of Joyce Carol Oates and those who would not read her, ever! Here is how I became fan.

I first read her one hot month in 1988 when I was stranded in Los Angeles due to a snafu in a training program I was attending. My accommodations were located across the street from a used bookstore with racks out on the sidewalk where battered paperbacks sold for a quarter.

I picked up Marya, A Life, only two years after its publication and already a 25 cent paperback. I lay on my bed in a sweltering room and read about Marya's terrible, gritty life having really no idea what I was reading. It was the most disturbing thing I had ever read. Not surprising because in those days I usually read trashy bestsellers.

By 1992, I was living permanently in LA and had embarked on an effort to branch out in my reading. I read Joyce Carol Oates's first novel, With Shuddering Fall. It was pretty gritty too. Her characters were fairly unrecognizable to me. Generally lower class whites, not mainstream in any way, violent and sometimes outright crazy. My mother told me she had tried reading Oates but found her books "weird."

I persevered, still eager in those days to rebel against my mother. I have read her first nine novels and some early short stories, then dropped her for several years. In 2013, I started again, reading whatever was her latest book. She is still weird in her own unique way, so I can only conclude that I have changed as a reader. I now count myself among her dedicated fans.

 

I have not read the recent bestsellers, How To Be An Antiracist or White Fragility, but I would say that Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars is JCO's answer to such conundrums from a literary viewpoint. 

 

The title is the last line of a Walt Whitman poem, "A Clear Midnight."

 

The novel is an intimate family tale concerning a white family in upstate New York. The father, a much-loved and well-to-do man in his community, pulls off the road one evening to intervene in what appears to be a scene of police harassment against a Black man. In the ensuing debacle, John Earle McClaren is beaten, tasered, and left by the police on the side of the road where he suffers a massive stroke. The dark skinned man being harassed is taken into custody.

McClaren dies in the hospital from a staph infection a couple weeks later. By that time in the story, his wife and five grown offspring have been introduced. It is clear they are not exactly the close and happy family they are perceived to be by the community.

The novel is long but I read it quickly, not wanting to look away. The family majorly fractures after the patriarch's death but she shows us the hairline fractures present from the beginning, though they had been held in stasis, in almost a hostage situation, by John Earle McClaren. His control was not ever physically brutal but it was absolute. Not his wife nor any one of his children were allowed to be who they really were nor to think for themselves.

JCO has always appeared to be prescient in her novels. She wrote this one a year before the more recent explosion of the Black Lives Matter movement. Listening to an interview with her about writing this novel, I realized again how attuned she is to the evils and upheavals of American culture. At this point in her life she is a privileged white woman but she came up in near poverty in the midst of small town violence. A favorite childhood book of hers was Alice In Wonderland.

 

She has written at least 56 novels! I feel her writing has become somewhat more accessible over the years but has never lost that bite, penetrating the human heart with all of its strengths and weaknesses, its fears and joys. In her novels I have found everyone I've ever known, the ones I was afraid to know, and myself.

 

I most loved Jessalyn McClaren, the widow of John and the mother of those five children. Her grief and her emergence from it, her tentative forays into life as her true self, are all so meticulously shown. Somehow we white people get to know ourselves through the book: our ridiculous assumptions about others, our reluctance to move outside our perceived safety zones, our ill-informed prejudices about people and our inherent fragility as the most powerful race on earth, no matter what our political stances are.

All of that is in Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars. Read it at your own risk.

SEPTEMBER READING GROUP UPDATE

My reading groups are on a roll. Lately every book is one I either already wanted to read or one I am happy to read. Still on Zoom though it may be possible to hope we can meet in person again someday soon.

Carol's Group:

 

One Book At A Time:

 

Bookie Babes:

 

Tiny Book Club:

 

 

How are your reading groups going? Have you had any good discussions lately? Have you read or discussed any of the above?

STARLING DAYS

Starling Days, Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, The Overlook Press, 2020, 289 pp

 

This novel was the April selection of the Nervous Breakdown Book Club. I hesitated to post my review since it was the least favorite of the books I read in August. It features a main character who suffers from depression and was hard for me to read at times but I decided to share what I got out of it because it was important to me.

 

Mina and Oscar have been a couple for many years and finally marry. Mina is a highly educated young woman who teaches and is working on a PhD in literature, specializing in Greek myths. Oscar works as a salesman for his Japanese father's liquor business.

On their wedding night, Mina attempts to end her life with pills. This we learn in the first chapter when Oscar is called by police to pick up Mina, whom they found at midnight leaning over the edge of the George Washington Bridge, known as a location for suicides.

Oscar decides to move them to London while he does some work there on his father's property, thinking a change of scene will be good for Mina. It does not help much, her depression has it in its grip, her meds are not working, and though Oscar tries to protect her he is becoming overwhelmed.

As the story goes on, it reveals the many early traumas of both. I liked the ways the author described each one's coping mechanisms but the choices both were making made me wonder if they would make it. I grew a little weary of being inside their heads and could not guess whether the ending would be happy or tragic.

I am not sorry I read Starling Days because it helped me understand a few things. I have always had an aversion to the subject of mental illness. It frightens me. After I finished the book I realized that I was raised to repress my own moods and occasional bouts of depression, to pretend I was fine, to keep up with life and family and work duties no matter how I felt. 

I guess I am fortunate to also have a strong, even sometimes happy side and to have never succumbed. Currently I have a friend who suffers from depression and have had to figure out how to relate to her when she is overcome. Buchanan's novel gave me insight into and more empathy for my friend.

THE VANISHING HALF

The Vanishing Half, Brit Bennett, Riverhead Books, 2020, 460 pp

 

Two of my reading groups picked this novel for discussion in August, but what a difference in reaction between the two groups. One was unanimous in loving it, the other was a mixture of opinions. Personally I found it brilliant.

 

The story centers around a set of female twins, not necessarily identical but born on the same day from the same mother. Their family lived in a small Louisiana town where everyone is Black though extremely light skinned. The townspeople are careful never to marry a darker skinned person even though all the surrounding towns know they are of the Negro race.

The twins, Desiree and Stella, witness the brutal murder of their father, by a white man, at a young age. At sixteen, they run away together and manage to survive by depending on each other.

One day, Stella vanishes. From that point on the story is split into two, following Stella and Desiree separately. Stella has passed as white and married a successful white man. Desiree married and then left an abusive Black man whom she flees with her very dark skinned daughter and returns home.

The novel is an almost Shakespearean tale about identity, both racial and gender. It is not, as far as I am concerned, about whether or not the characters are likeable, but about what happens to individual identities as they live and grow in a world that disdains difference.

As these sisters and daughters and mothers long for each other through several decades, a majority of the characters do grow and change giving a hopeful aspect. Some do not, due to being either oblivious, hopelessly prejudiced or just plain evil. 

I was captivated on every page. Brit Bennett, I think, believes in love and family but is showing us how those aspects of life are also full of pain, separation and loss along with just enough redemption to keep life going.

BOOKS READ IN AUGUST

 

 

August was just fine for me, despite all the upsetting stuff that is going on. I celebrated my birthday, for a week, as always. We had a mix of heat waves and lovely days in the 80s with some clouds. As has been my way during the pandemic I escaped into books and was rewarded with all kinds of stories that reminded me there have always been troubles mixed with joys.

Stats: 11 books read. 8 fiction. 8 written by women. 2 science fiction. 1 mythology. 1 nonfiction. 1 memoir. 2 historical novels.

Place I went: United States, England, Greenland, Germany.

Authors new to me: Steph Cha, Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, Kevin Crossley-Holland, Judith Lindbergh, Markus Zusak.

Favorites: Night Sleep Death the Stars, In the Country of Women

Least favorite: Starling Days

How did your August reading go? Favorites? Have you read any of these books?