MIGRATIONS

 Migrations, Charlotte McConaghy, Flatiron Books, 2020, 256 pp

This is the best novel I have read so far in 2021. The big idea behind the story is climate change. Set in the future, Earth's oceans are fished out, wild animals have all but disappeared, insects and birds are dwindling rapidly.

The culprits in all this demise are humans. Unless we can change our ways we will ourselves follow since we have decimated the very elements needed to survive. Thus it must be humans who populate the story.

Charlotte McConaghy had already published three sci fi/fantasy series in Australia prior to this international debut. She knows how to create awesome female characters so it is no surprise that Franny Stone, damaged and nearly broken, is also the heroine who drives this epic tale.

Able to love but unable to stay, her search for a way to heal the earth takes her on a journey to track the last Arctic Terns on their migration from Greenland to Antarctica. She finagles her way onto a fishing boat and then convinces its equally damaged and broken captain to take that journey. The opening chapter where Franny meets the captain and his crew is so gripping, I wondered where the author could go after that.

The answer is everywhere, from Ireland to Australia, on the high seas and into the human heart. All the while the mystery of Franny is gradually revealed. When a person has nothing more to lose, when she must engineer her own redemption, there are no limits to her daring.

The writing is at once cinematic and intensely personal. Never does the pace falter. On every page, I wanted desperately to know how the book would end. When it did, I wanted it to go on. I wanted to stay with Franny forever.

RED PILL

 Red Pill, Hari Kunzru, Alfred A Knopf, 2020, 304 pp

This is an important novel about today's world, about intrusion into our privacy, about a sort of epic battle between left and right in politics, about the ways in which such conundrums wear us out and down.

The title refers back to the 1999 film, The Matrix. It is about a choice: the red pill reveals life-changing truth, the blue allows a state of blissful ignorance. (I did not remember this trope from the film so I plan to watch it again.)

The novel opens with a middle-aged writer, happily married, father of a three year old daughter, but stuck as a writer.

"It is when you first understand," he says of middle age, "that your condition...is not absolutely mutable, that what has already happened will, to a great extent, determine the rest of the story."

In an effort to break through his writer's block, he travels from Brooklyn to Germany on a fellowship. He expects to have weeks of uninterrupted quiet and to work on his next book. 

Instead, he finds a regimented scene where he is expected to write at a desk in a large communal room surrounded by the other writers. He immediately becomes uncomfortable and gains a reputation as odd man out and troublemaker for resisting the rules.

He hides out in his room, binge-watching a violent cop show, and not writing. He takes walks around the town of Wannsee, historically the location where the Nazis planned the final solution. In the dining area he meets Anton, the writer of the cop show and perceives the man to be his nemesis. Eventually an obsession forms that Anton is living in the writer's mind. His actions become increasingly erratic.

I am drawn to descent into madness tales, perhaps because I have been on that brink a couple times myself. Kunzru has cleverly written one these tales but creates a parallel one; society and an individual making similar descents.

This creepy beginning ramps up into a type of psychological thriller. After a stint in a psych ward and finally being rescued by his left-wing lawyer wife, the book ends on the night of the 2016 election as he and his wife throw a party to watch the election results come in. Yes, that night!

I found the end of the book possibly a bit soft and improbable. As I thought about it over several days, I realized that it is so very Hari Kunzru that the nature of his story should be set against an improbable ending. After all, at this point in history we have little idea of where we are headed. 

Not a feel good novel but certainly an illuminating one.

MYSTERIES AND THRILLERS MINI REVIEWS

When January 1, 2021 finally rolled around I was in a state of despair with nothing to look forward to but January 6 (which brought only more anxiety) and January 20. Finally the longest wait ever was over. Meanwhile I decided to sink into the most distracting reading I could find. For me that is mysteries and thrillers where the pages fly by, justice gets done and the bad people get what is coming to them. It was a good decision! Here are some short reviews of those, for me, sanity saving books.

 The Searcher, Tana French, Viking, 2020, 446 pp

I would categorize this one as a literary crime novel. Tana French has always embedded her excellent plots in a literary style. I have read all of her previous seven books and appreciate how she has branched out in each one.

A former Chicago cop, after a divorce and deep disillusionment with law enforcement, has moved to Ireland. While fixing up his cottage and getting to know the local people and customs in his remote village, he gets pulled into a missing person can by a curious child who shows up on his property.

Though the story takes a while to get going, Tana French builds tension on every page until all the clues come together. The book is a study in culture clash, small town secrets and sad truths. I loved it.

The English Girl, Daniel Silva, HarperCollins, 2013, 473 pp

The 13th book in Daniel Silva's Gabriel Allon series is a political thriller. Allon is an art restorer in his public life but also works as an assassin and spy for Israeli intelligence. He is a master at all three roles.

Over the course of the series, Allon has forged relationships with both British and American intelligence. In The English Girl, he is called in via MI6 to find the missing mistress of the (fictional) current Prime Minister of Britain. The criminals behind the kidnapping of Madeline Hart figure the British governing party will pay a huge ransom to protect their guy at 10 Downing Street from scandal.

When Allon penetrates the operation, he finds himself once more at the potential mercy of some ruthless enemies he has made over the years, Russian enemies that is.

Even after 12 books this author managed to raise my heart rate while he began to set up a possible new future for his hero. Also intriguing was how deeply the story penetrated into Putin's true intentions for his country and the rest of the world, intentions that nearly destroyed our democracy over the past four years, intentions he has had since he became Russia's leader in 2012.

Mona Lisa Over Drive, William Gibson, Bantam Books, 1988, 308 pp

The final book in Gibson's Sprawl trilogy is a cyberpunk thriller. He gives us more of his groundbreaking unleashing of cyberspace onto the world of fiction. He exhibits some new fiction chops including deeper characters and an even more nuanced look at the machinations of the powerful Japanese underground, the uses of celebrities, and the mysterious beings behind artificial intelligence. 

His story brings back some characters from the first two books (Neuromancer and Count Zero) while adding Mona with her murky past, a new sort of console jockey, and an endearing but mentally challenged dude named Slick Henry who broke my heart.

After over 300 pages of non-stop action comes the intriguing ending meant to explain the history of these stories, the "why" of When It All Changed. It did not explain as much as it cliff-hangered me.

Will the next trilogy, The Bridge Trilogy, give more answers? Probably the plot will only thicken.

Hard Truth, Nevada Barr, G P Putnam's Sons, 2005, 324 pp

I ended my spree with the 13th book in Nevada Barr's mystery/crime series, all set in National Parks. I started reading this series five years ago and only have six more to go. I am getting there!

Park Ranger Anna Pigeon arrives at Rocky Mountain National Park for a temporary assignment as District Ranger in the midst of a search for three missing girls. On her first day two of the girls emerge from the woods, dressed only in ragged filthy underwear, traumatized and close to starvation. One girl is still missing. The two are rescued by campers but claim to remember nothing.

In a series where the plots are always complex and twisted, Nevada Barr has kicked it up yet another notch. Included in her tale are a wheel-chair bound paraplegic woman, a fringe Mormon community, mistaken identities, and a serial killer who specializes in harming children. 

Evil spreads through the breathtaking beauty of the park. Danger, even to animals, lurks in every valley, over the next peak, and even in the rangers's cabins. This is almost a horror novel.

I must admit that the physical and psychological damage done to the female children was hard to take. Be warned. Anna Pigeon's canny investigating and fearless strength provide much needed balance.

Have you read any of these thrillers? Who are your favorite thriller writers?

WILD SEED

 Wild Seed, Octavia Butler, Doubleday Books, 1980, 253 pp

This is the last book I read in 2020, for The Tinies reading group. We have not yet met to discuss it because one of us is ill (not COVID thank goodness) so I can't report on what they thought. I found it a tricky book to review because it contains multitudes but here goes.

Wild Seed is one in a series called Seed To Harvest. This book in that series is a somewhat alternate history beginning in Africa in 1690. Slavers are industriously capturing natives and shipping them off to America. Anyanwu is a healer, a shapeshifter, and is 300 years old. She does her best to protect her village from the slavers.

Doro comes upon that village. He had been inspecting what he calls his seed villages. What is a seed village? It is the crux of the whole story. Doro is over 1000 years old. When a body he inhabits becomes old or less useful, he jumps into another one after killing the previous owner. Just to give you some idea of the character. 

Doro has been engaged in a centuries long project to breed people of his race, developing individuals with superior powers and traits. He has brought many of these people to the New World, not as slaves but as almost mystical beings who can fight the powers of oppression.

Upon meeting Anyanwu, he recognizes her special powers and wants to use her to breed more people with such powers and add them to his groups. He also is aware that she is what he calls a wild seed and will need careful handling. So begins a power struggle between the two. Doro may be ruthless but Anyanwu is in some ways the stronger of the two because she has certain characteristics that he is lacking.

To America they go. Two hundred years go by bringing the story to 1840, before the Civil War but during the beginnings of Abolition. Doro and Anyanwu remain locked in their struggle. He demands complete obedience, she refuses to submit fully. She bears many children and suffers many tragic losses but fills a role that Doro cannot: healer, mother and a bit of a check on Doro's power.

The extremes of fantasy and the levels of violence in this tale of visionaries and psychics ride on a knife-edge of madness. It could be too much for some readers. I was fascinated and could not look away. Anyanwu is a heroine of mythic proportions and I had to know if she would survive under Doro or if she would escape.

A word about this series: I read Wild Seed in a 4 book collection, Seed To Harvest. The books in the collection are not arranged in order of publication. I searched for the reason. This collection was published just a year after Butler's death. Some sources say that she wanted the series released in the chronological order of the story, even though she wrote that chronology out of order. Originally the series was called the Patternist Series after the first published book, called Patternmaster. That novel is the last in Seed To Harvest.

From what I could find, readers are divided on the issue of whether to read the 4 books in publication order or chronological. Since I have seen this kind of thing happen with other science fiction series, I decided to go with the chronological option as presented in the collection. I will keep you posted as I read the other three books.

It looks like the four novels get into even wilder scenarios including a far future cosmic invasion! Can't wait!!

JANUARY READING GROUP UPDATE

 I am a bit late posting this but since none of my groups have met yet this month, here goes. Only three meetings. One is on Martin Luther King Day, another is on Inauguration Day and the last is after all the excitement and distraught horrible stuff is hopefully in the past. What a January we are having.

One Book At A Time:

I read this last year but it is a great book to discuss on Martin Luther King Day.

Carol's Group:

I am reading this now and I can tell you that is is astounding. 

Bookie Babes:

I have not read any of the books in this series and it is #9, but I look forward to a wintry read featuring Detective Inspector Vera Stanhope because I have heard good things about the series.

We are all still meeting on Zoom. Are any of your reading groups meeting this month? If so, what will you be discussing? Have you read any of these books?

Here is hoping February will see some light at the end of the tunnel.

WATER, WASTED

 

Water, Wasted, Alex Branson, Rare Bird Books, 2020, 283 pp

The final Nervous Breakdown Book Club selection of 2020 is possibly the weirdest novel I have ever read, but there was a lot I liked about it. As in Lord The One You Love Is Sick, it is set in a small town, this time in Missouri, right on the Missouri River.

The author grew up in Missouri, he likes to work for nonprofits that actually help people, and he runs an unusual podcast where every episode is the first episode without any sequels, or something like that. 

Central to the story are a middle-aged divorced couple, Barrett and Amelia, who lost their only child, a daughter named Edi. That loss destroyed their marriage leaving them each to become rather isolated eccentrics. The violent death of a teenage boy touches both of them in different ways but prompts them to reconnect and reflect on Edi's passing. 

Several other odd characters of the town turn out to have their own connections to Barrett, including an involved story concerning lots of dogs, a talking goat, a Bigfoot-like entity that ravages the countryside, and a G-man (supposedly a government agent who acts more like an alien.)

The story circles around, back into the past, and through many instances of the Missouri River flooding. During her short life, Edi wrote several fantasy books in which the goat, Bigfoot and the G-man figured. When these entities show up in town, Barrett and Amelia read Edi's books for the first time, trying to make sense of it all. What did she know and was it connected with her death?

I only recommend the novel to those who truly love the weird. It is like China Mieville decided to write a story set in small town America. I can't quite explain why I liked it, but I did. It made me think of some of the people and ideas that seem to have taken over our country in recent years and wonder if they didn't come out of a speculative genre or some parallel universe.

Thanks once again to another Los Angeles based indie publisher, Rare Bird Books, and to The Nervous Breakdown for sending the book out. 

LORD THE ONE YOU LOVE IS SICK

 Lord The One You Love Is Sick, Kasey Thornton, Ig Publishing, 2020, 229 pp

In the November, 2020, selection of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club, from indie publisher Ig, a slice of life plays out in a small North Carolina town. It is an enlightening read in terms of the supposed conflict between Red states and Blue states. I say supposed because it is my belief that Red vs Blue is a political construct that smothers the actual complexity of American lives.

Kasey Thornton grew up in a town similar to the one she writes about. She still lives in that community. She put this debut novel together by collecting the stories she had written about life in her town. The book reads like a novel, at least it did for me.

After the fatal heroine overdose of his best friend, Dale's life becomes almost impossible. He feels guilty for abandoning his friend, he is training to be a cop, and his marriage is on shaky ground. As all of this plays out, other residents of the town come into the story.

The drugs, the poverty, the vanishing economy, and all the secrets held combine into an explosive mix. The adults are facing down cancer, diabetes, mental illness; the kids are living with instability or abuse; the women are trying, and often failing, to stand by their men.

Yet there are strong religious beliefs and codes of behavior that include not facing reality. I have found this conundrum in much of Southern fiction: Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, Eudora Welty, Robert Penn Warren, Jesmyn Ward, Carson McCullers and more.

These issues and conflicts are probably present in any community. The title here comes from the Gospel of John in the story of Lazurus. When he falls ill, his sisters Mary and Martha send a message to Jesus: "Lord, the one you love is sick." If you were raised on the Gospels you know the rest.

Even Jesus had a secret plan.

BOOKS READ IN DECEMBER

 Remember December? It ended only 8 days ago. Sorry I have been missing for a few days but we all have our reasons. So, anticlimactic as it is, but for the record, here are the books I read in that far away month.

Stats: 10 books read. 10 fiction. 5 written by women. 1 for My Big Fat Reading Project. 1 speculative.

Places I went: Mexico, United States, Spain, Great Britain, Africa.

Authors new to me: Joseph Di Prisco, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Kevin Barry, Nick Flynn, Amy Shearn, Alex Branson.

Favorites: Night Boat To Tangier, Unseen City, Wild Seed.

I am a bit more caught up on reviews than usual. All but the last four of these have been posted.

Have you read any of these books? What are you reading now that is getting you through?

TOP 25 FAVORITE BOOKS READ IN 2020

 I had a year of great reading. I had set a lower goal than usual to give myself time to read some LONG books and I did do that. 

I read 122 books with an average length of 366 pages.

I read 44674 pages with an average of 122 pages a day. I think this is my most satisfying statistic since I always hope to read 100 pages a day. It looks like I nailed that one!

This year I decided to determine my top favorites by listing out all the books I noted as 5 star books on Goodreads. I got 46! It would seem either I am getting better at choosing books or books are getting better overall. Win-win, I would say.

I narrowed it down to 25 but added a few more at the bottom. For once I managed to get all of these reviewed on the blog and that is perhaps my best achievement. After all my wingeing last January, I figured out how to keep the blog going plus work on my writing. Of course, I was stuck at home for 9 months of the year so I should not brag.

In alphabetical order by title here are my favorites:

August Is A Wicked Month, Edna O'Brien

Barn 8, Deb Olin Unferth

Bellefleur, Joyce Carol Oates

Cantoras, Carolina De Robertis

The Glass Hotel, Emily St John Mandel

Hamnet, Maggie O'Farrell

How To Write An Autobiographical Novel, Alexander Chee

In the Country of Women, Susan Straight

The Keepers of the House, Shirley Anne Grau

Lilith's Brood Trilogy (Dawn, Adulthood Rites, Imago), Octavia E Butler

A Long Petal of the Sea, Isabel Allende

Night Boat to Tangier, Kevin Barry

Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars, Joyce Carol Oates

The Night Watchman, Louise Erdrich

Piranesi, Susannah Clarke

The Reckless Oath We Made, Bryn Greenwood

Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison

The Sweetest Fruits, Monique Truong

Transcendent Kingdom, Yaa Gyasi

Unseen City, Amy Shearn

Unsheltered, Barbara Kingsolver

The Vanishing Half, Brit Bennett

The Water Dancer, Ta-Nehisi Coates

The Women of Copper Country, Mary Doria Russell

Your House Will Pay, Steph Cha

Extras:

One of my goals for the year was to get caught up on all Neal Stephenson books I had not yet read. I still have one to go but I loved the ones I read 5 stars worth.

Quicksilver, The Confusion, System of the World, Anathem, and Reamde.

I cannot leave out The Labyrinth of the Spirits by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. Sadly we lost him this year so I add this one in his honor.

I have enjoyed reading all the year end lists from the bloggers I follow. We are mighty readers!

A huge thank you to all who follow me here with extra thanks for all who comment. Due to my reading groups on Zoom and all of you, I never felt too lonely this year. 

Happy New Year! Happy Reading! Happy Blogging Days Ahead!

UNSEEN CITY

 Unseen City, Amy Shearn, Red Hen Press, 2020, 266 pp

This will be my last review for 2020. I had two more I wanted to post but life got in the way. Next up will be my Top Favorite Reads, my Books Read in December, etc.

The September, 2020 pick of the Nervous Breakdown Book Club was published by an Indie press from my very own city!

I loved Unseen City from the first sentence to the last. Meg Rhys, the main character, is a 40 year old woman who self-identifies as a spinster librarian. She likes men and sex but does not want a husband or to be a wife. All her heroes had resisted wifehood from Jane Austen to Emily Dickinson.

Meg lost her younger sister to a hit and run on the streets of New York but that sister visits her as a ghost in the evenings after work. Besides her cat and books, her passion is contained in the shelves of the Brooklyn Collection, on the second floor of the Brooklyn Central Library where she works; where she has amassed a wealth of understanding about Brooklyn from its 18th century farmlands to it gentrification in the 21st.

However, a man does finally penetrate her spinsterhood. Ellis turns up at the Brooklyn Collection needing a history of the ancient Brooklyn house his family hopes to renovate and sell. This house has a ghost also! Her name is Iris, her story lurks beneath Meg's story and like magic the author ties them together.

Everything I love about novels is encapsulated in Unseen City. The rhythms of the prose, the believability of every character, the layers of history, the accuracy of its present time scenes.

I feel like I will from now on be aware that my house, my property, my town within my city, has all those layers of history beneath it. I think a smart combination of agent, publisher, editor and marketer could have made this novel a bestseller, but that did not happen. So now it is up to readers who tell other readers: READ THIS!!

Thanks to Red Hen Press for putting the book into the world and to TNB for putting it in my hands.

THIS IS THE NIGHT OUR HOUSE WILL CATCH FIRE

 This Is the Night Our House Will Catch Fire, Nick Flynn, W W Norton & Co, 2020, 275 pp

The other day when I reviewed The Good Family Fitzgerald, I mentioned that I intended to finish reading and reviewing the remaining 2020 selections of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club by the end of the year. I have finished reading the 5 books in this little challenge but with only two days left in December, I may find it even more challenging to fit in all the reviews. 

But first, a bit of a rant. I saw in the news recently that Bertlesmann, the international media conglomerate, who already owns Penguin Random House (itself already a conglomerate of all kinds of formerly independent publishing houses) is now going after Simon & Schuster. While we all realize that publishing is a business and thus must make money/profits, don't you think it feels like all these mergers into one mega corporation presents risks to the diversity of books that reach us? 

So I had the thought that the little indie publishers around the country and the world are going to have to take up the mantle that takes chances on new writers, on experimental writers, even genre writers, that have been choked out of mainstream publishing. I urge you to pay attention to the publishers of the books you read, the books that become bestsellers, have huge marketing budgets, etc, etc. If by chance you feel a sort of stifling sameness about some of these books, I want to point out that my subscription to The Nervous Breakdown Book Club has brought me many novels that are sometimes unusual, sometimes experimental but are almost always excellent reads by little known authors.

This Is the Night Our House Will Catch Fire is one of those books. It was the August pick, the fourth memoir by Nick Flynn and its publisher, W W Norton, is still privately owned. 

The style is what I would call experimental, short pieces arranged in such a way that brings together the traumatic events of the author's childhood, how he has coped with those events in both self-destructive and constructive ways, how he has figured out his adult relationships and how to live up to his responsibilities. 

The writing is full of contradictions: sadness and humor; insight and unawareness; real and imaginary memories. Because Flynn seems aware of these contradictions, I believed him.

The best parts for me were when he got into how he saw his environment as a kid. Those parts are excellent renditions of how kids try to make sense of what the adults around them are doing.

I also listened to his interview on the Otherppl podcast where I learned about his writing process and found useful ideas and approaches to writing memoir. Flynn teaches writing and it was almost like taking a class from him. If any of you are attempting that tricky descent into your past, I recommend both the book and the interview.

I truly admire people who attempt to raise their consciousness. To me, that is the most important task in life and is the road to developing our potentials as human beings. 

NIGHT BOAT TO TANGIER

 Night Boat To Tangier, Kevin Barry, Doubleday, 2019, 255 pp

Summary From Goodreads: 

In the dark waiting room of the ferry terminal in the sketchy Spanish port of Algeciras, two aging Irishmen — Maurice Hearne and Charlie Redmond, longtime partners in the lucrative and dangerous enterprise of smuggling drugs — sit at night, none too patiently. It is October 23, 2018, and they are expecting Maurice’s estranged daughter (or is she?), Dilly, to either arrive on a boat coming from Tangier or depart on one heading there. This nocturnal vigil will initiate an extraordinary journey back in time to excavate their shared history of violence, romance, mutual betrayals and serial exiles, rendered with the dark humor and the hardboiled Hibernian lyricism that have made Kevin Barry one of the most striking and admired fiction writers at work today.

I read this for a reading group. I had no idea what to expect. The summary above does set the scene. If you look on a map, Algeciras, Spain, and Tangier, Morocco, are separated by the narrow Straight of Gibraltar. It sounds swashbuckling and romantic but the ferry terminal where Maurice and Charlie wait is a study in sinister, haunted decrepitude. Well, so are the two man a study in such adjectives. 

We do also meet Dilly along about halfway through the story. The wait in the terminal happens over the course of one night but through their conversation and some back story about Dilly, the sad tale of the men's long friendship unspools. 

If it weren't for the lyricism, humor and humanity of Kevin Barry's prose, this novel could have put me into a depression. Instead it left me in a state of wonder. 

I am so glad I read it.

MEXICAN GOTHIC

 Mexican Gothic, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Del Rey, 2020, 254 pp

This was a reading group pick, suggested by me. I was seduced by the gorgeous cover as well as being interested in reading something set in Mexico. Also since I recently read Joyce Carol Oates's gothic novel, Bellefleur, I thought this book would give me another example of the genre.

It is the 1950s and Noemi is something of a Mexico City debutante. Spoiled, enamored of clothes and parties, she chooses the men she dates by their looks and their cars. She is not ready for marriage, in fact would like to attend college and study anthropology.

First though, she is sent by her father to check up on a newly married cousin who is crying for help from her husband's old family mansion high in the mountains. She claims she is being poisoned. If Noemi can bring back a report to her father, he will let her go to University. 

Noemi is full of self-confidence but is innocent as a lamb in most respects. What she finds at the mansion is so creepy, she is soon in as much danger as her cousin. As befits a Gothic heroine her reckless, plucky daring may just get her through.

Silvia Moreno-Garcia is masterful with both description and action. A good dose of horror pervades the story along with an intelligent mystery. Most of the fun of reading Mexican Gothic is following the twists and turns of the plot. For some reason the palpable horror did not turn me off. I just wanted to know what would happen. 

Fans of Bronte, du Maurier and even Mary Stewart will love this look at Gothic horror, Mexican-style and learn some obscure Mexican history at the same time. The author managed to write a story that feels both light and heavy. 

All my reading group members were well pleased.

THE GOOD FAMILY FITZGERALD

 The Good Family Fitzgerald, Joseph Di Prisco, Rare Bird Books, 2020, 404 pp

I have set myself a challenge to read the remaining novels I received this year from my Nervous Breakdown Book Club subscription. The number of books for this challenge is five. The Good Family Fitzgerald, the May selection, was lingering on my shelves because it is long, so I tackled it just after Thanksgiving. All 404 pages of fairly tiny print.

I had not heard of the author, though he has published five previous novels since 2000, as well as 3 poetry collections. He is 70 years old and active in education and literacy projects. In his interview on the Otherppl podcast, he relates the ways in which this novel is based on his own life.

I'll get the negatives out of the way first: the length, the wordiness, the style. Reading the book was like listening to your 70 year old uncle telling tales of the family when you are about 20 yourself. He is a bit out of step with the times though trying to stay relevant. He adds in sentences, whole paragraphs, sometimes pages of anecdotes and details that slow the story down.

The positives: This is a great sprawling family saga about the Irish in late 20th and early 21st century America. The combination of gangsters, lawyers and priests, all in the same family, is provocative and I must say entertaining. Paddy Fitzgerald, the patriarch, has his influence spread across business, real estate and the Catholic Church, all mixed up in a heady if shady stew.

I finally got to the end and was so pleased to find the females saving the day! Mostly I was happy to get to the end though not unhappy to have read it.

AN AMERICAN DREAM

 An American Dream, Norman Mailer, The Dial Press, 1965, 270 pp

Norman Mailer. Was he just a bad man, misogynist, and curmudgeon? Or was he a deep thinker, great writer and possible genius? I think probably both. He was full of himself as a younger man and he liked to antagonize anyone he could. He certainly had trouble with females. Do I read him because it is sensible to know the enemy? No, I think he was so perceptive concerning American society. I aways get insights from his books.

An American Dream was his fourth novel and came ten years after his third. It is a day in the life of Stephen Richards Rojack in which he murders his wife, makes it look like a suicide, faces the cops, starts an affair with another woman, confronts his enormously wealthy father-in-law, while staying drunk the whole time and facing all his demons.

The story is gritty, violent, sexy and psychological in the extreme. I don't particularly recommend it to anyone, but perhaps some men who read it will see themselves and some women will go, umhum, yes, that is what we are up against. In other words, read it at your own risk.

AUGUST IS A WICKED MONTH

 August Is A Wicked Month, Edna O'Brien, Simon and Schuster, 1965, 220 pp

This review is a complete spoiler, so if you have not read the book and plan to, you might want to read it first. If you don't plan to, you can read this as a plot summary. 

I love Edna O'Brien so much. I just get her and I feel she gets me. She turned 90 on December 15, 2020. Just the other day.

This was her next novel after The Country Girls Trilogy. Ellen, formerly of Ireland, lives in London and is divorced. She and her ex share a son who is eight years old. He mostly lives with Ellen but has weekends with his dad. Oh how I remember those times with my boys and my ex. That did not turn out well for us but things went worse for Ellen. 

When the dad takes the boy for a week long summer camping trip, Ellen decides to go on holiday herself. A fling to assuage her sorrows and to celebrate her freedom. Wild parties on the Riviera with wild people.

Then disaster. She gets the news that her son was killed by a truck on the side of a road. She stays on the Riviera for a few more weeks. It is August. She enters into an orgy of sex, eating, drinking and swimming with a mysterious guy. That all ends when he disappears and she develops what she fears may be gonorrhea. Worst nightmare scenario.

She finally goes home and works it all out, lets go of loss and failure and resolves to move on. I remember resolving the same. 

THE ARM OF THE STARFISH

 The Arm of the Starfish, Madeleine L'Engle, Farrar Strasus and Giroux, 1965, 243 pp

I have been following the books of Madeleine L'Engle all through My Big Fat Reading Project. This one is a great tale. Set in the "near future" as of 1965, filed at my library as "children's literature" because as of 1965 there was no such genre as Young Adult. However, Adam is a 17-year-old heading off for a summer job in Portugal before his freshman year at Harvard. 

He intends to become a marine biologist himself. Dr O'Keefe, his prospective employer, is doing groundbreaking research on the regenerative tissues found in the arms of starfish. Adam finds himself in the middle of a battle between pharmaceutical companies for possession of O'Keefe's research.

This is YA like one rarely finds these days. No drugs, no swearing, no sex. There is a sexy girl, the daughter of one of the men who wants to steal the research for his own profit.

Was this eerie to read during the weeks different drug companies were racing to get their COVID vaccines approved? You bet it was.

I love how Madeleine L'Engle always grants her young protagonists so much intelligence and independence. In this one, Adam has to decide all on his own who to trust as well as who to kiss.

HAMNET

 Hamnet, Maggie O'Farrell, Alfred A Knopf, 2020, 261 pp

[Note: I am on a quest to get reviews of all the books I have read in 2020 posted by the end of the year. So you will be seeing one a day and I hope I am not overwhelming you. You could save them all up and read them on Christmas Day when, no doubt we will all be bored out of our minds.]

Maggie O'Farrell has said in several interviews that she wrote Hamnet in an effort to bring for herself and readers some insight into William Shakespeare as a man and husband and father. She admits she pretty much imagined her novel based on very few facts. She is such a brilliant writer that I believed every word.

In Elizabethan England, the names Hamlet and Hamnet were interchangeable. In 1580 the Black Death crept across the country and into Stratford to claim the life of Shakespeare's only son. If you haven't read this book yet, now would be a good time as we stumble through the winter of our own pandemic.

I was blown away by everything in the book. Reading it gave me complete satisfaction on every page. I loved the way she imagined Agnes, the bard's wife and how she drew the many conflicts in the family life of her characters. Agnes could press the flesh between the thumb and first finger of a person and read into their character. She says she married William because he had more in him that anyone she had ever known!

When you read about the horrific grief accompanying the loss of a child and feel as though you have never read about that particular tragedy before, you know you are in the hands of a great writer. Because of course you have read that tragedy many times.

Why is it not too hard to read this story in these times? Because of the startling and blessed ending of the story which celebrates the power of art (in this case playwriting) to heal and bring joy to those left behind.

RBG X 2

 

My Own Words, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Simon & Schuster, 2016, 334 pp

In November, two of my reading groups chose two books on the subject of RBG, to be discussed a week apart from each other. Right in step with Nonfiction November! I always have a nonfiction book going in which I read a little most days. To complete the two RBG books in time though, I had to read more than a little each day. Honestly, I felt like I was in school but once again it was time well spent.

My Own Words is a collection of the Justice's articles, speeches and Supreme Court opinions. Assisting her in collecting, editing as needed, and writing Introductions for five different sections, were Mary Hartnett and Wendy W Williams. Those women are both professors of law who were also authorized by RBG to write her biography. As far as I know the biography is not yet published.

Having read Sisters In Law last year, some of the material in My Own Words covered ground I had been over before. That was fine because I gained a deeper understanding of the woman herself and of her life's work as well as the workings of the Supreme Court.

Her speeches are both charming and instructional. Her articles and court opinions are quite dense with legal speak and court precedent, making them more challenging reading for me since I still have scant knowledge of law, courts, and our justice system. 

Now I have more of that knowledge, making me better at reading and comprehending the news about Supreme Court cases and decisions. I have come to realize the importance of comprehending these matters as a civic duty and as a voter in our difficult and changing times.

Conversations With RBG, Jeffrey Rosen, Henry Holt and Company, 2019, 260 pp

This was the second book. It was a much quicker read. In a series of conversations, Jeffrey Rosen poses questions to Ms Ginsburg about life, love, liberty, and law. Her answers provided even more insight into the woman behind the image.

Jeffrey Rosen is President and CEO of the National Constitution Center. I have enjoyed many of his articles written for the Center's blog. He has been a friend of RBG since 1991 and it shows in their conversations.

They spoke about her landmark cases, her wonderful and happy marriage to Marty Ginsburg, her relationships with other Supreme Court Justices, and her carefully thought out plans for what she wished to accomplish on the Court.

Of course, my favorite chapter was "Margaret Atwood Meets RBG."

By the end of the book I felt I almost knew the woman personally. In the paperback edition I read, Rosen includes an afterword. It recounts his last conversation with the great woman, on December 17, 2019. So you get her own words, including her concerns for the future, just ten months before her death.

I wager that a full biography will appear eventually and I will probably read it. For now I have a fairly complete picture of this towering woman, her heart, her extraordinary intellect, and her unwavering courage.

TRANSCENDENT KINGDOM

 

Transcendent Kingdom, Yaa Gyasi, Alfred A Knopf, 2020, 265 pp

I loved this book from the first page to the last. I think Yaa Gyasi has a large, expansive mind. She likes to span the spaces between places, the fault lines between people, and the vast contradictions inside individuals. If you read her first novel, Homegoing, you know this.

Gifty is the daughter of Ghanian immigrants to the United States. As a child she lived as one of the few Black children in a small Southern town. Her mother is a devout Pentecostal but her father, never having felt at home in America, left and returned to Ghana. She adores her older brother Nana, but he succumbed to an overdose after becoming addicted to Oxycontin, prescribed by a doctor for a sports injury.

Her mother has twice succumbed to depression. Gifty turns to neuroscience to discover the scientific basis for addiction and depression. As a PhD candidate at Stanford her only friends are her lab mice and her lab partner.

Though she turned away from religion it is embedded deep in her consciousness. Wading through the distances between science and religion, between aloneness and connection, Gifty is a heroine unlike many others I have come across.

Transcendent Kingdom was a perfect read for the times. As an ideological war rages between those who look to science for answers to COVID and those who refuse to face facts, it made me look more deeply into the intersections of faith, science and love.