THE PEERLESS FOUR

Shop Indie Bookstores

The Peerless Four, Victoria Patterson, Counterpoint Press, 2013, 196 pp

I love nothing more than a well-written unique story. I was blown away by The Peerless Four, a fictional account of four young Canadian girls who competed in the 1928 Olympics, the first time in thousands of years women were ever allowed to compete.

These sixteen/seventeen year old girls each not only enjoyed being athletic from a young age, they craved it. Whether running, high-jumping or shooting hoops, each one overcame objections from parents, some through drastic measures such as the one who hid in a closet and refused to eat.

Here is what men thought about females in the Olympics in the 1920s: "No female should be seen swaggering around, pretending to be male. If females must compete in the Olympics, they should be consigned to participating in ladylike sports that allow them to look beautiful and wear some pretty cute costumes: archery, figure skating, and horseback riding being the best examples--activities that would not cause them to perspire. Furthermore, there is scientific evidence that the rigors of athletic activities weaken women for motherhood."

After introducing the four women with a quick chapter each on how they became athletes in childhood, the author gives us Mel, who narrates the novel as the chaperone for the Peerless Four.

Mel was a runner herself. As the story progresses we learn that she quit running after a miscarriage or two, falling for the idea that motherhood makes a woman complete. What made Mel complete was running and her marriage became a prison where she could not be herself, even though the husband wasn't necessarily a bad guy. He even allowed himself to be convinced to let Mel go to Amsterdam with the female team.

I am possibly the world's most unathletic person but this ostensibly sports novel got hold of me and would not let go. Mel, Jack the coach, and the four girls circle around each other in varying states depending on how training is going, the differing pressures on them all, and each one's past baggage. The climax at the Games themselves is so full of tension, I could barely breathe as I read.

Finally comes the real truth about any athlete-the aftermath of winning or losing. Who came through unscathed? The chaperone who never competed, the coach who had made those girls his reason for living, or the girls themselves? Read The Peerless Four and find out.

The other day I watched the movie "Foxcatcher." I kept wishing I were watching a movie made from The Peerless Four.

THE PRIZE

The Prize, Irving Wallace, Simon and Schuster, 1962, 761 pp

Irving Wallace's novel about the Nobel Prize was the #8 bestselling book in 1962. It took him over a decade to research and write. Unfortunately his research lays too heavily within the story and made the book overly long.

I could say that I got quite an education about the prizes but I would rather have looked all that up on Wikipedia and then enjoyed the story. Of course, Wikipedia did not exist in 1962.

By following the stories of six fictional Nobel winners, their associated wives or relatives, and some members of the Academy, he wove a pretty good tale. Each winner, whether scientist or writer, comes to Stockholm for Nobel week with personal baggage, vulnerable in different ways to the politics of the Nobel committees, to the press, and even to the world events of the times.

Though Wallace's characters are as much types as they are people, he gives each enough substance so that the reader becomes involved and participates emotionally in their changes. Of course, there are various romances spiced up with explicit sex (apparently Wallace is famous for that) but to his credit he makes of sex something seamless with the rest of life rather than sensational. He is clearly not in agreement with Puritanical views about its evilness.

Whenever he wrote about the trials and activities of the characters the story raced along. The historical bits, the travelogue style about visits to Stockholm's landmarks, and his descriptions of architecture, furnishings, restaurant meals and routes through the city were beyond boring. Unless you like that sort of thing, skimming is recommended.

In the end, he presents a balanced picture of the behind the scenes selections of the winners, the idiocy of such awards, as well as the positive effects on both the world and the winners due to recognition of great scientific work and literature.

I think the prize itself has been overshadowed by the many pop culture awards we have now, but I was still thrilled in recent years when Toni Morrison and Doris Lessing won. For me, the book was worth the read.

( The Prize is out of print, available as an ebook from certain on-line sellers, and in paperback from used book sellers. I found a hardback copy at my local library.)

MARCH READING GROUP UPDATE

And the reading goes on! Here is what my reading groups are reading in March:

The New Book Club: We are reading two books this month!

Shop Indie Bookstores

Shop Indie Bookstores

Once Upon A Time Adult Reading Group:

Shop Indie Bookstores

Tina's Group:

Shop Indie Bookstores

One Book at a Time:

Shop Indie Bookstores 

Bookie Babes:

Shop Indie Bookstores 

Tiny Book Group:

Shop Indie Bookstores 

  

INSURGENT

Shop Indie Bookstores

Insurgent, Veronica Roth, Katherine Tegen Books, 2012, 525 pp

THE SUNDAY FAMILY READ

I have read Divergent and seen the movie (twice!) My granddaughter loves this series. She is 13 and has not been harmed in any way by reading these books. In fact, we love to talk about them.

Insurgent picks up right where Divergent left off. Tris is still just about the best heroine I have met in fiction anywhere. Intelligent, strong, daring though not fearless, loving though nobody's fool. In the second volume she is suffering a form of PTSD from losses and incidents she went through in Divergent but she does not succumb. She powers on.

Tris is 16 and in love with Tobias (aka Four) but that love gets severely tested. They do a lot of kissing and fondling and even sleep in the same bed sometimes though they do not have sex. What I like about Roth's characterization of Tris is her ability to think and perceive for herself and that she is in fact more able than her boyfriend in several ways. She does not fail to use her abilities to stand before him, speak the truth, and call him out when he is being stereotypical as a male or weak as a human.

I once read an essay by I think either Anne Lamott or Natalie Goldberg (two of my favorite writing gurus) where she took issue with books that take you by the throat and with non-stop action and plot keep you reading to find out what happens. This kind of writing frightened her and she was suspicious that it had no value. I could see her point but then again why shouldn't a book be purely entertaining and what is wrong with reading 525 pages in just a few hours?

Veronica Roth does this to me while she also gets me thinking about deeper things like loyalty, truth, the state of mankind and why mind control is not a way to end war or conquer mankind's darker impulses.

(Insurgent is available in paperback on the shelves at Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

THE STORY OF CIVILIZATION III: CAESAR AND CHRIST

The Story of Civilization III: Caesar and Christ, Will Durant, Simon and Schuster, 1944, 672 pp

I have completed another milestone in my autodidact study of history. Caesar and Christ, which I have been reading off and on for three years, is quite a bit more about Caesar and Rome than it is about Jesus Christ and the beginnings of Christianity but there is good reason for that.

Early on in this volume on page 56 Durant lays out his thesis for the book: "The evolution of customs, morals, and ideas produced in one age the Stoic Cato, in a later age the Epicurean Nero, and at last transformed the Roman Empire into the Roman Church." I now understand in great detail how all of that came about.

The history of how a crossroads town called Rome became the Roman Empire reveals several aspects of the modern Western world. The Twelve Tables of laws written in 451 BC began what Durant calls Rome's greatest contribution to civilization: a legal structure. Another basic building block about which I have grave doubts was Rome's most basic institution: the patriarchal family in which the power of the father was almost absolute.

To my mind, a legal structure based on patriarchy inevitably leads to war. By war, empires are built but war depletes the empire building country and this sows the seeds of the empire's destruction. And so it goes. The empire of the United States of America, though it has taken a different form than that of the Roman Empire, is somewhere along that spectrum.

The most illumination in terms of my personal history came in the latter part of the book when Durant lays out the religious scene at the time when Christ lived on earth and makes clear how the spread of Christianity in its first 300 years incorporated elements of Judaism, Greek mysticism, Roman civilization, and many other spiritual beliefs and practices by the time its doctrine was codified.

Once Constantine, who was Emperor in the early 300s, converted to Christianity, which Durant considers possibly a consummate stroke of political wisdom, it was destined that the Church of Rome would succeed the Empire in ruling the Western world. That power may be waning today but it was the power that carried on Rome's government and civilization through the Dark Ages and beyond.

I understand Durant's thesis. His skill in making this part of history more clear to me leaves me in his debt. Next up is Volume IV: The Age of Faith, the longest in the series at 1086 pages. However long it takes me to read it, I know I have new revelations coming. At the risk of sounding like Plato, I feel it should be a requirement for world leaders to have studied these books or something similar.

Reviews of the earlier volumes:

Our Oriental Heritage

The Life of Greece

(The entire Story of Civilization Series is shockingly out of print, but the volumes can be found through used booksellers and in libraries.)

THE SILKWORM

Shop Indie Bookstores

The Silkworm, Robert Galbraith (aka J K Rowling), Little Brown and Company, 2014, 455 pp

Second in the Cormoran Strike detective series by J K Rowling (writing under a pen name), The Silkworm got off to a slow start for me. The magic in the relationship between Detective Strike and his office girl Robin seemed to have fizzled out. 

Meanwhile Strike, short on money as usual, overworked and in constant pain from his prosthetic leg, gets a new client. A famous author has gone missing and his long-suffering wife hires Strike to find him.

Though it took almost 99 pages to set up the whole thing, Rowling brought all kinds of threads together making for a breathless read to the end. I remembered that some of the Harry Potter books also had leisurely starts and then took off. She is quite amazingly good at plots.

The author turns up murdered, his agent and publisher have enough oddities between them to sufficiently confound the story, and Strike's relationship with Robin goes through plenty of change and development.

In her first volume, Rowling/Galbraith explored and exposed the evils of celebrity culture. In this one she lampoons the publishing industry. The dead novelist had just completed a manuscript divulging the worst about almost everyone he knew and there is even a leak about the forthcoming book by some loose lipped woman. Rowling gets her revenge, Strike and Robin get the murderer, and Robin gets what she has wanted all along.

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

DEPT OF SPECULATION

Shop Indie Bookstores

Dept of Speculation, Jenny Offill, Alfred A Knopf, 2014, 160 pp

I am as conflicted about this book as Jenny Offill seems to be about life. No, this is a novel so the main character, only called "the wife," is a fictional character who is conflicted about her life as a writer, a wife, a mother. But Jenny Offill must have experienced being conflicted because she writes about it so well.

In short sentences and short chapters she leaps from the universal to the individual. She throws in facts (antelope have 10X vision) and quotes from writers, friends, and even a tattoo. I started this book one day because it was short and on the Tournament of Books list and I was weary of long books as well as woefully under read as far as the TOB list goes. 

But every short chapter was rich and almost indigestible, so I could not read much in a day.

On page 8 the wife says, "My plan was to never get married. I was going to be an art monster instead. Women almost never become art monsters because art monsters only concern themselves with art, never mundane things." But she did fall in love with people and finally she married.

That was hard enough but then they had a baby. And then and then. So the book is called a "portrait of a marriage" in the promo. It could as easily be called a portrait of an artist or a portrait of a woman.

It is written with great artistry. It is a portrait in words. It is a poem in free verse.

I was conflicted because Jenny Offill came so close to what has been difficult and wondrous and true in my life.

THE ART FORGER

Shop Indie Bookstores

The Art Forger, B A Shapiro, Algonquin Books, 2012, 355 pp

The quality of writing in this novel is not really top-notch but the fact that I could not put it down and read it in two days means that it's not always about the quality.

Claire Roth is a fine artist who has not only never gotten a break but has been used by a male painter. Her former teacher and boyfriend took credit for a painting she had done, got rich and famous AND had her thoroughly discredited in the art world. This is the story of how she got her revenge.

Why is it called The Art Forger? Well, for one thing, Claire pays her rent by making expert copies of famous paintings for a company called Reproductions.com. She has the ability to paint in the style of some of the masters. The company is legit and its customers know they are buying a reproduction, but in the art world there are other gifted forgers some of whose paintings actually hang in museums as the real thing.

Claire gets herself into the most trouble when she agrees to reproduce a Degas painting for a New York art dealer in exchange for his promise to give her a private show at his gallery. We all know not to get mixed up with someone who says,"Trust me. It will be fine," but she does.

This is one of those mysteries where the wrongly accused suspect has to prove herself innocent before she gets locked up for good.  

It is a pounding good read.

(The Art Forger is currently available in paperback on the shelves at Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

AND THE MOUNTAINS ECHOED

Shop Indie Bookstores

And The Mountains Echoed, Khaled Hosseini, Riverhead Books, 2013, 402 pp

After being less than blown away by A Thousand Splendid Suns, I was going to give this one a miss. Khaled Hosseini, you can thank two of my reading groups, The Bookie Babes and Tina's Group, for getting me to read it after all.

And I'm glad I did. This author has always excelled at creating an emotional impact through his characters, thereby humanizing Afghan peoples for Western readers. In his third novel he adds a more complex structure that moves back and forth in time as well as location.

The story begins in an Afghan village where a father makes the difficult decision to give up a daughter for what he hopes will ensure her a better life, as well as for a payment that will help the rest of his family live in the present. But the separation between Pari and her beloved brother Abdullah creates a chasm in each sibling's heart that longs for reconnection. As these two and other characters relocate from Kabul to Paris to San Francisco, as other villagers survive wars and "progress", and a plastic surgeon arrives from Greece, the story grows more complicated.

Despite a few too many characters and story lines, Hosseini once again weaves together the noble and the unforgivable in human interactions. I ended up with more compassion for human beings and the choices we make, often without being able to perceive their consequences.

(And The Mountains Echoed is currently available in paperback on the shelves at Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

A HOUSE IN THE SKY

Shop Indie Bookstores

A House in the Sky, Amanda Lindhout, Scribner, 2013, 367 pp

This memoir was picked by two of my reading groups last month. I am glad I read it.

Amanda Lindhout was an adventurous young woman who lived to travel. She liked middle and far eastern locations best. As a young girl growing up in a broken family, she would read National Geographic magazines and picture herself visiting all those locations.

She made her first journey at 19 years of age, having saved up her tips as a cocktail waitress in her Canadian home town. She wanted to know and understand the whole world and learned the life of backpacking, youth hostels, and living cheap. Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Laos, Bangladesh, India, Sudan, Syria, and Pakistan were countries she traveled in during the early years of the 21st century.

She made friends easily and as her confidence increased she pursued breaking into the profession of reporting about foreign affairs. But in 2008 she recklessly entered Somalia, then considered the most dangerous country on earth, and by her fourth day there she and her former lover were kidnapped and held for ransom by young soldiers who worked for men who made big bucks and contributed to jihadists with those funds.

Amanda and her Australian friend were imprisoned and abused in a series of desert dwellings for 460 days until they were finally rescued. It is a harrowing tale well told by Amanda and co-writer Sara Corbett.

Some time ago I named a genre: Prison Camp Lit. I have read a good deal of it and have vacillated between morbid fascination and nauseous unease, learning how both captors and captives deal with some of the most degraded environments known to man. A House in the Sky would fall into a subgenre: Hostage Lit.

The book is a deep look into the psychology of both the kidnapper and the hostage, told through Amanda's perceptions. She was vastly more mistreated than her male counterpart. The fact is women without protection get raped. The "house in the sky" is an imaginative construct she built to give her spirit somewhere to go while her body was being put through horrendous pain and suffering.

Neither the Canadian nor Australian governments pay hostage money, understandable in terms of not wanting to encourage the practice but cruel in my opinion. Both Amanda and her friend's families eventually went into crippling debt to secure their release. I've read reviews of this book by people who probably have never experienced an unsafe day in their lives and criticize Amanda for being naive and foolish, for causing many people a lot of trouble, etc, etc.

Plenty of journalists are taken hostage not to mention all the military personnel who either come home with severe PTSD or lose their lives and are not thanked for their trouble except with the lip service, "Thank you for your service." Amanda admits she was heedlessly over-confident and has done much to make amends for the trouble she caused. The point to me is that she is a heroine of the first order, one because she survived and two because her book tells a huge amount of truth about our world.


(A House in the Sky is available in various formats by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

THE GODDESS OF SMALL VICTORIES

Shop Indie Bookstores

The Goddess of Small Victories, Yannik Grannec, Other Press, 2014 (translated from the French by Willard Wood), 464 pp

Another great read for The Tiny Book Club! What is it like to be the wife of a genius? Not that great.

Adele Porkert was working at a cabaret and living with her parents in Vienna. In 1928, she was beautiful and in her early 20s. Early one morning walking home from work she noticed a man walking slowly on the other side of the street. Alarmed because of rumors about gangs that snatched young women from the streets and sold them to brothels in Berlin, she bolted for her door.

But eventually, after seeing the same man at that same time and place for over two weeks, she decided he was harmless and became curious. Then one night he appeared with some friends at the cabaret. Adele met Kurt Godel, who was destined to become one of the most renowned mathematicians in the world. She finds him good looking and intriguing, so she seduces him and becomes his lover. Little does she know she has attached herself to a troubled genius. This is a fictional account of the marriage between them.

Yannick Grannec is French, this is her first novel, and she calls herself a math enthusiast. Researching Godel's life out of curiosity, she came across some scanty information about his wife and wanted to know how a woman could have loved such a difficult (paranoid, anorectic, depressed) man for fifty years. In an interview with her publisher she gives an account of writing the novel and the challenges she faced rendering concepts of advanced mathematical theories into simple words. 

The book is a fascinating study of love, devotion, and the painful interaction of two individuals driven from their beloved Vienna by Hitler's antisemitism and forced to assimilate into academic life in Princeton, NJ. Yes, my home town!

I grew up always aware of Princeton University, the Institute for Advanced Study (where Godel researched and taught) and the high intellectual status of my town. Einstein, Oppenheimer, Godel, and many others of genius proportions, all featured in the novel, lived and taught there, contributing to a sort of Golden Age of science in America in the 1940s and 1950s, though that was tarnished by the atom bomb. It was a time and place where great brains developed the foundations of the modern world as we know it in all its technical wonders as well as horrors.

It was not a good time for women. Adele was not lacking in intelligence and was well endowed with energy and courage. She poured all of that into Kurt and grew old, fat, tired, and discouraged. A woman today has to wonder how she could have been so devoted to a man whose mental difficulties overtook him as his genius burned away. (It is a well documented fact that most math geniuses burn out early.) Godel became more and more eccentric, more of a hypochondriac, subject to depression and he refused to eat. 

Because of a lack of biographical data about Adele, we will never really know but Yannick Grannec supposed a probable story of a relationship based on love, commitment, and mutual admiration even as these two drove each other to distraction. They are portrayed as a couple who needed each other, he for Adele's caring and protection, she for the fascination of his esoteric mind. Would they have been happier if they had parted? They never did until Godel died and then Adele was devastated. She lived on still caring for his destiny and proper place in the world.

I found the novel believable, entertaining, and informative. I loved that she called Adele a goddess. Now I need to find and read about some female geniuses and the men who took care of them.

WILDERNESS

Wilderness, Robert Penn Warren, Random House, 1961, 310 pp

Robert Penn Warren's seventh novel is set in Civil War times but though he draws on his studies of that conflict, it is really about something else.

Adam Rosenzweig, born a club-footed Bavarian Jew, sets out on a quest to honor his recently deceased father. His intent is to fight for freedom, that having been the defining mission of his father's life. He gets himself a special boot to correct his deformed foot and takes a ship to America where he plans to join the Union Army and fight for the freedom of the slaves.

Of course nothing turns out as he planned. He spends time in army camps in an area called the Wilderness, working for a sutler. His only friend is a Negro fellow employee and he experiences all the grit and suffering and insanity of war without ever fighting as a soldier.

Thus the novel becomes a story about living according to one's passion, no matter how innocently conceived nor how badly carried out, because to live any other way is hardly to have lived.

I liked the book. At times it reminded me of The Good Lord Bird, by James McBride. The voice and major themes of RPW's writings come through loud and clear.

On the night Adam's father was buried he thought, "This was the moment when the dead realize the truth: This is it, it will never be different. To be dead, he thought, that was to know that nothing would ever be different. He thought: I am alive."

And so we carry on.

(Wilderness is best found at libraries or from used booksellers.)

FEBRUARY READING GROUP UPDATE

I attend reading groups because I love to talk about books. Not TV shows, not my grandkids, maybe movies if they were made from books. Most of the members of the groups I attend are women, but they come in all ages and stages. I like to think we are doing some good for the world as we discuss and explore all the cultures, ways of life, and people that struggle with life; all the millions of ways people live and die, love and hate, win and lose. Of course, the wine is good if we have it, and the food, though some groups have neither. Still I go. And lately, the same books come up in more than one group. That is good in two ways: I have less books to get through in a month and the discussion gets broadened.

Here are the groups and their chosen books for February:

The New Book Club:

Shop Indie Bookstores

Once Upon A Time Adult Reading Group:

Shop Indie Bookstores

One Book at a Time:

Shop Indie Bookstores

Bookie Babes:

Shop Indie Bookstores

Tiny Book Club:

The Girly Book Club:

Shop Indie Bookstores

If you attend reading groups, why do you go and what do you enjoy about the meetings?

CRYSTAL EATERS

Shop Indie Bookstores

Crystal Eaters, Shane Jones, Two Dollar Radio, 2014, 173 pp

I had a tough time with this novel. I checked it out because I admire indie publisher Two Dollar Radio and I had listened to a podcast interview with the author on Other People. Set in a speculative world, or perhaps allegorical would be a better word, its gritty, even gross details actually made me feel yucky. 

A small extremely poor village with seven dirt roads lies outside an ever encroaching city. The villagers mine crystal and sell it to manufacturers in the city for technological uses. They have mythical beliefs about crystal's properties, the main one being that every living creature is born with 100 units of crystal in their bodies. As life goes on this count steadily lowers due to accidents, injuries, illness, punishments, and emotional turmoil, until all the crystal is gone and death ensues.

Remy is sad throughout the book because both her dog and her mother are dying, her dad is stoically distraught, and her brother is in jail. The most mythical belief of all is that the crystal count can be replenished by ingesting a certain rare and hard to mine color of crystal.

At least that is what I could figure out. The chapters are numbered from 40 down to 0. Remy and her brother love their parents, death is inevitable, but also brings sorrow. The city controls anything that is good in the material world but the powerless villagers still have feelings. 

I admit that the conceit with the crystals is original but the plot is not. If I had to live in that village I would welcome death. 

In a Paris Review interview, Shane Jones says, "...prayer, crystals, myths, folktales, the universe as a system of life and destruction--I'm attracted to these things and they are players in the book."

The book garnered some highly positive, even adoring reviews, but it did not work for me.

(Crystal Eaters is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

LUCKY US

Shop Indie Bookstores

Lucky Us, Amy Bloom, Random House, 2014, 256 pp

Amy Bloom just never lets me down as a reader. Lucky Us was the last book I finished in 2014 and it was an auspicious moment when I did. 2014 turned out to be a rough reading year for me: personal issues which possessed my attention, illness, eye surgeries. All I wanted to do was read but sometimes all I could do was play Solitaire on my iPad.

So ending my reading year with a book so satisfying, so aligned with my current views about life, actually I must say, so perfect, reassured me that I could still consider myself a voracious reader but better yet, still be one.

Mainly with Amy Bloom for me, it is about the characters. All are flawed, none are completely admirable, but some manage to live and love and create in spite of their flaws. I also think she gets it that no matter how wonderful a person might be, what matters is how that person deals with the people around her or him.

Eva, half sister to Iris, was the gem among a parade of weak or disreputable or self-serving folks. She was abandoned by her mother, a single mom, a one-time lover of Eva's father. Dumped on her father's doorstep, she and Iris, whose mother has just died, form one of those deep bonds which aid survival but are also in ways dysfunctional.

It is the 1940s. The story travels from Ohio to Hollywood to Long Island. The characters' relationships span from Brooklyn to London. They help each other, betray, rescue, and love each other. Eva is fearless, Iris is reckless. The story could have gone for hundreds of pages and broken your heart.

But it is a short novel, a mere 256 pages. A very artful compression of time, incident, and emotion. I was left not with despair but delight. We are human, we get by or we don't, there are an infinite number of variations on how to live.

And so we go on. Living is a story. Some write them, some read them. I may not get my stories written but I am living a story and I love reading the stories of others.

By the way, each one of the 29 chapter titles is the name of a song from the 1930s and 1940s. I am listening to those songs now after reading the book but I wish I had listened as I read. Go ahead readers. Nerd out on that!

(Lucky Us is available now in hardcover on the shelves at Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

MY BRILLIANT FRIEND

Shop Indie Bookstores

My Brilliant Friend, Elena Ferrante, Europa Editions, 2012, 331 pp

Now I have read the book that so many readers I respect and relate to loved. I loved it as well.

There is a magic between childhood friends, no matter the time period or locale. Elena Ferrante captures that magic and its combination of black magic and good. In the early chapters she makes the terrors, the sorrows, the worries between two young girls so real and true. I had those myself as a girl, even to the point of being made sick by them. At the same time, it was some kind of point of honor not to admit how bad those feelings were and a duty to rise above them. So it is with Elena and Lila.

Those two girls lived in postwar Naples, Italy. I grew up in postwar American suburbia, Princeton, NJ, to be exact and my circumstances were much more tame. Somehow these differences don't matter because it is the friendship and connection of growing up together, the changes that affect each girl and alter the relationship, that spoke to me and gave the story its emotional heft.

Anything else I could say would just be gushing. As Alice Sebold's blurb on the front cover says, "Elena Ferrante will blow you away."

Better yet, the third novel in this trilogy about female friendship, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, is on the short list for this year's Tournament of Books, so I have an additional reason to go ahead and binge read the next two volumes!

 

 

(My Brilliant Friend is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

CALIFORNIA

Shop Indie Bookstores

California, Edan Lepucki, Little Brown & Company, 2014, 393 pp

I didn't keep any notes while reading this novel and I finished it many weeks ago. So I will just write about what still stands out in my mind.

1) Cal (short for California, the guy's college nickname) and his wife Frida. I don't think I know any people who are remotely similar to these characters. It could be an age thing. I think they are late 20s in the story and I kept feeling they were about the same age as the author would have been when she was writing the book, so she ought to know. I have nieces and nephews who are that age but they are not much like Cal or Frida.

2) Their marriage: OK so the setting is some 50 years in the future and this couple have escaped a decayed Los Angeles to live with practically nothing in the California wilderness, but they routinely keep secrets from each other. Big things and stupid little things, for good reasons like protection of the other and for perverse reasons.

I don't know if this is normal in marriages. It is normal in mine but for some reason it felt abnormal for two people who only have each other. Later when they become involved with a community that feels unmistakably like a cult, this compulsion to withhold information causes big trouble and leads them straight into the climax. So it was a great plot device.

3) The end of the story and a couple plot twists before that were for me complete surprises. I liked that. I just could not imagine how and where they would end up but any guesses I made or hoped for were wrong.

4) Lepucki's voice. For the half of the book it felt oddly brittle. She doesn't write like anyone I have been reading lately and I mean that in a good way. She is herself and by the end I was used to that voice, which has not a lot of humor nor is it compassionate. She is telling it the way she sees it.

5) Summary: In a dystopian setting peopled by a young married couple and various other desperate characters, the key tonality is desperation. I felt she took most of the things that are the most dysfunctional in our current world and made them just enough worse so that the rest of the story is believable.

This year I read On Such A Full Sea by Chang Rae Lee, MaddAddam by Margaret Atwood, and Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel. California is the most like On Such A Full Sea in tone and environment. It was the least like Station Eleven. The ending is not happy but there is really nothing happy in the book although happiness is pursued. It is an engrossing addition to the current crop of post-apocalytic fiction.

 

 

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

SEVEN FROM THE STARS

Seven from the Stars, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Ace, 1961, 248 pp

An early MZB novel from 1961 or 1962, depending on where you look. I found it an accomplished and entertaining sci fi novel with Heinlein and Asimov influences plus her signature feminist views.

Seven survivors of an intergalactic ship find themselves on Earth near a large Texas city. Each is a level of telepath or telempath also programmed to adapt to wherever they are and assimilate so well that the locals don't recognize them as extra-terrestrials. Earth is considered a Closed Planet meaning they will not be rescued.

As time passes a baby is born, there are conflicts amongst the survivors, and they become involved with a Texas rancher and his family. MZB gets in some semi-political commentary on Mexicans and immigration and treatment of illegals as employees.

Most of all I liked her nicely worked out neuroscience of telepaths (who can receive and transmit worded thoughts in any language they know) versus telempaths (who can probe the thoughts and emotions of all humans as well as translate these into the languages and concepts of any other race.) 

Due to these excellent skills as well as intelligent assimilation most of the seven survive and are able to bring a boon to Earth. Great story!

(Seven from the Stars is out of print but available from used book sellers as well as in ebook form. I found my copy on Nook.)

CASTLE DOR

Castle Dor, Arthur Quiller-Couch and Daphne du Maurier, Little Brown and Company, 1961, 288 pp

I don't recall how I first heard about Castle Dor. I think it was reviewed by one of my Goodreads friends. Since I am doing a completist reading of du Maurier's novels, I added it to my list.

Castle Dor was an incomplete novel by the very literary and august (according to my research) Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch. He died before finishing it. The du Mauriers were friends of Quiller-Couch so his daughter asked Daphne du Maurier to take over and write the rest of the book.

The story is based on the Celtic myth of Tristan and Iseult. Even I, who have only dabbled in mythology, know that tragic story of star-crossed lovers. In this version, which is set in the early 1840s near the Fowey River in the Cornish countryside, certain individuals unknowingly play the parts of the main characters in the legend.

The setting and the slipstream notion of people reliving a story from centuries earlier was the idea of Quiller-Couch. In the prologue he imparts the imaginations of a local doctor who spends the night waiting on a birth by standing on the ancient earthwork of a ruined Castle Dor and begins to fancy that he can perceive the sorrowful tale of those who lived there far in the past.

I loved the concept: "All England is a palimsest of such (quarrel, ancient feud, litigation), scored over with writ of hate and love, begettings of children beneath the hazels, appeals, curses, concealed travails." I was however challenged by the original author's rather florid and wordy style.

In several reviews readers have claimed that the continuation of the writing by du Maurier is seamless. I could tell right away when she took over, partly I suppose because I am familiar with her voice. Suddenly about a third of the way through I could read smoothly and easily without having to reread almost every sentence several times.

Then the book became a pageturner though it never lost that time travel essence. I ended up loving it and feeling as sad as if I hadn't know the lovers were doomed. I admired the skill with which she and Quiller-Couch placed the elements of the legend into the realities of life in the 1840s.

I am glad I read it.

(Castle Dor is available as an ebook by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

TOP 25 BOOKS READ IN 2014

It was another tough year in my reading life. I only read 92 books in 2014. I averaged a bit less than 2 books a week, only 80 pages average a day. I read 7 books of over 500 pages and possibly more challenging books than in previous years. But the bottom line is that I missed several weeks of reading in May when I was too ill and when my cataract surgery was going on I slowed way down on reading. Then I went on the Christmas road trip and was having much too much fun with real live people and real live scenery to spend any time reading. 

It is all good. I improved my health after that wake up call in May, I have much better eyesight after the surgeries, and my personal sorrows are down to only one. Life is hard, messy, glorious, and always interesting. 

This list is in alphabetical order by title not by favorite, but are the most loved and rewarding books I read in the past year. Not all were published in 2014. I read about 2/3 in real books and the rest on various e-readers. I have posted reviews of all but two books on the list and will post those shortly.

 

JUDY KRUEGER’S TOP FAVORITE BOOKS READ IN 2014

All the Birds, Singing, Evie Wyld

Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

The Bird Skinner, Alice Greenway

Black Like Me, John Howard Griffin

The Blazing World, Siri Hustvedt

Boy Snow Bird, Helen Oyeyemi

The Chronicle of Secret Riven, Ronlyn Domingue

The Golden Arrow, Anna Redmond

The Golem and the Jinni, Helene Wecker

Half-Blood Blues, Esi Edugyan

If Beale Street Could Talk, James Baldwin

The Invention of Wings, Sue Monk Kidd

Little Failure, Gary Shteyngart

Long Division, Kiese Laymon

Lucky Us, Amy Bloom

The Madonnas of Echo Park, Brando Skyhorse

The Magician’s Land, Lev Grossman

Mood Indigo, Boris Vian

Mother Night, Kurt Vonnegut

My Brilliant Friend, Elena Ferrante

The Signature of All Things, Elizabeth Gilbert

Southland, Nina Revoyr

Station Eleven, Emily St John Mandel

A Tale for the Time Being, Ruth Ozeki

The Tuner of Silences, Mia Couto

HOLIDAY VACATION TRIP

Leaving today for points east and south. Going to visit family and drive many miles. I love a road trip. I am going to hang out with real people and give the internet a break. Well, not entirely. I will have a device or two with me. 

If you like music, here are links to my CDs of original music recorded a while back. You can listen to any of the songs for free, you can download tunes or full CDs, or you can buy them. Happy listening!

http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/judykrueger
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/krueger2
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/krueger

I will be back in January with the Favorite Books Read in 2014 post and more reviews.

Thanks for visiting and reading and commenting!

THE CHILDREN ACT

Shop Indie Bookstores

The Children Act, Ian McEwan, Nan A Talese, 2014, 240 pp

I liked this novel more than I expected to. It is about family, marriage, children, religion and the law. The title refers to a bit of English law: "When a court determines any question with respect to...the upbringing of a child...the child's welfare shall be the court's paramount consideration."

This piece of legislation from 1989 is a giant step towards civilization from the climate of British legal views on children in the days when Charles Dickens grew up. I kept finding myself thinking of Oliver Twist and David Copperfield as I read.

But the child in question here is only months away from turning 18. Because he was raised and protected from the world by devout Jehovah's Witnesses, he has a childlike view of life and the world. He is dying of a disease (was it leukemia? I don't recall) and could possibly be saved by a blood transfusion but his parents will not allow it as that would violate their religious beliefs. 

Fiona Maye, a middle aged, childless High Court judge in family court holds the power to decide what has become a legal battle between the parents and the hospital where the boy lies dying. Concurrent with the progression of the case is a horrific problem in Fiona's marriage.

In almost perfect prose with impeccable timing, the drama plays out. Each character is poised on some brink where passions and disappointments in life meet the person's capacity for making good and sensible judgements. Or you could call it an inner battle of maturity meets childishness. 

Of course, no one really ever wins in such battles. Life is not that simple and is in fact messy. Turning 18 or even 60 is no guarantee of maturity. McEwan keeps the reader captive on these brinks he created which makes for an incredibly good read. He does not judge, even while every character makes judgements and thus we see ourselves and others with increased empathy.

I read this for one of my reading groups and we had one of our best discussions ever.

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

DEATH COMES TO PEMBERLEY

Shop Indie Bookstores

Death Comes to Pemberley, P D James, Alfred A Knopf, 2012, 291 pp

I have previously read three books by P D James: her first, Cover Her Face, 1962; The Lighthouse, next to last of the Inspector Adam Dalgliesh books, 2005; and the stand alone Children of Men, 1992. 

I liked best the one that got low stars and tepid reviews: Children of Men. In her mysteries she is too sedate and slow moving for me. Children of Men had zing.

When one of my reading groups chose Death Comes to Pemberley, I was rightfully concerned. I don't much enjoy Jane Austen either. Ms James' book is written as a sequel to Pride and Prejudice with a murder mystery for the plot. I anticipated a dreadfully boring read and that is what it was for me. Exactly half of the reading group felt as I did and the other half loved it. There was no middle ground.

I think for Jane Austen/Pride and Prejudice geeks the book would be perfect. The two authors would certainly have been besties had they lived in the same era.

Ten days after I finished reading Death Comes to Penderley death came to P D James. I feel a bit mean now for hating her book. I admire her for a long successful career and for her contributions to the playing field of female mystery writers.

(Death Comes to Pemberley is available in paperback on the mystery shelf at Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

THE ROSIE PROJECT

Shop Indie Bookstores

The Rosie Project, Graeme Simsion, Simon & Schuster, 2013, 320 pp

I read this for a reading group that I did not attend, but since I had intended to go and started the book with not much time to read, I read it super fast. Fortunately it was that kind of book and I did not dislike it particularly. But it is characterized by that light, slightly humorous writing found in TV shows, so not much of it remains in my memory.

A guy who is some type of heavy scientist residing somewhere on the asperger/autism spectrum is in want of a wife. He devises a project to find one who will match with his peculiarities and instead finds Rosie. He and Rosie run through the obligatory romantic comedy tropes.

It is all very endearing and witty and brings a few new aspects to the nerdy guy meets hot girl story. Being set in Australia, I was constantly having to readjust my internal GPS because the novel seemed so American in most ways.

Nice comfort read but it won't change your life. You already know this story.

(The Rosie Project is available in hardcover and paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

AN UNFINISHED LIFE: JOHN F KENNEDY

Shop Indie Bookstores

An Unfinished Life: John F Kennedy, Robert Dallek, Little Brown and Company, 2003, 711 pp

I have now completed the third biography on my list of US Presidents who have been in office during my lifetime: Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy. It appears that to be taken seriously a presidential biography must be a door-stopper no matter how long their lives or how many terms they served. John F Kennedy only lived for 46 years and only held the Presidency for 1000 days but he still got 711 pages of text from Robert Dallek.

This reading about presidents' lives is probably the most difficult of my various reading projects but also hugely satisfying in terms of an overview of American federal government and politics. Who they were and how they became presidents is a mirror on American life. But the main idea I have come to is that the news media gives us a distinctly skewed view of our presidents and the disconnect between who they really are and what they have to deal with as the leaders of our country compared to what we are told about that while it is happening only grows wider as the news media keeps up with technological changes over the years.

Despite huge swaths of boring day by day depictions of JFK's nomination and election campaigns as well as the major crises he faced during his term, I learned much more about the man than I was ever taught in school. I gained an understanding of why he was and continues to be so revered. He was THE man for the times in 1960; young, handsome, intelligent, and forward looking. He was also a consummate politician with an inborn sense of how to advance his career, complemented by what he learned from his father. He was far more ill for his entire life than was publicly known. Medicated to his eyeballs much of the time, his health was a risk and a big long story covered fully in Dallek's book.

Though I suspect the author down pedaled it to a large degree, Kennedy was an unrepentant and continuous womanizer. As a teenager I was infatuated with the romance between Jack and Jackie. In An Unfinished Life, Jackie only gets about 20 pages, so now I will need to read some books that give more of her side of the story. I was left feeling it was all a political show.

I wonder if I could have or should have read a different Kennedy biography. Robert Dallek's dull and pedestrian writing style certainly did not match his flamboyant subject.

(An Unfinished Life is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

THE MADONNAS OF ECHO PARK

Shop Indie Bookstores

The Madonnas of Echo Park, Brando Skyhorse, Free Press, 2010, 199 pp

Brief news flash: Both of my cataract surgeries are now complete. I can see everything without glasses! Well, except for small print close up in poorly lit places, for which I use those reading glasses you can buy at pharmacies. I am so happy!

Now onto my review. Except for a trip on the week of Christmas, I shall be posting regularly again. Thank you for your patience.

My hand-crafted, boutique, and very special Tiny Book Group is on a project to read books set in Los Angeles. All three of us are from elsewhere, having come to LA in middle age. Echo Park is a Los Angeles neighborhood that began as a Mexican ghetto and has lately succumbed to gentrification. Brando Skyhorse grew up in Echo Park in the 1980s.

His truly wonderful novel is a successful example of a novel written as a series of collected stories featuring characters who appear again and again. By the end you know how they are connected through family and events.

"We slipped into this country like thieves, onto the land that once was ours." There is so much history in that opening sentence. It took my breath away. But history is the last thing on the minds of Skyhorse's characters. Their minds are crowded with fears of deportation, struggles to learn English, make a living, and assimilate.

Every living American today, except for Native Americans, is an immigrant or a descendant of immigrants. I wonder how many immigrant novels have been written here. Brando Skyhorse (descended from Mexicans but raised to think that his Native American step-father was his biological father) took this often told story and made it pulse with sights, smells, tastes, loves, deaths, and the infinite variety of human longings.

The Tiny Book Group met in Echo Park to discuss the book. We ate lunch at Xoia Vietnamese Eats.

We got pastries at Masa of Echo Park Bakery & Cafe.

We strolled to Echo Park Lake to eat our treats,

then to Stories Books to choose our next read.

All the while we talked about the book and wondered, "Where have all the Mexicans gone?"

Part of the answer can be found in this video, but most of the answers have been encapsulated in The Madonnas of Echo Park.

One more thing: reading and learning about the incident that inspired the book's title was a little piece of literary magic.

(The Madonnas of Echo Park is available by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

 

 

TWO EYES ARE BETTER THAN ONE

UPDATE

Two weeks after cataract surgery on the right eye and I have almost 20/20 vision for distance. My eyes don't look like the above image which I copied from Google. My eyes look more like Margaret Atwood's or Jane Smiley's or Hilary Clinton's. These are all eyes that have seen a lot, as have mine, eyes that have read millions of words. 

I've been stumbling around without my glasses because they don't work for me anymore. My left eye also has a cataract and is extremely near-sighted. Cooking for Thanksgiving was a challenge but I managed not to cut off any fingers by wearing my glasses with the right lens covered in duct tape. It has been quite an adventure. I can drive in the daytime and see better than I have in years. At night I need mild sunglasses to cut down on the glare from headlights, street lights, etc. Last night in the rain was truly scary but luckily I was only a few blocks from home.

But I can read! And I have been reading. As you can see I managed to post one review here but it was so stressful looking from my handwritten review to the computer screen, even with reading glasses, that I haven't done another.

Monday I got the good news that my second surgery will be this coming Monday! By next Tuesday morning I should be able to see distance in the right eye, middle (computer) distance in the left. Might need reading glasses for close distance like reading books or iBooks. I should be able to see better than I have for decades. No more progressive lenses, no more glasses for everyday tasks. Thanks to modern medicine, my wonderful ophthalmologist/surgeon and her team of technicians, eye drops, and my adoring husband who drives me to surgery and check ups. Thanks to Medicare. 

But OMG my eyes were nicely hidden behind glasses and I could not really see what they looked like. Life is quite a joke sometimes. Yesterday I spent money on new eye cream and face cream. I gave myself a mud pack facial. Face it, Judy. You are not young anymore.

Still I can read, I can drive, I can go to Texas and see my grandchildren for Christmas. I can come home in the New Year and hopefully read more books than ever. Maybe I can even post a couple more reviews before the year is over.

Thanks for your patience!