BOOKS READ IN NOVEMBER

I had another excellent reading month in November with 14 books read. Only one was what I would call a long book, several were quite short, over half were written by women and over half were written by authors new to me. I managed to write reviews for all but the last two by the end of the month, but have only posted 7 of those reviews. My intentions for December are to catch up on posting all reviews and to make my yearly goal of 144 books read. Lest you think I am being too hard on myself, be assured that I am having fun doing this!

Stats: 14 books read. 14 fiction. 8 written by women. 3 thriller. 4 for My Big Fat Reading Project. 1 young readers. 1 science fiction. 1 poetry. 2 translated.

Countries visited: United States, Great Britain, Brazil, China, Germany

Authors new to me: Donald Hamilton, Louise Fitzhugh, Lydia Kiesling, Emily Fridlund, Cixin Liu, S J Watson, Philip Kerr, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

 

Favorite books: The Golden State, The Three-Body Problem

Least favorite: History of Wolves

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How did your November reading go? Have you read any of these? What were your best reads last month?

THE GARRICK YEAR

The Garrick Year, Margaret Drabble, William Morrow & Company, 1964, 221 pp

 

 

Of the last 19 novels I have read, 15 were written by women. I have reveled in being so immersed in the female point of view and somehow thrilled to be assured there are so many ways to be female.

 

The Garrick Year is Margaret Drabble's second novel. She is British, the sister of A S Byatt, and a frightfully good writer who is perceptively tart with humorous undertones.

Emma, mother of two small children, is married to an actor in the early 1960s. She has a chance for a career in television, not as an actor but more as some kind of show host. David, her husband, is an actor and equally ambitious for a career in the theater and possibly movies.

When an American heiress funds the renovation of the Garrick Theater in a provincial English town, David is called by the prestigious director to act in several plays for a season there. Emma gives in, not gracefully, so they rent out their London home, set off for Hereford with kids and au pair, and the fireworks begin.

For these two strong and restless as well as self-centered persons in their late twenties, life is never dull, except for Emma's dull hours in a hideous house with her kids. She is a house-proud woman. Emma and David contend, they are so much alike in some ways, they make up with humor and heart.

I loved the book for the characters (after all theater people are all characters, on stage and off), for the tension between this couple, for the absolute truthfulness about the confines of parenthood and fidelity. Emma is one of the great young married mothers I have met in literature. I understood her every emotion and action because I went through all that in my early married days.

The novel captures what it was like for women in the mid 60s when feminism was a barely conceived movement but we were all feeling it and finding our way. It was good to remember how much we loved our loving, our children, but also our freedom.

HOW TO (UN)CAGE A GIRL

How to (Un)cage a Girl, Francesca Lia Block, HarperCollins Publishers, 2008, 120 pp

 

 

This book of poetry is by the author of the stupendous Weetzie Bat, my favorite YA novel ever! After I finished the WB Yeats collection in September, I went to my shelves and found only three books of poetry: an already read collection of Edna St Vincent Millay, The Standard Book of British and American Verse published in 1932, and a signed advance reader copy of these poems by Block. That night I opened How to (Un)cage a Girl and resumed my new poem-a-day practice.

 

There is no doubt that these poems come from the unique sensibility of Francesca Lia Block. Magical, emotional, probably auto-biographical. In three sections she does teenage years, young woman years, and more mature woman years.

The poems express the secret thoughts of women. While they are set in a world of adventurous, sometimes misbehaving females, I think that even the most proper, well-behaved women have these secret thoughts and feelings.

I just ordered Sylvia Plath's Ariel. Female poetry is what I need these days. Are you reading poetry? If yes, what?

IF MORNING EVER COMES

If Morning Ever Comes, Anne Tyler, Alfred A Knopf, 1964, 265 pp

 

 

This is Anne Tyler's first novel. The other day I read her latest, Clock Dance. Bookends! Don't be put off by the silly reprint cover shown here. I don't know what they were thinking. 

 

Only 22 when it was published, she got a rave review by Orville Prescott in the New York Times. Not bad for a young woman's first novel in 1964. I learned that she studied writing with Reynolds Price in college. Maybe he gave her a hand in getting published.

It is quite a Southern story with echoes of Eudora Welty. Ben Joe Hawks is studying law at Columbia, though not because he necessarily wants to be a lawyer. He has a widowed mother and six sisters back in North Carolina and feels responsible for them. 

Suddenly one morning he hops a train and heads home. He feels worried about all those females. When he arrives they are all like, "Oh, hi," but don't see any need to be worried over. 

Of course you can't go home again, especially to the South in mid-twentieth century America. That was also the theme of that disappointing Robert Penn Warren novel Flood I read recently. Tyler's book has plenty of emotion but it is not melodramatic. Her trademark human but offbeat characters are already there.

Apparently she has said she wishes she could disown her early novels. If I could have a chat with her I would say don't. I have a soft spot for first novels. It is like looking at a baby and trying to picture how that individual will grow and become to be.

I had a soft spot for young Ben Joe Hawks. There is something endearing about a lone male in a house full of females. As he tries to knit his past into his present, I felt all those females should have worried about him!

(If Morning Ever Comes is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

THE GOLDEN STATE

The Golden State, Lydia Kiesling, Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2018, 290 pp

 

 

Let me start by saying that I adored this novel. I have spent more time thinking about how to review it than I did reading it. (It was compulsively easy to read.) During the days I spent thinking about what I wanted to say, I have gone out to lunch, picked up new glasses, had dinner and plenty of drinks at a music event and listened to the hour long interview with Lydia Kiesling on the Otherppl podcast. Meanwhile the library due date for the book has come and gone. Time, as they say, is up.

 

Daphne, the mother of 14-month-old Honey, her first child, has been juggling too much for too long. Her Turkish husband has been kept out of the United States by immigration bureaucratic fuckery for months. She has a full time job and a good daycare for Honey but money is tight, her somewhat cool job involves more bureaucracy, and she is lonely for her husband.

One Friday she has a mild meltdown. On the way to work, she turns around, goes back to their apartment, packs up basic necessities, picks up Honey from daycare and splits. Since this happens in San Francisco, CA, USA, Daphne has a car. She also has an inherited mobile home (the nice kind with a yard on a piece of property) in a small high desert town.

During her ten days there, she spends hour after hour with Honey, pretty much obsessing over her current life situation. Such is the writing skill of Lydia Kiesling that she turns these ten days of the minutia of toddler care, the odd encounters smart, liberal Daphne has with the Trump supporters in town, the obsessive pingponging of her mind, into a gripping narrative.

I have not spent hours at a time with small children for many years; over 40 years ago with my own, almost 20 years ago with my grandchildren. I have apparently not forgotten the strange brew of deep love for them and even deeper boredom as the hours pass. I always felt overcome by the love and guilty about the boredom. I have never felt more understood about all of that than I did while reading The Golden State.

Then, all of a sudden (though surely both Daphne and I should have seen it coming) this young woman involves herself so impetuously in an ill-advised situation that I feared for her and Honey for the last 90 pages. I mean real fear, heart-pounding, foreboding fear.

I got to know Lydia Kiesling's writing through a regular feature on The Millions, one of the first highly successful literary blogs. She wrote brilliant, interesting reviews about many of the 100 Modern Library novels. I was drawn to her voice, her perceptions, her style. In fact, she had the most influence on me as a reviewer out of the countless book reviewers I have read. She is now the editor of The Millions and The Golden State is her first novel. From the first page I recognized that voice.

If you are a mom, not the perfect kind but the kind who wants (or wanted) to be as perfect as possible without losing touch with the rest of your life, I recommend this novel. It is like therapy and the writing is as perfect as we all wanted to be.

If you are Lydia Kiesling and you read this review, I hope I did your novel justice without giving away too much but leaving all the other delights therein for other readers to discover on their own.

(The Golden State is available in hardcover by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

CLOCK DANCE

Clock Dance, Anne Tyler, Alfred A Knopf, 2018, 292 pp

 

 

This wonderful novel is the latest from Anne Tyler and proves (at least to me) that she has not lost one whit of the qualities that infuse all of her work: deep perception of human beings and of what makes life hard and where joy might be found. This is her 22nd novel in 54 years of publishing. It is the sixth one I have read and I don't intend to stop until I have read them all.

 

Willa Drake, my goodness, had a long path to finding herself. She had her reasons from childhood. She is one of those women who has every good quality you could hope for in a person except the ability to assert herself. I know in these days of whatever stage of feminism we are in, we like stories of strong women who can do it all and have it all. Maybe that is because there are still too many women like Willa.

The novel is also full of the slightly off characters who people Anne Tyler's stories. Sometimes I think we, especially Americans, like to hang out with fairly mainstream people, though look where that has gotten us.

Willa is on husband number two, when she makes an impulsive decision that opens up her life at the age of 61. Impulsive decisions are not new for her. What is new is that this one brings her what she wants.

Another theme in Anne Tyler's books is that our faults or negative qualities or shortcomings can work in our favor when we least expect it. I always find that an encouraging idea.

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

DEATH OF A CITIZEN

Death of a Citizen, Donald Hamilton, Titan Books, 1960, 227 pp

 

 

Some months ago I wondered out loud on this blog if there were any novels about the early days of the CIA during the Cold War. Lisa at Captivated Reader went to work for me and found the Matt Helm series. Death of a Citizen is the first in that series.

 

Matt Helm had worked for the CIA (or its preceding organization) during WWII. He left the service after the war, married a lovely woman and had two kids. He became a writer of popular Westerns and thought he had made a pretty good life for himself.

However, his old boss, now a CIA guy, came looking for him in the guise of Helm's former partner during the war. His assassin nature reared up, as well as his lust for Tina, that former partner. He was back at it. This time he was supposed to save the life of an American nuclear physicist.

Death of a Citizen is a fast-paced thriller with plenty of sex, blood, double-crosses and mysterious persons. Matt has a style all his own preferring knives and pistols. His attitude toward women is definitely mid-20th century and his mental state is naturally conflicted. 

I liked the book well enough to try a couple more in the series. I hadn't thought the CIA carried out missions inside the United States. I thought that was the FBI's territory. Clearly I have more to learn.

HARRIET THE SPY

Harriet the Spy, Louise Fitzhugh, Random House, 1964, 300 pp

 

 

THE SUNDAY FAMILY READ

 

 

It was with great anticipation that I opened this middle grade novel from 1964. I have often come across characters in other novels who mention Harriet, as well as writers who extol the book for being influential to them from childhood. In fact, Miriam Toews, author of All My Puny Sorrows, said in an interview that Harriet the Spy was one of her favorite books as a kid.

 

I was expecting a lot and I got a lot but not what I expected. It is true that Harriet is plucky, always a good personality trait for a middle grade female protagonist. It is also true that she has to learn hard lessons and overcome a sort of bullying. She is not, however, a particularly nice child.

Harriet is impulsive, nosy, noisy, sometimes rude and quite judgmental about the grownups and kids she interacts with. She carries a notebook with her at all times, jotting down her observations about these people. She goes to school and does her homework but considers her real work to be spying. Everyday after school she visits locations on her "route" and notes what is going on. 

Eventually I got used to Harriet, even feeling sympathetic to her approach to life and admired her independence. Being the only child of wealthy parents who had turned her over to a "nurse" whom she calls Ole Golly (a wise sort who encourages Harriet while giving good life advice) it is quite a shock to the girl and the reader when Golly finds a suitor, marries him and moves away.

Harriet's journal and her disturbing behavior after Golly leaves land her in big trouble at school. She overcomes it but the lesson she "learns" is to remain true to herself and use her proclivities more cunningly to turn her situation around.

By the end, I got why so many admire the book. It is a story for rebels, outliers, fiercely independent types, and of course writers. Harriet discovers she is a writer but also that her spying powers her writing. She could grow up to someone like Patricia Highsmith!!

Warning to moms: if you want your daughters to become nice, well-behaved women who fit in comfortably, don't let them read this one.

(Harriet the Spy is available in paperback and hardcover on the shelves at Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

ALL MY PUNY SORROWS

All My Puny Sorrows, Miriam Toews, McSweeney's, 2014, 321 pp

 

 

Sometimes a novel has so much heart, is so full of love, humor and good cheer in the face of hard times, that when I finish reading it I feel I have been given a huge gift I didn't even know I needed or wanted. All My Puny Sorrows was such a novel for me.

 

In fact, words fail me as I try to figure out how to write a review. I have had the book on my shelves for some time. I put it as the October book for my own 2018 challenge to read a book a month from my last 12 years of TBR lists. I am so happy I did.

So I will just say that if you have ever had a gnarly sorrow in your life which seemed to have no solution or for which you could find no solace, you must read All My Puny Sorrows.

GO, WENT, GONE

Go, Went, Gone, Jenny Erpenbeck, New Directions, 2017, 283 pp (originally published in Germany by Albrecht Knaus Verlag, 2015; translated from the German by Susan Bernofsky.)

 

 

This reading group pick was an interesting look at another country's immigration problems. I had heard much praise for Jenny Erpenbeck's fiction and was glad to be introduced.

 

Set in Berlin, it is a ripped-from-the-headlines topic put into a fictional story. Richard, a retired classics professor, is at loose ends. His wife is no longer living and he feels without a project.

He notices some African refugees on a hunger strike outside the tent city where they have been living. Curious, he makes up a questionnaire and begins to interview individual refugees. Little by little, he becomes involved with several of the men, trying to help them. Naturally that forces him to learn about how his country is handling what has becomes something of a crisis.

Of course, the rulings and proceedings are a Kafkaesque maze of barriers for the refugees. They are not allowed to work without proper papers which are nearly impossible for them to get. Then the news makes these people look like moochers wanting handouts.

As Richard develops relationships with some of these men, the reader learns how much they have lost, how bored they are with nothing to do after being used to hard work in their home countries, and how the wars at home created by outside interference both political and business related have caused them to be forced to flee. It is enough to make your blood boil.

I recently read The Map of Salt and Stars, another angle on this mess. Richard with his classics knowledge does this cool thing of relating current turmoil to ancient history. Go, Went, Gone added even more understanding to realizations I have been having about how history is going.

It seems to me that the history of mankind on this planet is a continuous series of upheavals as peoples vie for resources, territory, and power. Sometimes there are periods of peace in one area or another, other times certain rulers amass enough power to control large areas for long periods of time. Thus advances are made in science, art and philosophy but eventually conflict erupts again, when the less powerful and the oppressed rise up.

It is as if the cultures of the world are contained in a vast Cuisinart. All gets churned, sliced and diced as new groups rise to power. Right now in the world that start button on the Cuisinart is being held down and nobody likes it. Yet the daily lives and stories of us all go on.

I didn't love Go, Went, Gone as much as I did The Map of Salt and Stars but it gave me more to think about. Jenny Erpenbeck is a wonderful writer and I will read her earlier novels.

(Go, Went, Gone is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

I'M FROM ELECTRIC PEAK

I'm From Electric Peak, Bud Smith, Artistically Declined Press, 2016, 130 pp

 

 

Basically a novella from an indie press and indie writer Bud Smith, this was the April, 2016 selection from The Nervous Breakdown Book Club. I have been reading one book a month from the club in an effort to at least not fall further behind since I am maintaining my subscription there. The books come once a month and keep piling up on their own special stack on my shelves. 

 

I'm From Electric Peak is a gritty romp of a read that I would have been sorry to miss. Kody Green is an orphan, a teen who escaped from the Mayweather home for wayward youth. He is in love with Teal Carticelli and plans to talk her parents out of sending her to Italy after they forced her to have an abortion. Kody was the father.

The story is wild, the violence is so over the top that it takes on cartoon proportions, the love between Kody and Teal is epic. Soon they are on the run, stealing cars to keep moving, having bittersweet but harrowing adventures across the country.

One blurb on the back of the book put it in the genre of outlaw love stories and it does have a Bonnie and Clyde essence. I would put it in the genre of young loser dudes of America. I loved every page and read it in a couple hours. It is worth any number of nonfiction books on the "broken heart of America" as another blurb called it.

I don't think I will ever forget Kody and Teal.

THE MESSENGER

The Messenger, Daniel Silva, G P Putnam's Sons, 2006, 334 pp

 

 

This thriller is #6 in Silva's Gabriel Allon series. I must say that each book so far has been more exciting than the last. 

 

Gabriel Allon is an art restorer but that is just his cover. He is a spy and also often an assassin for Israeli intelligence. In The Messenger, the evil entity is al-Qaeda. It appears that the organization is planning a more audacious attack on the Vatican that will top what they did at the World Trade Center. 

For the first time in the series, that I can recall, Gabriel teams up with the CIA. I read the book right around the time that Jamal Khashoggi was murdered in Saudi Arabia. A certain high-powered Saudi businessman features in the story, so even though it is now 12 years since the book was published reading it was like going behind the news of today.

As always, Silva presents his Israeli-centered viewpoint on world events but this time I really felt the series moving towards the present.

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

NOVEMBER READING GROUP UPDATE

Reading groups are slim for me this month. But first a recap of last month's meetings:

My somewhat dysfunctional One Book At A Time group ended up not meeting in October so we will discuss Sunburn this month. I have already read, loved and reviewed that one, but I have no idea how the members will react to the book.

 

New Boy got mixed reactions at Tina's Group; every gradation from loved it to hated it and some in between. The one male member thought it was brilliant to set Othello in a middle school. His wife found it boring and it never caught on for her. So of course we had a great discussion.

 

The Underground Railroad almost destroyed many of the Bookie Babes due to its grim subject matter and one member just could not get with the underground railroad being a real thing in the book. Another great discussion. We all got super involved with the heroine and found her amazing.

 

The Tiny Book Club found much to ponder from reading Jenny Erpenbeck's Go Went Gone, about African refugees in Berlin. I will be reviewing that one soon.

Now for November I only have one other group meeting:

Bookie Babes:

 

 

 

Have you read History of Wolves? If you are in one or more reading groups, what are you discussing in November? 

BYE BYE BLONDIE

Bye Bye Blondie, Virginie Despentes, The Feminist Press, 2016, 245 pp (originally published in France, 2004, by Editions Grasset & Fasquelle; translated from the French by Sian Reynolds.)

 

 

I first learned about this contemporary French author in 2015 when I read Apocalypse Baby, a novel she published in France in 2010. Wow! I was an instant fan. Bye Bye Blondie is an earlier novel of hers and was not quite as wild as Apocalypse Baby, which is not to say it was not wild.

 

We first meet Gloria roaming the streets in the rain after a violent fight with her boyfriend during which she almost killed him. She is in her forties, she is now homeless and suffers from attacks of extreme rage. She finally reaches one of her few remaining friends who agrees to put her up temporarily.

Then comes the back story of her tumultuous and rebellious teen years. She spent some time on a mental ward to which she was committed by her parents. In part, this is a story of the cruelty of mental health treatment and the lasting effects of it on her life. Basically the treatment turned her from a wild young girl into a mentally ill young girl.

While in the asylum she met her soulmate Eric, also the great love of her life. They remained a couple after being released and led the way in their middle class French town for all the disaffected youth: drugs, 90s punk bands, counter culture on high volume. The relationship did not survive.

Now Eric is a successful, rich TV star and when Gloria runs into him at a party, the love between them reignites. He brings her to Paris where she lives with him in a luxury she had never known and basks in his loving care. But her wounds are too deep. It is wrenching to read about her attempts to fit into "normal" society and her periodic descents into the rage she has carried for so long.

Yet I kept hoping for her, that she could find peace of mind and happiness without sacrificing her independence. In some ways this is a romance, but a feminist romance. It seems to be a hopeless story. In other ways it is a testament to the uses of rage and violence when a woman refuses to be quelled, molded and deceived.

Gloria takes the path that Elena Greco restrains herself from taking in My Brilliant Friend. She also reminded me many times of Mathilde in Fates and Furies, and of many other heroines I have loved in fiction. Despentes writes with even more power than Ferrante or Groff. The brutal details are probably more than some readers can stomach, but when a woman goes full tilt with her demons and determination the results are not pretty. 

Ultimately though, Bye Bye Baby is a testament to love, to a woman finally admitting to herself that emotional safety can be found and acceptance of love does not have to equal captivity. Quite a triumph of great writing and great perception.

(Bye Bye Blondie is available in the paperback English translation by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

 

 

 

BOOKS READ IN OCTOBER

Even though I took a four day vacation during which I read a total of 86 pages, I still managed to read 12 books. As usual it was a good mix but I fell down on reading for My Big Fat Reading Project. I did read three translated books.

Stats: Fiction: 11. Big Fat Reading Project: 1. Written by women: 8. Mystery: 1. Drama: 1. Translated: 3. Thriller: 1.

Authors new to me: Jennifer Zeynab Joukhadar, Laura Lippman, Bud Smith, Jenny Erpenbeck, Miriam Toews.

Countries I visited: United States, Syria, France, Israel, Germany, Canada.

Favorites: The Map of Salt and Stars, Sunburn, Bye Bye Blondie, All My Puny Sorrows.

Least favorite: Flood.

How was your reading in October? Which were your favorite books? Have you read any of the ones I read?

NEW BOY

New Boy, Tracy Chevalier, Hogarth Shakespeare, 2017, 204 pp

 

 

New Boy is a retelling of Othello set in a 1970s elementary school in Washington, DC. In those days elementary went up to 6th grade, followed by 7th and 8th grades for junior high. The kids in the story are sixth graders.

 

All the major characters from the play are represented. Osei Kokote is Othello. He is the son of an African diplomat, used to being the new boy as this is his fifth school in five years and used to being the lone Black boy. Beautiful, blond Dee, the most popular girl and her teacher's pet, plays the Desdemona character. Between two recess periods on Osei's first day at school, he and Dee are beginning a relationship.

The dastardly sociopath Ian takes Iago's part and decides to destroy the budding attraction between Dee and the new boy. He employs his sycophantish friend Rod and recent girlfriend Mimi to rig various situations on the playground.

 

For much of the novel I was a bit bored. Aside from some trigger words it felt like a young adult story. The writing is simple in style and the kids are usual preteens. Gradually I began to admire the true to life racism, the volatile upheavals between classmates, and the sexual attractions and competitions. Yes, I remember to this day how it was when we were twelve going on thirteen.

 

Even though I had just read the Shakespeare play and knew it would end in tragedy, I wanted things to end happily for Dee and Osei. I hoped at least one of the bumbling and clueless faculty would act intelligently enough to save the day. 

 

I closed the book full of admiration for the author's intricate portrayals of Shakespeare's tale of bullying, betrayal and jealousy. She captured every nuance of the play. I think New Boy should be required reading for middle school teachers and parents of preteens. The kids probably don't need to read it. They are living it.

 

I found myself pondering the book for days and comparing it to The Hate U Give which I had read just two weeks earlier.

 

 

(New Boy is available in hardcover and paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

SUNBURN

Sunburn, Laura Lippman, William Morrow, 2018, 290 pp

 

 

I have wanted to try this author for quite a while, so when the One Book At A Time reading group picked Sunburn, I was happy. This is her latest book. It was great and I am hooked.

 

Polly and Adam meet in a small-town Delaware tavern. Polly is on the run from an abusive husband. Adam has been hired as a PI to find Polly. She left a daughter behind when she ran but has even worse deeds and deeper secrets behind that. Though she has her reasons, Polly has not been a good girl.

Adam likes to make a bundle of money doing investigations and then take off to exotic locations for long vacations. He has no desire to settle down. He and Polly fall into lust, it turns into love, but though neither is any kind of dummy, they keep their secrets from each other until they just cannot any longer. The climax of their story is explosive.

I realize that all of the above sounds like many other psychological suspense stories. For me this one stands above and outside of that genre. Mostly that is because of Polly and the complexity of her character. She starts out appearing to be a victim, she is super smart, and she has a surprisingly big heart but not in the ways one usually thinks of a bighearted woman. Not at all!

(Sunburn is available in both hardcover and paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

THE MAP OF SALT AND STARS

The Map of Salt and Stars, Jennifer Zeynab Joukhadar, Simon & Schuster, 2018, 352 pp

 

 

I have been wanting to read a novel based in Syria and this was an excellent one with which to start. The author is Syrian/American, has had short stories published here and there, and this is her first novel. It was an epic and glorious read.

 

The story is set in two time periods, as so many novels are lately. In this case the device works perfectly and I was completely immersed in both. The current period is 2011/2012. Nour is the youngest of three daughters. She is the only one of their Syrian parents born in the United States. While living in New York City, her beloved father dies after filling Nour with stories of their family homeland.

When Nour's mother moves her and her sisters back to Syria, the girl repeats those stories to herself in an attempt to keep her father in her heart while she adjusts to Syria.

Nour's favorite stories feature Rawiya from the 12th century, who ran away from her home in the North African town of Ceuta, just across the Straight of Gibraltar from Spain. Rawiya disguised herself as a boy, managed to apprentice herself to the most famous mapmaker of the time and had incredible adventures. Her story fills the earlier time period in the book.

When the 21st century Syrian War reaches Homs, where Nour and her family returned to live, their home is bombed into rubble and they escape with only a few belongings. Soon they realize they are refugees and must make a desperate journey westward, hoping to qualify for asylum in America.

Nour's journey and Rawiya's cover similar paths. As the novel alternates between the two, the details of both timelines are brought to life. Both young women come of age; both are longing for home.

The Map of Salt and Stars could have been a difficult read for me, even though the writing is exceptional, due to the absolute foreignness of the locations. However, I had recently read the section of Will Durant's The Age of Faith, wherein he tells the history of the Islamic Civilization in the Middle Ages. I had learned about all the key players and conflicts between Islam and Christianity as well as the rise and fall of rulers from 569 to 1258 AD. The mapmaker, al-Idrisi, to whom Rawiya was apprenticed was a real personage in those days and I had read about him!

That knowledge and the maps provided in the novel kept me oriented. I happen to love maps and use them often while reading. My own mental map of the routes both young women traveled from Syria through Lebanon, Israel, Egypt, Libya, Algeria and Morocco to the town of Ceuta on the Straight of Gibraltar is now pretty fully formed. I think most readers who love history could follow the story just fine but if your geography of that area is lacking, use maps.

Now when I read the news of what is happening in those countries I have images to go with it. When I read about the beleaguered refugees of today, I can picture their day to day struggles and dangers. I can feel their losses of home and identity.

I think Jennifer Zeynab Joukhadar channeled the map making skills and story telling gifts of her characters. For the politics of Syria and the Middle East of today we can read the news but she filled in the personal details of a culture that was once a major world power but is now being torn apart and in danger of oblivion. What a great read!

PS: Tomorrow morning I embark on a dream vacation to Zion National Park with my husband. I have wanted to go there for a long time. So I will be back to blogging next week.

(The Map of Salt and Stars is available in hardcover by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore. The paperback will be released in March, 2019.)

AN AMERICAN MARRIAGE

An American Marriage, Tayari Jones, Algonquin Books, 2018, 306 pp

 

 

As I sat down to write this review the other day, I was suffering from a sense of despair about life and the world. In An American Marriage I found two young African Americans who fall in love,  marry, and then have their lives destroyed by a wrongful sentencing of the husband to twelve years in prison for a rape he did not commit. This did not happen back in the 1950s but in the present day. To despair or not despair, that is the question.

The marriage falls apart, the center cannot hold. The wife, allowed to be at large in the world, can be productive enough not to be destroyed. She can create her art, run her business, have friends and even a lover. That does not mean she is happy or even secure. It just means she is not imprisoned.

The husband has lost pretty much all agency in his life. If he has to serve his entire sentence his life will be half over by the time he is free. He tries, through letters and visits, to hold on to his wife but his future depends on a lawyer, an appeal, and the courts. He is not in control of any of it.

The wife appears to be the stronger of the two though she is not inherently either a better or worse person than her husband. They muddle along. The marriage may not have lasted in any case due to the personality differences between them. She is strong in support of her freedom of choice as a woman, an artist and a person. But so is the husband though his approach to life differs from hers. As it is, his incarceration becomes the main destructive element.

So, white vs black, woman vs man, freedom vs various forces that deny it. This novel is less cheerful than her earlier Silver Sparrow but no less well written. It must have been hard to get the story right. Universal human issues set in a particular American location and time. It is full of emotion, almost too full, but she reined it in and made it feel real and true.

(An American Marriage is available in hardcover by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

THE ILL-FATED SCIENTIST

The Ill-Fated Scientist, Alice Zogg, Aventine Press, 2018, 200 pp

 

 

Once again my friend Alice Zogg, self-published mystery writer, has surpassed all her previous books with this new standalone mystery.

 

Tara Blunt is a syndicated columnist with no private investigator experience who finds herself looking into a mysterious death. A brilliant scientist, in the running to win a $5 million contest, is dead from an explosion in his lab. Tara had arrived to interview him just minutes after the explosion.

 

I liked Tara right away. She is an interesting modern young woman, with baggage of course, mainly a series of unfortunate relationships with men. She just can't let the death of the scientist go, especially because he had created a product that would replace all types of petroleum-based packaging. In fact, that was the story she had come to interview him for.

 

She treats her investigation as she would in following down a news story. Soon enough she must determine which of four men she should believe. One of them is bound to want her silenced, probably permanently.

 

Alice Zogg has always been good at plots. In this book she has amped up her dialogue, her character building and the overall pace. I could not put this one down. 

(The Ill-Fated Scientist is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

FLOOD

Flood, Robert Penn Warren, Random House, 1964, 440 pp

 

 

When I started reading Flood I somehow though it was Robert Penn Warren's last novel and I was sad. When I finished reading what turned out to be a mostly unsatisfying turgid slog, I learned that he had written two more novels in the 1970s and I was sad. Flood did not make me want to read more.

 

After over 50 wandering and confusing pages, I figured out that Brad Tolliver, a successful mid 20th century screenwriter and Yasha Jones, a famous director (both fictional characters) have come to a tiny Tennessee town to make a movie.

Fiddlersburg is Brad's hometown and is less than a year from being underwater. The Tennessee Valley Authority is building another dam in that controversial government plan to bring electricity to Appalachia. 

Brad and his sister are the offspring of a swamp rat father and a respectable woman of the town. The family history is complex and sordid, of the type you might expect in a Faulkner novel. In the course of the novel it all comes out. Brad confronts his many demons and has a sort of rebirth at the end.

This is Robert Penn Warren alright, complete with the search for identity and truth as people sit on moonlit porches drinking, talking, and revealing long buried secrets. It just was not up to the standard that I feel the author set up in some of his earlier books.

It seemed to take forever to read and that melodramatic tendency he had used to good effect in his better novels fell flat for me. I may skip those last two novels. On the other hand, I may read them eventually because he has let me down and then gone on to surprise me before.

 

Have you read this one or any of his other novels?

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

THE HATE U GIVE

 

 

THE SUNDAY FAMILY READ

The Hate U Give, Angie Thomas, HarperCollins, 2017, 444 pp

 

 

I chose to read this Young Adult novel for Banned Books Week. It was on the list of the most challenged books in 2018. It won several awards and was nominated for slews of others. The movie adaptation will be in theaters on October 19th. It is amazingly well written for a first novel.

Starr Carter is a sixteen-year-old African American girl living between two worlds. She resides in a poor neighborhood where her father runs a grocery story and her mother works at a medical clinic. She attends a top of the line prep school in an affluent area of her unnamed city. 

One night she runs into her childhood best friend at a party. They go for a drive and are pulled over for no reason by a white police officer who shoots Khalil in the back for no other good reason.

Starr's uncle on her mother's side is also a police officer. Thus follows a months long story during which Starr finds her voice, her courage, and tries to do the right things while she mourns her friend and her neighborhood goes up in flames due to gang violence, protests and unrelenting media attention.

Angie Thomas brought the things we see in the news to full life with all the nuances of the stuff that African Americans must navigate no matter how hard they try and no matter what paths they choose. Starr is portrayed realistically as the teenager she is who has to deal with so many conflicts and hard questions that would more than challenge a grown woman.

The lies about Khalil in the press, the threats against her family by a local drug lord, the confusing past of her own parents, combine with the fact that she is the only living person, besides the trigger happy cop, who knows what really happened on that fateful night. No matter what she says or doesn't say, she could endanger herself, her family and her community.

I loved many things about the book but two of those things stand out. By making Starr and her friends completely believable teens, I felt every sentence was true. By not talking down at all to a young adult audience, Angie Thomas wrote possibly one of the best books I have read in the genre. 

(The Hate U Give is available in a movie tie-in hardcover edition on the shelves at Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

MERMAIDS IN PARADISE

Mermaids in Paradise, Lydia Millet, W W Norton, 2015, 290 pp

 

 

Sometimes fun is what I want in a book. This medium length novel was complete fun all the way through. It was the September pick of my 2018 challenge to read one book a month from the TBR lists I compile each year. If you have followed my reviews for a while you know that I have loved all four previous novels I have read by Lydia Millet. Mermaids in Paradise was no exception.

 

The story is hilarious, endearing and satirical, all in one. Deb and Chip have navigated through their families' input on their wedding day. Deb is an opinionated though clear thinking modern woman while Chip is easy going. They are a perfect balance for each other.

Soon enough they are on their honeymoon at a Caribbean island resort complete with a high-end restaurant that serves meals on a platform over the water. Chip meets other guests in his friendly outgoing way, one of whom is a marine biologist. Nancy is there to study the health of the coral reefs in our current toxic oceans. While doing so she encounters what appear to be actual mermaids.

Word gets out and the parent company of the resort swoops in to capture the mermaids in an initial step to develop a theme park featuring those mythical creatures. You practically get whip lash from the speed at which an idyllic honeymoon turns into something of an eco thriller.

However, Lydia Millet's writing through the voice of Deb, who narrates the story, keeps it light and breezy. Considering there are mermaids involved, Lydia and Deb also keep it real.

I must admit I was not enticed by the cover or even the title. Truly I had very little idea what I was getting into but I sure am glad I did! Next time you visit the Caribbean be sure to take this novel with you.

(Mermaids in Paradise is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

FOR THE GOOD OF THE CAUSE

For the Good of the Cause, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Praeger Publishers, 1964, 94 pp. (Translated from the Russian by David Floyd and Max Hayward)

 

 

This short novel was the second of Solzhenitsyn's works to be published in the Soviet Union. When Khrushchev succeeded Stalin, he made an attempt to lighten the worst aspects of his predecessor's rule without undermining the Soviet system.

For the Good of the Cause shows how the hope of better times given to ordinary people was crushed by the vast network of Communist officials wanting to maintain the system that gave them power and authority.

The story is set in a provincial town where the students and staff of a technical school have completed construction of a new building. Their pride and sense of accomplishment are dashed when some higher ups decided to put a new research institute in the building, leaving the technical school in their cramped and inadequate quarters.

When the Head of the school tries to fight this decision he is told the bureaucracy's decision is "for the good of the cause." The Head's investigation uncovers dirty dealing behind the scenes but he is powerless to expose it. Who in Moscow would listen? No one. The book is a chilling portrayal of the outright cruelty of Stalin becoming the more hidden control of "the system."

 

After the author won the Pulitzer Prize in 1970, this was one of his novels cited by the Soviet government as evidence that Solzhenitsyn was a dangerous man of ideas.  An introduction in the Praeger Publications edition I read tells the full story of the eventual censorship of the author's writing by the Soviet Union.

I read the novel first and then the introduction. It is as if Solzhenitsyn told his own future!

THE DAYLIGHT MARRIAGE

The Daylight Marriage, Heidi Pitlor, Algonquin Books, 2015, 245 pp

 

 

This novel was the March, 2016, pick of the Nervous Breakdown Book Club. (I am trying to catch up reading the books I get from this subscription site, the only one I engage with. Yes, I am 2.5 years behind. Whatever.)

 

Heidi Pitlor is probably best known for being the series editor for The Best American Short Stories since 2007. She has also written two novels and this one is her second. I listened to the Otherppl podcast interview with her and it was fascinating to hear about the trials and rewards of working on The Best American Short Stories books year after year while raising twins and writing novels.

From the cover of the paperback I read, I thought The Daylight Marriage would be a nice little story about a marriage. I felt bored before I even read the first page. I should have looked more closely at that cover. Do you see how that vase is in midair with the water splashing out? By the end of the first chapter I was certainly not bored.

The story beings with a loud and terrible argument between Hannah and Lovell, her husband of almost 20 years. It is one of those arguments supposedly about one thing that dredges up years of unspoken grievances on both sides.

The next day Hannah disappears. The rest of the novel follows the aftermath of her disappearance in alternate chapters from Hannah's or Lovell's viewpoints. What I had expected turned into a crime story evolving from a marriage that was not good at all.

Though the book is short, it felt longer because the pace is a bit slow. Somehow though the suspense was all the more taut. In the end, I valued this novel several notches above such bestsellers as Gone Girl or The Girl on the Train. Heidi Pitlor does not use gimmicks, nor does she manipulate the reader's emotions. I felt it was as true as real life.

Two adults with personal baggage that made harmony and intimacy nearly impossible, made parenting a challenge. I was convinced that two basically decent people could cross a line, go over the edge, and destroy a relationship beyond repair.

I once wrote a song with this line in it: "Do you ever wonder if the time comes when it's too late?" In this affecting novel that time came for both husband and wife. There lies tragedy.

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

LAKE SUCCESS

Lake Success, Gary Shteyngart, Random House, 2018, 335 pp

 

 

One of the best things Russia has given America is Gary Shteyngart. Actually, he is not a thing. He is a person who creates things, namely five novels and a memoir. I have read all but one of his novels and his memoir. His books are nothing short of amazing.

 

Lake Success is his only novel set entirely in the United States of America. All of his earlier work has included Russia in some way and if you read his memoir, Little Failure, you understand why. Now that America has become more like Russia in some ways, I guess he felt comfortable writing exclusively about the country he lives in instead of the one he came from.

Lake Success is the name of the hedge fund founded by Barry Cohen, circuitously named after The Great Gatsby. The story opens thus: "Barry Cohen, a man with 2.4 billion dollars of assets under management, staggered into the Port Authority Bus Terminal. He was visibly drunk and bleeding. There was a clean slice above his left brow where the nanny's fingernail had gouged him and, from his wife, a teardrop scratch below his eye. It was 3:20 AM."

This is the ultimate road trip novel, one of the ultimate American odyssey tales, and possibly the ultimate tale of the rich white male trying to discover his true self. In this time and place, many Americans are quite aware that the true eye of the needle for white privileged men is coming to awareness of and empathy for other human beings.

I went to hear Gary Shteyngart read from Lake Success a couple weeks ago. Normally listening to an author read aloud from his or her work is a dull, mind numbing experience for me. He pulled it off like a pro, like a top poetry jam dude or a truly funny comedian. Even more entertaining was his story about how he wrote the novel. All of that however might have slipped my mind, as so many things do at my age, had I not read the book.

You get Barry's life story, how he ended up marrying a woman of Indian descent, what devastation ensued when their son was diagnosed as being on the extreme wrong end of the Asperger/Autism Spectrum, how he came to be on the run from the SEC, and how many painful lessons he had to learn before he even got a clue.

All of that makes a fine story but this is Gary Shteyngart. You know all those books and think pieces about how we managed to elect our current President and what the heck is wrong with America? Oh my, the hand wringing, the anger, the complete identity crisis of the USA? Yes, this is an author of fiction having his say and boy does he.

Barry travels across the country on Greyhound buses, underfunded but undaunted. He has come down from his shaky ivory tower to meet America, the America that hides beneath our plastic shiny veneer. His journey is equal parts hilarious and hideous, delightful and depressing. This novel is exactly what you need after two years of anxiously reading the news and your social media feeds.

Does Barry achieve awareness and empathy? Well, yes and no. A rich white man will always retain certain quirks. He does, after a really long time, become a better human being. As Jesus said, "Truly, I say to you, it will be hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God." Matthew 19:23-24.

(Lake Success is available in hardcover by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)