BLACK WAVE

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Black Wave, Michelle Tea, Feminist Press, 2016, 325 pp

I was not sure I was going to like Black Wave. It was a contender in the 2017 Tournament of Books. I had listened to an interview with Michelle Tea on the Otherppl podcast. So I took the plunge. She has written and/or edited 14 books. This one, like several earlier ones, is a mashup of memoir and fiction with a meta-fiction section in the middle. I guess you could call it experimental. I was surprised by it and it worked for me.

The first section is set in San Francisco. Michelle writes about herself in third person. She is in her late twenties, a published poet, living the life of a poor, substance abusing, promiscuous lesbian in the Mission district. It is 1999. 

This part is raw in the extreme and Michelle is an unlikeable woman. She is unfaithful to her lovers, unable to reciprocate in love, living on the edge of poverty and usually drunk. She also experiments with heroin and feels unconcerned about getting addicted because she inhales rather than shoot it. Truly it is a wonder she remains alive and out of jail.

One day she decides she needs to get her life more together so she moves to Los Angeles intending to write screenplays. She gets a job at that bookstore on Franklin Ave in Hollywood. She drinks wine until she passes out every night. She tries to adapt her life to a screenplay by changing herself into more accessible characters. That is the meta part and the second section.

Then the story gets even more weird because the world is going to end and by the final page, it really does. But as life around her gets more strange by the day, Michelle gets it together. She gets sober, makes peace with her two lesbian mothers, and finds a state of grace.

That is where she got to me. I still felt I was obsessively reading about a messy, sometimes disgusting breakdown of a person and the world, but the juxtaposition of the two became brilliant and full of truth about human beings. Each of us as an individual has an inescapable destiny, she seems to be saying. In parallel to that sobering fact, so does the human race.

Black Wave is not a feel-good book, not at all. It is in many ways appalling and readers will either love it or hate it. I didn't hate it because it has too much about it that is great and I almost loved it for reasons I find hard to articulate. I am extremely glad I read it. At the end, I felt good.

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

BRUSH BACK

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Brush Back, Sara Paretsky, G P Putnam's Sons, 2015, 459 pp

Now I have read all of Sara Paretsky's books and I am ready for her newest one, Fallout, which will be released next month, April 18, 2017!

I first read Sara Paretsky in 2005 when one of my reading groups read and discussed Fire Sale. I was hooked! I felt, and still feel, that V I Warshawski was the best female private investigator of all. I went back and started reading all her books in order.

Brush Back takes V I back into the South Side Chicago neighborhood where she grew up. An old boyfriend appears one day asking for her help in exonerating his mother Stella, who has served a 25 year stint behind bars for manslaughter. She had been convicted of murdering her own daughter, but is still claiming innocence. However, she is no victim but is in fact a violent, crazy woman and she hates V I with a passion.

As in every Sara Paretsky mystery, what seems like a small matter explodes into a trail of corruption and injustice involving white collar crime. Also as usual, the police have little interest in getting involved, leaving it up to V I to risk her life tracking down the truth.

In Brush Back a blue collar neighborhood has been gutted by the closing of the steel industry and overrun by gangs and drugs. It is being somewhat propped up by a purported do-gooder who is as corrupt as they come. V I takes plenty of flack for having left the neighborhood and having had a degree of success with her private investigator one woman business. Rather than anyone being glad to see her coming back to help, she is vilified and obstructed at every turn, even though her deceased cousin Boom-Boom is well-loved for his success as a famous hockey player.

The book is so timely. Those down-trodden South Side residents are a part of the demographic that put our current President in office. The criminal behind all the supposed "good work" he does in the neighborhood is the one who is actually driving the area further down. What is he hiding?

In these days of calls for activism, V I Warshawski is an admirable example of the dangers involved in exposing corruption, greed, and the rotten spots in city politics. I wish I was that brave. At least I read the books. Follow the money is still an important watchword. 

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

DO NOT SAY WE HAVE NOTHING

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Do Not Say We Have Nothing, Madeleine Thien, W W Norton & Company, 2016, 463 pp

Summary from Goodreads: Master storyteller Madeleine Thien takes us inside an extended family in China, showing us the lives of two successive generations—those who lived through Mao’s Cultural Revolution and their children, who became the students protesting in Tiananmen Square. At the center of this epic story are two young women, Marie and Ai-Ming. Through their relationship Marie strives to piece together the tale of her fractured family in present-day Vancouver, seeking answers in the fragile layers of their collective story. Her quest will unveil how Kai, her enigmatic father, a talented pianist, and Ai-Ming’s father, the shy and brilliant composer, Sparrow, along with the violin prodigy Zhuli were forced to reimagine their artistic and private selves during China’s political campaigns and how their fates reverberate through the years with lasting consequences. 

My Review:

This novel about China under Mao, then under Deng, at Tiananmen Square, spoke to me on so many levels and I felt passionate about it on every page. Three days after finishing it, my thoughts and heart are still reverberating.

For many, including two-thirds of the reading group who went with my suggestion, it will be a challenging read. Music, the study and composition and playing of, permeates the story. The three generations of two extended families interweave. Time is fluid. But it is very much a female perspective on political change and oppression, on the attack to the sense of self and freedom of thought for all people who live under it, especially to creatives.

The author preserves a secret story within her story. As far as I am concerned, she has fulfilled the purpose of novels, of writing fiction and of using language to express the nearly inexpressible. Math, music, writing across cultures and borderlines can be antidotes to oppression, providing a tenuous hold on sanity. I adore intelligent women and have added Madeleine Thien to my growing list.

I was encouraged to read this novel by a review on The Nature of Things blog. Thank you Dorothy! Here is a link to her excellent review: http://birdwoman-thenatureofthings.blogspot.com/2016/12/do-not-say-we-have-nothing-by-madeleine.html

(Do Not Say We Have Nothing is available in hardcover by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

LYING ON THE COUCH

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Lying on the Couch, Irvin D Yalom, Basic Books/HarperCollins, 1996, 369 pp

Irvin D Yalom is an emeritus professor of psychiatry at Stanford University who also writes fiction. Three years ago I read and found stimulating his most recent novel, The Spinoza Problem, so when one of my reading groups chose this one, I looked forward to it.

Lying on the Couch was his third novel and I think he was still working out how to switch over from writing technical works to writing fiction. It wasn't bad; in fact it is a thought provoking look at the inner workings of professional psychotherapy, but it had some rough patches.

Two therapists come into conflict. Marshal is the entrenched older mentor to Ernest Lash. The former believes in the efficacy of psychotherapy with all its guidelines and procedures, but has deep issues himself about success and money. He mentors the younger Ernest Lash, formerly trained as a psycho-pharmacist (meaning one who prescribes drugs rather than counseling) but who has now become a "talk-therapy" proponent. The two clash over methodology and how open a therapist should be with his patients.

Threaded through their professional relationship are other characters and story lines. Marshall falls prey to a patient who is in fact a supremely successful con man and is almost ruined. Lash is the victim of a predatory female patient bent on seducing him in revenge for Lash having broken up her marriage to another of his patients.

The whole novel nearly collapses under the psychological and criminal thriller element the author layers on to what is also a treatise on the state of psychiatry in the late 1990s. The sexual aspects are a bit cringe-worthy, the criminal elements are somewhat improbable, and despite the propulsion of a rather trashy plot, I felt queasy much of the time.

Really, the novel is enough to put the reader off from ever submitting to any sort of therapy. If therapists are actually working out their own obsessions and mental problems as they try to help others, how can anyone fully trust them?

We had a profound reading group discussion. I decided that there are always people with a fervent desire to help others, whether they be therapists, ministers, teachers, family or friends. Once the political and economic interests of organized institutions get involved with helping others, the subject of help gets murky and sometimes outright destructive. 

Often I feel I have gained more insight into my own troubles and relationships by reading great fiction, more than I ever got in the countless hours of therapy I have had. I can't say that therapy didn't help me sometimes but for now I am sticking with fiction.

I don't think that was Yalom's intention, but his novel cemented my decision to leave therapy alone in the future.

(Lying on the Couch is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

THE BOYS IN THE BOAT

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The Boys in the Boat, Daniel James Brown, Viking Penquin, 2013, 370 pp

In 1936, the varsity crew of the University of Washington's rowing team went to the Olympic Games in Berlin and took the Gold Medal in eight-oared rowing. That is known historical fact. When Daniel James Brown published The Boys in the Boat in 2013, the world learned the back story to that achievement. What a story it is.

The author was a neighbor of Joe Rantz, one of the crew members. Close to the end of his life, Joe Rantz was ill and being cared for by his daughter. She happened to be reading aloud to Joe, Brown's earlier book, Under a Flaming Sky. The old man wanted to meet the author since he had been a friend of Angus Hay, Jr, who featured in that book. Thus Brown's next book was born, a story almost as good as the book itself.

Due to Joe's daughter having kept all manner of records and stories about Joe's life and about the rowing team, Joe is the central character. He also told as much as he could to Daniel James Brown over a series of interviews in 2007 before passing away in September.

This is a story of triumph by a bunch of young men who grew up in the Great Depression, most of them in and around Seattle. I was struck by how hard life was for people in those times; people who had no safety net. I have read a good deal about that period in American history but no other book I've read has brought so much day to day insight into those people's lives.

It is also a story about how a great team is made, about rowing and the boats. About being a rowing coach. And about George Yeoman Pocock, the builder of most of the boats in use at that time and the guru of rowing technique.

By contrasting life as it was for the boys leading up to the Olympics with what was happening in Germany under the rise of Hitler, the story is broadened and laid into the stream of world history as it were.

All of this makes for a powerful book and took me by surprise. I have always preferred novels to any other kind of reading material and even to movies. Somehow I have let more and more non-fiction stray into my reading, in part due to my many wonderful reading groups with the democratic way we bring books to each others' attention. In fact, that is how I came to read The Boys in the Boat and our discussion was one of the best.

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

THE GODS OF TANGO

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The Gods of Tango, Carolina De Robertis, Alfred A Knopf, 2015, 363 pp

Another fabulous novel! It will live on in my memory perhaps for as long as I live.

In 1913, Leda leaves her tiny Italian village for a new life in Argentina. Her cousin/fiance has been there for a couple years and has finally written for her to join him. The wedding ceremony has taken place in her village without him present and her mother is so angry with her for leaving that she will not even say goodbye. Oh, the terrible things we do to each other. In addition, Leda's best friend has recently died under horrific and mysterious circumstances.

So, along with a suitcase and a trunk containing her father's violin, she boards a ship with hopes, fears, and losses as her primary baggage. When she finally arrives in Buenos Aires, she is greeted by her new husband's best friend with the shocking news that Dante is dead, killed by a stray bullet in an Anarchist riot just for being an innocent bystander.

Buenos Aires is a city teeming with immigrants, a violent place with large areas of poverty contrasted with the wealthy. After months of barely surviving as a single woman, Leda becomes infatuated with the Tango, teaches herself to play the violin with the help and encouragement of an old man who lives in her building, and decides to go into the city's nightlife as a male violinist. She takes Dante's name, wears his clothes and lives an incredible life as a musician.

The novel is as seductive and flamboyant as a Tango. Having been a violinist earlier in my life, having played in orchestras, sung in bands, and written my own music for many years, I was enthralled. This is also a history of the Tango, a musical genre that has parallels to the Blues in North America, and has gone through constant changes as it became one of the most popular musical and dance styles of South America. I watched videos of the Tango as I read.

Leda's story, living as Dante, is dramatic, full of challenges, triumphs and heartbreak. It is also a tale of her awakening sexual identity and the conflict between the accepted church-inspired views of women with what really goes on in the secret personal lives of both men and women.

Carolina De Robertis writes prose the way a composer writes music and drew me into a rich and passionate world I had not known much about. It is a sexy novel that will have you reaching for your partner or sending you out to find one. 

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

MARCH READING GROUP UPDATE

I must say, my reading groups are doing quite well at selecting books I am interested in reading! Or, in the case of Moonglow, a book I have already read and loved, so am dying to discuss. My only exception this month is A Man Called Ove, which doesn't exactly seem like my kind of thing, but there is a movie and it is by a Swedish writer, so I will take a chance.

Laura's Group:

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Tiny Book Club:

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Tina's Group:

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One Book At A Time:

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Bookie Babes:

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If you are in a reading group or groups, what are you discussing this month?

 

THE DAY THE WORLD CAME TO TOWN

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The Day the World Came to Town, Jim Defede, Regan Books, 2002, 244 pp

The book is poorly written and quickly became boring to me, but I did learn some things I did not know before. The reading group who chose the book mostly felt the same way and our discussion lasted about twenty minutes before it devolved into the usual these days: a discussion of our new President and how he is doing. 

But the book: On 9/11 right after the Twin Towers were hit, the United States closed its airspace. You may remember. I forgot that part. All aircraft headed for the US from other countries were forced either to turn back or land elsewhere. Thirty-eight jetliners were ordered to land in Gander, Newfoundland, requiring that small town of 10,000 people to play a Red Cross role for over 6000 travelers plus flight crew members. The book tells this story.

According to Jim Defede, it all came off without a hitch, there was no violence or unpleasantness, all the townspeople and local businesses pitched in to shelter, feed, entertain and even provide medical assistance where needed. This went on for six days.

If one can believe all this it is heartwarming in these these times of closed borders, burgeoning numbers of refugees, etc, etc. It was nice to contemplate that the world is made up of mostly nice people. The author chose to follow the stories of a select number of stranded passengers. You feel their individual troubles and anxieties but not enough to upset the reader too much.

Of course, I wondered how my small town of approximately 20,000 on the edge of Los Angeles would react in such a situation. Would we be that generous and that friendly? Hm. 

(The Day the World Came to Town is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

BOOKS READ IN FEBRUARY

Despite the shorter number of days I had a stellar reading month: 11 books. It did help that many were excellent, that it was rainy and cloudy and cold almost all month, and that hubby was gone on business for the last week. Odd for me, I read four non-fiction books, three of which were reading group picks. I so wanted to finish the 1962 list for My Big Fat Reading Project, but I did not quite make it. I only have three to go so I will finish that list in March for sure.

Stats: 11 read. 7 fiction. 2 sci fi/speculative/fantasy. 5 by women. 4 non-fiction. 3 from My Big Fat Reading Project. 1 translated. 2 for Tournament of Books.

Favorites: Version Control, All the Birds in the Sky, The Time of the Doves, The Gods of Tango and Do Not Say We Have Nothing. (That is a lot of favorites! No wonder it felt like such a good month.)

Least favorite: The Day the World Came to Town.

And the books were:

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How did your reading go in February? What were your favorite reads?

 

THE LONELY GIRL

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The Lonely Girl, Edna O'Brien, 1962, Plume (also available in The Country Girls Trilogy and Epilogue, Farrar Straus Giroux, 1986) 200 pp

The Lonely Girl is the second volume of Edna O'Brien's Country Girls Trilogy. I had read the entire trilogy back in 2004, which is when I fell in love with O'Brien, so this was a second reading.

She captures so well the innocence and emotional states of Kate and her friend Baba. Baba mostly just wants to have fun but Kate falls in love with another older man. She had done that in the first book, The Country Girl, when she was still living at home and grieving for her recently deceased mother and had her heart broken. This time, she and Baba are living in a rooming house in Dublin, working at dull jobs, usually short of money, and looking for men.

Eugene Gaillard is a supposedly divorced writer who lives outside of the city on a large country estate. In fact, he is still married to his American wife with whom he has a daughter but they are separated. The romance is doomed because he is worldly and Kate is a country bumpkin, still a virgin, steeped in her Catholic teachings, in no way prepared to deal with his ways and her insecure jealousy.

It is painful to watch how her inept youthful inexperience causes her to suffer. Painful also to remember those years in my life. In some ways my early twenties were more exciting than anything in life so far but in the end there was more heartbreak than fun.

Kate's drunken father plays a huge role as he shows up at Eugene's house with a priest and a friend. They virtually kidnap her, a 20-year-old woman, and take her back to the small town where she grew up. It is all sanctimonious Irish Catholic sentiments from men who actually mistreat women. Sound familiar? Though she manages to escape she has learned very little.

Disgusting, disturbing, and the central theme of all the O'Brien novels I have read so far. Her brilliance is in plumbing the inner thoughts and feelings of her female characters.  

THE TIME OF THE DOVES

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The Time of the Doves, Merce Rodoreda, Graywolf Press, 201 pp (originally published in Spain, 1962; translated from the Catalan by David H Resenthal)

Ah, this was a beautiful book. It is tragic and sad so how did she make it so beautiful? The author, a Catalonian woman who came of age during the Spanish Civil War, saw her early novels burned by the authorities of the time as she became a refugee in France and did not write again for eight years. The Time of the Doves was her first novel after that hiatus.

Though I have not ever had to live where a war was being fought, this novel was personal to me for other reasons. I was raised by parents whose childhoods were shadowed by the Great Depression and whose young adult years were crimped by the fears and deprivations of WWII. In the 50s we had all we needed, though the Cold War was a distant but ever-present threat. My sisters and I were taught to believe that happiness was ours if we behaved ourselves, trusted that Jesus loved us, and did well in school.

So I grew up thinking that happiness was the goal and I pursued it madly, not by being a well-behaved believer in Jesus, but still sure it was my birthright. It was not! Now as I approach my elderly years, I know that happiness is as fleeting as spring flowers. 

Suddenly, while reading The Time of the Doves, I realized, as the Eastern sages have been saying for eons, that happiness and sorrow are only polarities as are riches and poverty, success and failure, and on and on. There is a strange beauty in all of it.

Natalia, whose mother died when she was young and whose father barely acknowledged her existence, meets Quimet during a dance in one of the town squares of Barcelona. He woos her away from her current fiance, he bullies her yet holds for her a strange fascination. They marry and have two children but Quimet becomes obsessed with raising doves on the roof of their apartment building and stops making money. Natalia goes to work as a cleaning woman, the Spanish Civil War begins, and eventually she loses her husband, her job, and barely survives with those kids, all nearly starving to death.

Finally rescue, safety, and even love come back into her life but she cannot recover from the trauma or believe in love anymore. It is only because of Merce Rodoreda's exquisite prose (probably even more so in Catalan) that the whole picture of this woman's desires, fortitude, despair, and finally hope kept me from collapsing under all of Natalia's misfortune. I was sure she was doomed but there was beauty everywhere in the writing.

By the end, another one of my mother's lessons finally made sense to me. Only if one keeps going, one foot in front of the other, doing one's duties, does one have a chance at happiness, survival, and even life itself. As a child I thought she meant it was my duty to be happy. But she knew how fleeting happiness is, she already knew how long life could be, and that there is no sense crying about it. Instead she grew flowers, played the piano, and kept an orderly home. Thanks Mom. Thanks Merce Rodoreda. They both knew that beauty matters.

Thanks also to my blogger friend Edith at Edith's Miscellany for introducing me to this novel in her review. The Spanish version she read was entitled In Diamond Square.

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

THE PYRAMID CLIMBERS

The Pyramid Climbers, Vance Packard, Penguin Books, 1962, 319 pp

 

 

This is the fourth book I have read by Vance Packard. It concerns big business in America, how it is structured (as a pyramid though not to be confused with today's pyramid schemes) and how employees climb that pyramid to executive, company president, and chairman of the board.

 

Though it is one of the driest yet of Packard's books, it was interesting to read about the amount of control and influence those companies wielded over their executives in the early 60s. It mattered what sort of wife they had, where they bought their homes, what clubs they joined. People of color, Jews, women, and recent immigrants stood little chance of reaching executive positions.

Personality and psychological testing came into common use beginning in the mid 1950s. Regular assessments of how a man was doing on the job and how he was perceived by his superior and co-workers were conducted. Demands for increased production year after year led to unethical practices in order to meet the quotas.

It all paints a picture of these big corporations as almost a cult. The early 60s were a time of transition from promoting within the companies to using head hunters to steal men away from other companies. It was also the beginning of the overseas branches and multinational conglomerations that led to the situation we have today of out-sourcing and its accompanying unemployment in America.

Basically WASPs ran everything and a corporate culture of blandness rather than the outrageous types who we now call the Robber Barons were being replaced by executives bound by their Boards of Directors and shareholders.

Sometimes the author fell prey to generalities though he attempted to show differences between various kinds of industries. Aside from that complaint and the boredom that comes from reading too many statistics, I felt I learned as much as I wanted to know about the transitions in business that led to where we are now.

My husband and I were both children of fathers who worked for a major corporation: Ford Motor Company and United States Steel. Neither of us has ever had a desire to follow that path. My father-in-law made it pretty far up the pyramid and died of a massive stroke at age 52. My father chose to not angle for promotions and took early retirement. He had some health problems later in life but lived to be 85.

Being a person who is concerned about climate change and the unsustainable culture we have today, I got a glimpse of the inner workings of businesses based solely on profits and growth. Where will it all end?

(The Pyramid Climbers is out of print and not found in my libraries. Used books are available.)

ALL THE BIRDS IN THE SKY

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All the Birds in the Sky, Charlie Jane Anders, TOR Books, 2016, 313 pp

Summary from Goodreads: Childhood friends Patricia Delfine and Laurence Armstead didn't expect to see each other again, after parting ways under mysterious circumstances during high school. After all, the development of magical powers and the invention of a two-second time machine could hardly fail to alarm one's peers and families.

But now they're both adults, living in the hipster mecca San Francisco, and the planet is falling apart around them. Laurence is an engineering genius who's working with a group that aims to avert catastrophic breakdown through technological intervention into the changing global climate. Patricia is a graduate of Eltisley Maze, the hidden academy for the world's magically gifted, and works with a small band of other magicians to secretly repair the world's ever-growing ailments. Little do they realize that something bigger than either of them, something begun years ago in their youth, is determined to bring them together--to either save the world, or plunge it into a new dark ages.

 

 

My Review:

Incredible! Last week I read Dexter Palmer's Version Control, among other topics, a book about time travel. This week I read this sparkling and crazy novel that imagines a war between magic and science taking place as the world enters its final slide into oblivion for the human race. A time travel/anti-gravity device is a possible solution for saving at least a small portion of humanity by sending them off to another planet.

 

There are richly complex characters to love and hate, a magic system and a scientific one, with a world just around the corner from where we are now.

 

If you want an idea of the plot, read the summary above. Honestly, as thrilling as the reading experience was, it was also exhausting and anyway, I hate writing plot summaries. This is a book for geeks of all kinds. 

 

Patricia, the magical witch/healer who can talk to animals and Laurence, the scientific child prodigy, make most of the fantasy or sci fi characters who are outcasts in their own lives look kind of mainstream and well adjusted by comparison. Their childhood friendship and adult romance are more what we are used to but hold up better than other couples in the genres.

 

If this sounds like something you might like to read, be prepared to jettison all preconceived ideas and just go with it. If you like your facts and emotions pinned down and your beliefs kept intact, skip it. This book is crazy good but it is also plain crazy! I loved it.

 

Also it is a TOB 2017 contender and just got nominated for a Nebula award. 

 

 

(All the Birds in the Sky is available in hardcover by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.) 

BETWEEN THE WORLD AND ME

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Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Spiegal & Grau, 2015, 152 pp

Summary from Goodreads: In a series of essays, written as a letter to his son, Coates confronts the notion of race in America and how it has shaped American history, many times at the cost of black bodies and lives. Thoughtfully exploring personal and historical events, from his time at Howard University to the Civil War, the author poignantly asks and attempts to answer difficult questions that plague modern society. In this short memoir, the "Atlantic" writer explains that the tragic examples of Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, and those killed in South Carolina are the results of a systematically constructed and maintained assault to black people--a structure that includes slavery, mass incarceration, and police brutality as part of its foundation. From his passionate and deliberate breakdown of the concept of race itself to the importance of the Black Lives Matter movement, Coates powerfully sums up the terrible history of the subjugation of black people in the United States. 

My Review:

For me, this book defies being reviewed. It is so personal, so true, so well thought out. I don't feel I have the right and I certainly don't have the nerve to write about what this man wrote.

I already knew we are not, in America, living in a post-racial world. Racism is alive and well and being committed as a harmful act gazillions of times every day.

I thought I already knew what it is like to be Black in America, but now I know I can't ever even really know.

I suppose I felt "lucky" or "blessed" that my karma this lifetime is to be middle class and white. Now I know that is the ultimate privilege, even if one is female or lower class or poor. Anyone seen as White in this country is safer, has more opportunity and more freedom than a Black person, no matter how much education or power or money that Black person has.

So I thank Ta-Nehisi Coates for writing this book, for getting it published, for thinking so hard and writing so clearly, for applying his intelligence and his love for his son to what is more than just a problem but is actually an insanity.

I don't know what to do about it except to keep reading and encouraging others to read the books by people of color who tell us White people what it is like for them. Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Jacqueline Woodson, Malcolm X, Walter Mosley, Colson Whitehead, Gloria Naylor, Gwendolyn Brooks, James Mc Bride, Dorothy West, and many more. I encourage you to read all of them. Then do what needs to be done where you live, where you work, where you vote. 

(Between the World and Me is available in various formats by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

VERSION CONTROL

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Version Control, Dexter Palmer, Pantheon Books, 2016, 495 pp

Back in 2010, I read Dexter Palmer's first novel, The Dream of Perpetual Motion, and I did not like it much. Seven years later I confess that it was more a case of I didn't get it. I was ignorant of the steampunk genre back then so had no way to determine how or if his steampunk setting was any good. Compounding my ignorance, I somehow missed that it was a retelling of Shakespeare's The Tempest not to mention that as of 2010 I had not read The Tempest. My apologies to Dexter Palmer. I will give the novel another read one of these days.

Version Control on the other hand blew me away. I did not even mind the obvious fact that Palmer was intending to blow as many minds as he could. Though the novel is set in a near future time (including self-driving cars, an internet dating service whose actual moneymaker was data collection sold to political and marketing clients, and a President who appears to people personally on their hand-held devices to wish them Happy Birthday and give them words of wisdom about their "private" worries) this is a love story steeped in science.

Rebecca, who had to go back to living at home after college because she could not find a job, met Philip on the dating site where she also finally got a job. Philip is a mad scientist deeply involved with quantum mechanics, string theory, and developing an invention he calls the "causality violation device" but which the press calls a time machine.

In Version Control, Palmer takes the ever and increasingly popular time travel trope into uncharted territory. He is still pretty wordy (he has a PhD in English lit from Princeton University, so), he is still cramming everything under the sun into his story, and his writing style is still a bit pedestrian though he has his lyrical moments. But he has written a highly entertaining story with perplexing twists and turns and made me even try to understand the science.

When the surprising conclusion I did not even see coming signaled the end of the novel, I felt like I would rather keep reading Version Control for the rest of 2017 rather than start another book.

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

THE NIX

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The Nix, Nathan Hill, Alfred A Knopf, 2016, 620 pp

In an interview with Nathan Hill, he talks about how he spent years trying to become a novelist by writing what he thought publishers would buy and worked himself into a defeatist state of mind. Finally he got a job teaching writing and used his spare time to write what he wanted to say. The result was The Nix.

The protagonist, Samuel Andresson-Anderson, is then somewhat of an autobiographical character, a not uncommon circumstance in a first novel. I found him to be a sympathetic character reminiscent of fellows in books by Philip Roth and Saul Bellow. Adrift in a sea of losses (his mother, his best friend, his one true love) he loses himself in on-line gaming as he struggles/procrastinates in writing a novel, long overdue, the huge advance he'd received long spent. Then his long lost mother resurfaces.

The structure of this novel is unwieldy and certain sections could be called over-written. By the time I finished reading all 620 pages, I forgave Nathan Hill everything. He wrote the story of a family that is littered with the universal detritus of failures, cowardice, love, bad communication, terrible parenting, immigration, myths and ghosts.

Somehow, and somewhat ungracefully, he stuffed all of this into what is either a sprawling mess or a brilliant synthesis of American life over the past century. Samuel's grandfather ran away from a hopeless future in Norway, landing in a mid-western American town with a job for a company that produced chemical weapons of mass destruction. He brought with him the Nix, a piece of Norwegian folklore about an evil trickster who steals whatever you love most and breaks your heart.

He raised his daughter Faye on stories of the Nix, leaving her in a state of personality disintegration. She escaped to Chicago in 1968 and got involved with the protests at the Democratic National Convention. Though she eventually returned home and married her high school sweetheart, she was more traumatized than ever. She left Samuel and his father when her son was a boy, disappearing completely. As she enters Samuel's life again decades later, she has been accused of a sordid crime committed in Chicago during the demonstrations.

As in the common current technique of novel writing with the story moving back and forth in time, the mysteries and losses of Samuel's life are revealed to both Samuel and the reader. The result is a heart wrenching story about how we make sense of our parents' actions and the possibility of reconciliation after deep misunderstanding and hurt. Along the way we also get to relive a social history that brings us up to where we are today.

The Nix is a long read that alternates between action and introspection. It won't please everyone but it was a bestseller last fall, has had glowing reviews and 4+ stars on Goodreads and Amazon. I loved it.

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

THE SWORD OF ALDONES

The Sword of Aldones, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Ace Books, 1962, 164 pp

 

 

Because I read and loved The Mists of Avalon back in the 80s, I decided to include Marion Zimmer Bradley in My Big Fat Reading Project and read all of her novels in order of publication. The Sword of Aldones is the first book she wrote in her renowned Darkover Series.

 

There are two schools of thought regarding how to read that series because, like Star Wars movies, they were not written in chronological order. MZB provided a numbered chronological list before her death and some people read them that way. She also recommended reading the books in order of publication, so that is what I am doing.

The Sword of Aldones was written when she was 16, so while she had clearly done her world building in her mind, not all of it comes across smoothly. It is mostly an action tale, there are many characters, and the magic, of which there is plenty, doesn't all make sense. 

I liked it anyway, as a tale of two intergalactic civilizations in conflict. Terran is on a path to take over as many planets as possible for trade purposes. Darkover runs on magic and myth. It is a theme of hers and of many other writers, both speculative and historical. I found that theme in Mary Renault's two historical novels about the legend of Theseus (The King Must Die and The Bull From the Sea.) It is also the major theme of The Mists of Avalon. 

The writing and plotting and characters are all a bit sketchy and suffer from her inexperience but her voice is there and the promise of what became a fascinating series.

(The Sword of Aldones is out of print but can be found at used book sites and in audio and ebook versions. Happy hunting!)

GRIEF IS THE THING WITH FEATHERS

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Grief Is The Thing With Feathers, Max Porter, Graywolf Press, 2016, 114 pp

Nearly everyone alive has lost someone dear to them. Not everyone can write well about it but Max Porter has done it in breathtaking fashion.

A man has lost his wife suddenly, unexpectedly due to an accident. His two young sons have lost their mother.

Three voices reach out to us:

The boys as a sort of braided, combined consciousness, with the young boys-eye-view of the events, the emotions, the weird adjustment to a life run only by dad and a home without a mom.

The dad, figuring it out day by day, seeking oblivion but tethered to life by his boys.

The crow, an imaginary presence who drops feathers as he performs the role of grief counselor and family guardian. That crow symbolizes the magical thinking so well described by Joan Didion in The Year of Magical Thinking.

Max Porter has been a bookseller and is currently an editor for Granta Books. He loves poetry and this is his first novel. You can learn about how and why he wrote it by listening to his interview on the Otherppl podcast, but I suggest reading the book first.

Very short chapters, some of which read like poetry, take you through the grieving process of the man and his sons. That crow is a trickster myth character who mixes words, sounds, free verse, and shenanigans.

If you have ever lost someone you loved and grown weary of the stock phrases (I am sorry for your loss), the platitudes of grief counselors, the surreal days and nights of dreams and hauntings by the lost one, this book will feel so familiar.

Such grief never really ends and it can make one feel slightly insane, so for me it brought new insights and a sort of reassurance and comfort and forgiveness for my own. 

(Grief Is The Thing With Feathers is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)

REINHART IN LOVE

Reinhart in Love, Dell Publishing Inc, 1962, 438 pp

 

 

Where did I learn about this author? From an obituary when he died at 89 in 2014. He is one of those under-sung, under-read, literary authors. It was a cinch I would go for that label!

 

I read his first novel, Crazy in Berlin, 1958, and found it challenging. It was the first literary novel I had read set at the beginning of the Cold War, in which Carlos Reinhart, an American serviceman, is completing his enlistment in Berlin as a medic. I decided it had been worth reading, so I continued with this account of his first year back in the United States as a civilian.

 

He has troubles fitting in. He lives at home in Ohio with parents who are some truly strange but very American characters. He falls in love with the secretary at the office of a real estate mogul where he took at job and eventually they marry. 

 

True to the character I got to know in the first book, he stumbles into the oddest adventures, all the while trying to figure out how to be an employed man, a husband, and a fellow who has the idea that he is an honest person.

The story includes hot subjects like racism, corruption in local politics and business, and lots of sex. Berger writes rather long, convoluted but grammatically correct sentences filled with literary allusions. Reading him requires work and concentration. Once again I was rewarded by his subtle satire, his humor, and his fine-tuned awareness of life in America.

Since that perception of middle class life is part of what I am looking for when I read these books from the 1960s, it worked fine for me. However, unless that is something you are looking for in your reading, I can't give this novel a high recommendation to all readers.

(Reinhart in Love is out of print. Check for it at your favorite used bookseller site.)

FEBRUARY READING GROUP UPDATE

I got a bit behind on blogging this week. I spent a good deal of time reading, hanging out with friends and seeing movies. All worthwhile activities in these insane times. Reading groups are more wonderful than ever for me right now because getting together with real live people and discussing books is the needed antidote for my compulsion to read and follow the news. The news makes me feel crazy. The people and discussions bring me back to sanity.

It is going to be an interesting month with the groups. And believe it or not I have joined another group: The Literary Snobs! We are a start-up group this month, we are small with just three members, and we are dedicated to reading books written only by Nobel Prize winners. New reading groups are subject to all kinds of attrition so we will see what happens.

Laura's Group:

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One Book At A Time:

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Molly's Group:

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Bookie Babes:

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Literary Snobs:

What are your reading groups reading in February?