The book is very good at foretelling and setting the scene.  It opens one icy day with the family out hunting geese.  As one nears, Reuben is handed the rifle by his older brother.  He is now man enough to take the shot.  It is only the first of many adult behaviors that will be asked of him.  While I’m not usually fond of books about hunting, especially birds, this is a rural family hunting for dinner. 

The pace of the story is slow with plenty of storytelling and meandering, but tension grows.  By the end I was galloping through to see what would happen.  Afterwards, I went back to slowly read one of the final scenes which was as beautiful a description of a possible afterlife as I have ever read.

I waded ashore with measureless relief…the bank was a waving slope of knee high grasses…the water appeared gold as on your favorite river at sunup… moving up from the river the humming began to swell – it was magnetic, a sound uncurling into song and light…

While I wouldn’t describe this as a “Christian” book, there are strong overtones of faith and religion, and the miracles are real.  It is not magical realism because everyone recognizes that the events are extraordinary, thus raising questions about the presence of the supernatural in our lives.

This is a formulaic story – two people meet but hardly pay attention to each other.  Little by little they do start to notice, and attraction develops. Troubles intervene. But the pleasure of the novel is in the details and the story is compelling. How exactly will they finally get together?

The coast-to-coast walk across the middle of England evokes the beauty of a wild landscape as well as the memorable experience of pouring rain and fog. Cozy pubs in the evening are a nice counterpoint. The characters are very likeable.  I would have been disappointed if it hadn’t ended well.

Cal, a retired policeman from the states is helping to rescue and mentor somewhat neglected and delinquent Trey, a bright teenage girl whose father has abandoned the family.  When Dad suddenly returns home their relationship is threatened.

Dad didn’t come alone.  He brought an Englishman who claims his family came from their small Irish town.  This acquaintance has stories, passed down for generations, of a vein of gold running through the town.  The townspeople, suffering from a drought and worried about their farms, need distraction and listen to the story.  The scene is set.

As the plot unfolds, the author explores the customs and ethics of the small village.  She examines the loyalty friends and family have for each other and the difference between the legal and the moral.

French, known as The First Lady of Irish Crime, is a successful mystery writer whose stories have been made into a television series, Dublin Murders.  I also enjoyed her short essay on why people like to read mysteries which you can find at this link, Why Mystery Books are So Satisfying.

Some of their comments were thought provoking.  They ask, “Who is wise?” and answer “The person who can learn from everyone.”  I liked their definition of forgiveness: “giving up the resentment to which you are entitled and offering friendlier attitudes than they are entitled.”  “A well-aged person is someone people want to visit not have to.”

A lot of the information was a rehash of ideas I had heard before. There is much talk about gratitude, which must be an “in” subject. Wisdom sounds desirable, but do I really want to spend my old age on self-improvement so that I may become more compassionate, generous, forgiving, grateful, patient?  Whew!  Maybe wisdom, and old age, are about more than that.

Possibility is a physical sensation and there’s nothing like it.  I remember the first time I felt its thrill, listening to my father describe something that was going well in his lab…he fairly trembled with excitement…

She writes vignettes about what she did during Covid, memories that surfaced, people and things she used to love. Through these delightful stories, there is insight into isolation, loneliness, memory loss, paying attention, nameless dread, and anxiety. Here are some favorite quotes:

In the intro: Don’t smile at us as if we’re cute or pat our hand and call us dear.  A little respect please.

You can do a lot with a cane; you can use its rubber tip to shove a door shut, which is satisfying if you’re in a bad mood; …

 Unforgettable advice: Always take a cookie when the plate is passed.

I can think of my failing memory as an accomplishment.  I am finally living in the moment.

While the first book was chock full of serious suggestions and advice on how to improve, the second was realistic about how people think and behave – and it was funny. 

In Women of the Silk, Gail Tsukiyama tells what life was like for girls like Pei, our main character. Raised on a small rural farm that had fish and mulberry leaves for its cash crops, she was taken by her father one morning to the nearby town. Without any idea of what was happening, she was dropped off at the factory dormitory. She was eight years old.

The other girls and young women, all in the same situation befriended her.  The relationships among them unfold against the backdrop of the silk factory.  We learn how silk was produced and the conditions of factory life. 

This segment of Pei’s life ends when she is in her 20s and escapes to Hong Kong to avoid the Japanese who have invaded China. I wonder if the author’s Chinese ancestors had direct experience with this time as she has written before about the brutality of the Japanese army.

Morgan was interested in rare manuscripts and had haphazardly amassed a valuable collection.  He was looking for a librarian to bring some order to it when his nephew introduced him to Belle.  She was a jewel.  Not only did she catalog his acquisitions, she also guided him in adding to his collection.  Rare books, first printings from the original printing press, illuminated manuscripts, all were her forté. She could spot a forgery or misrepresentation. Plus, she was a skilled negotiator when most women, in the early 1900s, just didn’t do that sort of thing.

The second story in this book of historical fiction was about Belle’s personal life.  She was born a “colored girl” in the South just after Reconstruction.  Her educated parents enjoyed success in that period, a respite between slavery and Jim Crow.

As Reconstruction passed and federal troops left the South, segregation and prejudice once again became ascendant. The family moved north and faced a choice.  They were light skinned and could pass as white.  Should they?  Belle’s father said no and fought for equality.  Her mother, less optimistic, said yes and took the children, thus giving them opportunities they never would have had.  Belle, moving in sophisticated circles in a high-powered job, presented herself as white with a Portuguese ancestor to account for her darker skin. 

The private library she directed became public one hundred years ago.  As part of its centennial celebration last year, there was an exhibit honoring Belle, acknowledging her accomplishments and mixed-race background. Her secret had been kept until 1999 when a Morgan researcher discovered her birth certificate listing her as “colored” and naming her father, Richard Greener, who was a well-known black advocate for racial justice.

This newest detective, Matthew, was raised in an evangelical community in rural England where he found belonging and acceptance until he came out as gay and married his love.  Shunned by the church and rejected by his parents, he found a new community in the police force and rose to the rank of detective inspector.

In this story he and his two sergeants are called to solve the murder of a popular sailing figure, dead in a small boat apparently arranged to be found.  Matthew remembers the place.  It was here that he spent a happy childhood as part of the Brethren. But now, pouring rain, roaring winds, and high tides add to the gloomy atmosphere as the three officers follow a dangerous trail that twists through old flames, jealousy, illness and aging.

This one tells the story of a man who visited the undersea dragon palace.  After being entertained there for a few days, he returned home to find he had been gone three hundred years. I was reminded of our Rip Van Winkle story and interested to see the same fable about this modern physics concept (of time moving at different speeds), in two very different cultures.

The indigenous view is one of gratitude, respect, and reciprocity.  Nature gives us much and we have a responsibility to return the favor.  All living things are seen as persons and native language reflects this.  Trees, for example, are “she” not “it.”  How much harder to cut a tree down if you think of her as a living person, a “she,” instead of an “it.”

Kimmerer’s essays describe her experiences as a mother, botanist, teacher, and Native American. She harvests maple syrup and makes baskets. She takes her students into the woods and on farm visits to experience the concepts she teaches.  Those nice Thanksgiving squash are actually swollen ovaries?  Yuck. There is an abundance of scientific information told in a delightful way.

One of the best chapters, Collateral Damage, was about salamanders, those cold-blooded often unappealing little beings that are never poster animals for endangered species. She writes that when the first spring rain comes into the forest when the temperature has reached 42 degrees, the salamanders rise through the humus and head towards their natal ponds.  The females, swollen with eggs, go first.  A couple of days later, the males go.  They get together in a very particular kind of watery environment.  Any writer who can make the moving and mating of salamanders both beautiful and fascinating is gifted indeed!

The book is slow starting; it is also repetitious.  Her portrayal of the success of the Native American lifestyle was idealized. Kimmerer herself tells us there was a “hunger moon” in the winter when starvation was common. But the essays are thought-provoking; the descriptions evoke the best days in nature; and the book made me see the world from a different perspective.

The characters are Nigerian who live there or who have moved to the states. Their culture controls many of the stories but some are universal.  Mothers die; children die; mothers sell their children; they reject them. The stories explore the bond between mothers and children, different facets of becoming a mother, things that go wrong along the way.

In a short time Ajose-Fisher’s characters pull at us so we are invested in their outcome. There is little backstory and sometimes the lack of detail is confusing, but the feelings of the woman or child are very clear.

What does the author mean by the title?  Does she want to dispel idealistic notions about both mothers and gods? Is the mother the most primal, God like influence on her child? I leave it to the reader to decide.

But Maud was no fool. She soon figured out what the neighbor wanted and devised a plan to keep her from getting it. But then…what? Maud! Not what I expected.

Helene Tursten has given us a different kind of main character – one who plays the old lady card, and anything else she can get her hands on, very well.  Of course, we don’t approve, but yet… Each of the five chapters in this short, small book is a tongue-in-cheek separate story about Maud’s problem-solving capabilities.  It is easily read in an afternoon.

Before she wrote short stories, Tursten wrote serious detective novels set in Stockholm. Check out my new Facebook page for a short review of her first, Detective Inspector Huss.

What was important about this man and where he lived?  Blair eventually became known as George Orwell, author of 1984 and Animal Farm, and there is little documentation of this part of his life.

The plot is straightforward.  Blair goes through his training and apprenticeship but does not find success. Although he forces himself to do the work, he hates the job and does not get along with his peers.  He lasts only a few months in each posting and then is transferred.

The setting is much more interesting.  How the British treat the Burmese they are supposed to be helping is appalling to a 21^st century reader – not just in their capacity as policemen, but in their personal and social lives.  Blair, a man of his times, is embarrassed to be related to his uncle who is married to a local woman, and worse yet has a half caste child, his cousin, shunned by both the British and natives.

The flavor of Burma, the tropics, suffuses the story.  “the shimmering fish scales of small waves on the surface of the sea…the sun sinking like an apricot…a mass of twitching bats, clustered together, jostling their loose wings…the brown wastes of inland Burma, the scabby bush, the naked children jumping into foul creeks…”

But it is the character of the budding writer that is the crux of the book. Theroux’s portrayal is a masterclass in a young person’s discovery of who he is.  At first, Blair is determined to make a success of his job.  He salutes; he studies; he follows orders; but it is not for him.   Eventually, Blair acknowledges his rebellious thoughts; he searches for ways to find comfort in an intolerable situation; he finds and names a second person hidden inside himself; he imagines leaving the police and Burma.  In incremental steps, the writer emerges.

The epigraph, quoted from George Orwell’s Burmese Days, reads “There is a short period in everyone’s life when his character is fixed forever.”

His train is met by Matsu, the taciturn house caretaker. As they slowly become acquainted, Matsu begins to include Stephen in his daily activities. He takes him shopping, introduces him to an old friend in the nearby village.  Most important, he takes him to meet Sachi who has made her home in the leper village in the mountains. Others have the burden of sickness as well.

Stephen likes Sachi and he soon realizes the depth of her relationship with Matsu and the loyalty and commitment that bind them despite her illness.  At the same time, Stephen learns of his father’s affair and sees the marriage of his parents disintegrate. Several additional relationships are explored; each more complex than they first appear.

Both Matsu and Sachi have made beautiful gardens.  His is rich with cherry blossoms and chrysanthemums; hers is raked stone. The beauty they create is hard won. When destruction comes, which it does, they rebuild.  It is a symbol of their lives.

The setting is pre-World War II when Japan’s military is sweeping through China and approaching Hong Kong.  Stephen’s parents send for him before it is too late to come home.  He has become a full participant in the rural life he previously dreaded and is heartbroken to leave.  As in the story above, it has been a short period of his life that will affect him forever. The first words of the novel, “I wanted to find my own way…” have more than one meaning.

A young Indian bride, married three years ago when she was still in school, has just joined her husband, a newly established doctor, to begin married life.  They are invited to dinner where she meets his British colleagues for the first time.  As dessert, carrot halwa, is served, a scream comes from the kitchen.  Kaveri, bright and curious, figures out a way to get near the murder scene. The victim is a pimp well known to the police. 

The scene is set to show many aspects of life, British colonial rule, upper class educated Indians, servants, poverty, and the seamier side of gangs and prostitution.  Kaveri is fortunate in her arranged marriage as her husband, Ramu, is forward thinking.  He supports her interests and desire for further education.  They make a good team – as a married couple and as sleuths in this cozy debut mystery.

He and his second in command, Jean-Guy, and Inspector Isabelle Lacoste must decipher the cryptic clues in time to prevent a catastrophe. Who exactly can they trust? Old friends appear but they might be lying. Sanctuaries, monasteries hidden from the world, find themselves not as safe and removed as they thought. Domestic terrorism leaves no place to hide.

Balancing the fear and danger of their work is the refuge of home. Readers of Penny’s books will be familiar with this cast – loving spouses and children, noisy small grandchildren, the eclectic residents of Three Pines who are best friends as well as neighbors.

Her descriptions of place capture the mood and flavor. Here is the monastery of Saint Gilbert Entre les Loups: “Even in the weakening light, the place was magical.  From the outside it looked frightening, foreboding. But inside? It was glorious. The windows high up in the long, long corridor captured every last ray available in the dying light and magnified it, brought it to life.  The stone hallway was giddy with the evening sun.”

Louise Penny is at the top of her form.  She has written a thrilling page turner, a mythic story about the battle between good and evil, symbolized by two warring wolves.

Minutely observed by the octopus in captivity, Tova works at night cleaning the aquarium. She needs the job for something to do, not the money. A recent widow, Tova also still mourns a beloved son who died at 18. The second main character, Cameron, has just been fired, again. His girlfriend threw him out. Marcellus, near the end of his four-year life span, realizes he can give them a gift.

This is an especially well plotted novel. All the information is necessary and fits together into a satisfying whole. No excessive rambling!  The human characters at junctures in their lives are sympathetic. And who could not like the feisty being with three hearts who thinks that humans can occasionally, just occasionally, be remarkably bright creatures. The point of the novel – how an act of kindness can change a life – makes this a beautiful heart-warming story.

This multi layered novel is definitely adult fiction. It is philosophical and peppered with pointed observations. “Logic and reason are never the best weapons in an irrational world. It’s humor” (An apt suggestion for our current time.)

Reclusive Rintaro Natsuki has spent as much time as possible with his grandfather in his secondhand bookshop. The store is unusual in that it doesn’t contain best sellers, but classics from around the world.  When the grandfather dies and leaves the shop to him, Rintaro must figure out how to make his way in this altered world. Unexpectedly, there are helpers – a pretty girl from school, a popular athletic senior, a kindly aunt, and yes, a talking cat.

Rintaro undertakes the hero’s journey where he must find his way through the labyrinths and confront the monsters, both physical and metaphorical. All the monsters are connected to the mistreatment of books. But more deeply, this mistreatment is a commentary on modern society.

Finally, there is the exploration of the value of books. What good are they? At the end, Matsukawa provides a satisfying answer. “Books teach us empathy, how to care about others. That’s the power of books.  We learn about the hearts and minds of other people besides ourselves.”

Birds who compete for resources during breeding season, band together during the dark days. “They cooperate as compensation for leafless trees and cold temperatures, working together to find food sources and evade predators, staying warm by flocking up…In the dark days already gathering, we will need to do our best to look out for one another and for the creatures we love.”

John’s father was a preacher, and the Pentecostal faith is the basis of the family’s life.  Wrestling with sin and evil is constant.  The father, Gabriel, is determined to keep John from sin, something he is all too familiar with.

The teen’s story is told in third person, but John’s aunt, father and mother all tell theirs in first person lending an intimacy to their disclosures.  This black family speak of their heartbreaks, their beating down, their rage.  The church, with its singing, wailing in tongues, emotional prayers for salvation, offers a refuge.  Racism is not dwelled upon, but feelings about whites are clear from the few bitter remarks.

The family’s expectation is that John will become a preacher.  While John wants to be “good,” he must deal with his awakening sexuality and his feelings towards the attractive 17-year-old male minister in their church. 

The book is semi-autobiographical.  Baldwin grew up in a similar environment, wanted to be a preacher, knows his Bible quotations.  He is an astute critic of such a church and its teachings.

There are three extremely powerful, emotional passages; in two, someone is saved and in the third, someone succumbs to sin (sex). His compelling language, use of imagery, character dissection, and finally the portrayal of the evangelical life all illustrate the depth of Baldwin’s talent and show why this book is considered his masterpiece and an American classic.

After just two weeks, someone in the club is murdered and the members look at the two new women suspiciously.  But they are the ones with experience in this sort of thing and join together to investigate. Peg’s pushy nosiness and Rose’s soft touch are just the right combo for eliciting information.

The other main characters in this mystery are Peg’s three standard poodles who provide her, a widow, with company and support.  She and her husband had raised dogs in the past and she is still an accomplished judge at shows.  Rose is more a cat person.

It’s a good plot – well paced and just difficult enough.  I didn’t guess the ending.  This is a story that will especially appeal to the dog lover (especially poodles), the bridge player, and anyone wanting to relax with a mystery that is cozy rather than a thriller.

The women in her family, who always chose to raise their daughters alone, were often shunned by their small town – although those they helped with their specialized knowledge felt differently.  When two teenage girls disappeared and were later found dead in the pond on the Moon farm, accusing fingers pointed their way.  Unable to prove anything but easily convinced of their guilt, law enforcement did little to find the real culprits.

When her grandmother dies, Lizzie returns to the farm to get it ready to sell.  She misses this grandmother she loved and determines to honor her by clearing her name and hopefully finding the real murderer of the two girls.  She is helped by the handsome neighbor.  No one who has read a book before will have a hard time guessing what happens.  But how exactly it works out is very well done and we have an enjoyable mystery with a bit of “magick.”

The setting is France before World War II.  Lou was a fearless sports-oriented child who liked her brother’s clothes. She is sent to a convent where her athletic gifts are encouraged; the Olympics are mentioned.  When trouble comes, she is given shelter in a transvestite nightclub in Paris where she thrives for a while, becomes part of a show, and falls in love.  Because of her strength and competitive spirit, she is tapped by one of the customers to train as a race car driver.  She is successful and briefly happy.  But each success, both in love and work, ends in betrayal, leaving Lou depressed and embittered.

It is at this low time that she is invited to Germany where she is flattered and fawned over.  There is a dinner where the Fuhrer (no less!) chooses to sit with her and admire her strength and accomplishments.  She is totally seduced.  With her many contacts in the sports world, wouldn’t she like to help Germany, which is doing so well and wants to help France become equally successful?  Of course she would.

Lou’s choices – or is it fate – make this a meaty psychological book, but there is so much more.  The supporting characters tell their stories in their own voices.  There is the gifted photographer, Gabor, drawn to the steamy nightclubs of the Paris underworld who writes weekly to his parents.  His friend the writer, is penniless at the time, but eventually becomes a cult figure.  The Baroness, in a very French marriage, supports and loves Gabor.

Equaling the complex characters are the vivid descriptions of the prewar era.  The portrait of how Paris waited, of how the French lived their daily lives as war with Germany loomed, is superb.  At the same time, the Germans are crazy for their leader and idolize his views on strength and power.  When war comes, we see the details of how spying for the Nazis worked and how easily information slipped out to waiting ears.

In addition to evocative descriptions of an era, insightful character studies, and explorations of moral questions, Prose does a great job with the symbol of the chameleon.  On one hand, it is the obvious: the cross-dressing night club and the spies and resistance during the war. But it is also two themes of the book. Is there just one truth or does a story change according to how many are experiencing it?  Is someone’s identity stable, or does it change according to circumstance and time?  What is the chameleon’s true color?

The characters in the book are based on real people and events.  Lou is based on Violette Morris, a French lesbian race car driver who collaborated with the Nazis; the writer is based on Henry Miller; and the Hungarian photographer, Brassai.

Part of the group was deployed to Europe, Africa, and Asia to find needed facts buried in old pamphlets, newspapers, dry technical books.  They found, for example, information on railroad capacity enabling the US military to estimate how quickly supplies could be moved by rail in Germany.  Old telephone books kept in obscure libraries listed companies, (with addresses), that made parts such as ball bearings used in tank or truck production.  Bombing factories that made parts put many additional manufacturers out of business. 

At home, another part of the group read the reams of information that was sent and organized it into usable reports that answered generals’ questions. This was an interesting story about the kind of details that were important in winning a war and the kind of people able to find them.

Graham is interested in the U.S. culture of the 40s that looked in unusual places for experts and found them among the people Hitler most loathed – intellectuals, racial minorities, Jews, immigrants.  The diversity of the U.S., its melting-pot, was a great asset in collecting intelligence.  She contrasts this openness with German authoritarianism which valued conformity, overestimated the abilities of insiders, stereotyped outsiders.  Graham ends with a discussion of the continued need for a liberal arts education.

The beginning forewarns us.  The first letter is placid and friendly; the second is written during the 1962 Columbus Day storm, a benchmark for the Pacific NW since then.

Joan, a young woman living in Los Angeles, mails a fan letter to Imogen on Camano Island, Washington.  She encloses a small gift of saffron to Imogen, an established writer for a local news magazine.  When Imogen answers, they discover a rapport, and a warm friendship develops.

The flavor of the 1960s infuses the story.  What fun it was to read about Lawrence Welk and Herb Alpert, and to hear about The Feminine Mystique as something new. The characters anxiously await the mailman or pay $3 for a three-minute long-distance phone call.

But it is their delight in food – the discovery of unknown international flavors – pesto, molé, shish kebab – that makes this a joy to read. The two women share the new techniques and recipes exploding onto the American cooking scene; they watch Julia Child on the new education channel.  Joan discovers the Mexican markets of LA and finds someone to share them with.

I was reminded of that old movie Babette’s Feast where a spectacular dinner softens the most dour of hearts and intransient animosity.  In our book, the enjoyment of excellent food is a gateway to intimacy and love.  When troubles come, and they do, each woman has the support of a best friend.

Those living in the Northwest will enjoy the section on the Seattle Pike Place Market and the 1960s campaign to tear it down and replace it with condos.

A widow, just 60, Vera has plenty of zip and energy and not much to do with it.  Her run-down shop gets few customers and sitting by herself all day is lonely. But one morning everything changes when she opens the door and finds a dead body sprawled on the floor. Her desire to take charge kicks in. She pries the flash drive out of the dead person’s hand, does a few other helpful things such as outlining the body, and then calls the police.

Vera knows a murderer will return to the scene of the crime so she settles in to wait. But four possibilities show up at her tearoom so how will she choose?  Vera would have gotten along well with Joan and Imogen from the above review.  She decides to cook – the most delicious Chinese food – and feeds them all.  Her mothering, her advice (she has lots), her support are what they need and soon this troubled secretive group responds to the home cooked meals and care. They reciprocate by helping Vera refurbish her dated tearoom and offer the companionship she has missed.

Does Vera identify the murderer?  It wasn’t too hard to figure out what happened, although I never would have guessed the details. The best parts of the story are the very likeable characters, each with their own abilities, who bring this mystery to a satisfactory close.

There are three separate stories.  In the first, Deanna, a wildlife biologist who is in charge of a section of the Appalachians, encounters a handsome hunter on the trail.  In the second, Lusa, an entomologist, starts her life as a new farm wife in the small town nearby.  In the last, Garrett, a grumpy old man, can’t get along with his neighbor whose skirts are too short for her age (70) and has so many newfangled ideas about pesticides and weeds. The development of each story is nicely paced and after a while, a name from one of the other two appears in the third. At the end, the three stories join into a satisfactory whole.

Kingsolver is interested in the ecology of the Appalachians and has some definite ideas about predator species and pesticides.  Sometimes they intrude too much into the story.  As a birder, I was especially impressed with her descriptions of warbler songs.  Warblers!  There are over a hundred different kinds and identifying even a few by appearance, never mind song, is a big deal.  The author lives in rural Appalachia and I’m guessing this is something she, as well as her character, can do.

Frankie is a privileged young woman, newly graduated from nursing school in California, raised in a patriotic family whose generations of men have gone to war.  When someone suggests that today, women can be heroes also, she idealistically enlists in the Army and is sent to Vietnam.

We see her character change, quickly, as she encounters the unimaginable reality.  Although she comes home physically uninjured, she never recovers from that time.  She endures the deaths of a family member and several close friends; she is betrayed by the love of her life and abandoned by her parents; she suffers from PTSD before the term has been defined; she is unable to get help from the VA because “there were no women in Vietnam.”  But she does have the two close women friends she served with in Vietnam.

The novel is a bit overdone as Hannah tries to give as much of the wartime experience as possible to her one main character. It isn’t the most powerful war story I’ve read, but it is a worthwhile one about a group of women who deserve the honor of being remembered.

But happiness is not the subject of this Irish novel.  Helen is not so gay at her party but feels a sense of disquiet.  Toibin continues in this vein when he introduces a visitor the next day.  He is her brother’s friend who has come to tell her that the brother is dying from AIDS. She is asked to give the news to her estranged mother and grandmother and to go to him.

The brother’s illness controls much of the plot, but it is the relationships among Helen, her mother and her grandmother that are the crux of the story.  Neither of the two women were invited to Helen’s wedding or have met her husband and children; she hasn’t seen them in years.  There is a painful, suppressed rage, each towards the other.  Toibin places them in a situation where they are forced to interact to help the brother, and maybe to vocalize some of their feelings of fear, rejection, and anger carried forward from the past.

Vignettes, two or three pages long, start when Esperanza is a young child. Each paints a revealing slice of life in her family and then the larger Mexican community.  Together they are the coming-of-age story of a bright young woman observing the poverty-stricken world around her.

In the tenth anniversary edition, the author writes a perceptive introduction about her eventual move away from home. “I was undergoing several changes of identity. For the first time I was living alone, in a community very different in class and culture from the one where I was raised.  This caused so much unrest I could barely speak, let alone write about it.”

These phrases caught my attention as I have been thinking recently about the many cultural changes that have occurred in the last fifty years in our country: women’s equality and their expanding roles; protected minority rights in education, housing, jobs; LGBTQ being recognized and celebrated; white men’s traditional positions blamed and challenged.  There are also technological changes – safe abortion; advent of the pill and the subsequent sexual revolution; in vitro fertilization. 

These changes threaten our most basic identity, leaving us, as the author says, full of unrest.  It may be a partial explanation for why many want to “go back to how things were” when they understood their roles more clearly.  Fifty years may not be enough time for a culture to adapt and incorporate so many fundamental changes. Progress, unfortunately, is not a straight line.

“Their sense of world order is about to be undone by the women in their lives grabbing democracy by the ballot box. (When you’re a registered voter, they let you do it.)”

Another vivid sentence: “In Western Europe, many see America’s presidential election this year…as something more like a soccer game between a mid-ranking team and a herd of stampeding buffalo. Sure, the buffalo might win — but not by playing soccer.”