Poppy, a happy elementary school girl, was born Claude, a boy. She has a circle of close friends, but none knows her secret. Now she is ten and puberty is approaching. How her supportive family will deal with this dilemma is explored in This Is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel.
The book is fiction, but Frankel herself is raising a trans child. In her novel she uses several plot devices to explore the options available to such a family. One, the truth can be told right from the start. This is a difficult road in our current society but avoids the weight of a serious secret and the fear of discovery. Or, the physical identity can be hidden, and the child presented as a little girl, saving her the embarrassment of being very different in a culture that wants conformity in this area.
But this is only a postponement, because dresses or not, at puberty the child will start to become a young man. Difficult decisions will have to be made about hormone therapy and eventual surgery when the child is just a teen and struggling with all the usual things as well.
Our culture sees gender as binary, either-or, male or female, but Frankel suggests the recognition of a third, in-between possibility. In the story, the mother volunteers to work in Thailand and becomes acquainted with the concept of kathoey, or ladyboy, which allows more flexibility in how sexuality is expressed.
The elements of a novel such as character, setting, or plot are not what count here as it is all about the subject matter. As a senior, I grew up in the 50’s when gay children, never mind trans, didn’t exist. Although my horizons have expanded a lot since then, transgender sexuality is a subject I am barely familiar with. It was enlightening to read about the changing views and possibilities connected with this issue.
Klara, Josie’s best friend, has no questions about her purpose in life. She lives to make Josie happy, to care for and protect her, because Klara, a solar powered AF, is programmed that way. Kazuo Ishiguro, in Klara and the Sun, welcomes us to the future when elite teenagers are tutored via computer at home and need the companionship of an AF, Artificial Friend, for company.
We meet Klara when she is newly made, living in a store, waiting to be chosen as a best friend. She is learning about her environment, and we see as she does in pixels and shapes. Josie, the human who chooses her, is a metaphor for the benefits and risks of technology in our lives. She is especially intelligent and privileged but has a mysterious illness which brings a note of disquiet to the story.
Josie’s father, when he comes to visit, nicknames her Animal, an unsubtle commentary about one of the main issues. Exactly what is the difference between Klara and Josie who have indeed become best friends? Does the human have a special spark that the machine does not or is it just chemicals and programming for them both?
On the surface, this is a story about love, friendship, family and the choices that define who a person is. Underneath is the provocative question of how much we want technology, computers, robots, and AI to intersect with our lives.
“Hints of clove, cinnamon and black pepper intermingle with the deeper, earthier fungal underpinning that is characteristic of … wild mushrooms??” As an ex-wine grower and current wine drinker, “mushrooms” wasn’t the word I expected. Langdon Cook in his informative, yet literary, The Mushroom Hunters, evokes the pleasures of dining on this wild food.
A picker himself, Cook brings to life the underground world of the wild food forager. Often people at the edges of society, the pickers are the type who are proud of strenuous physical labor and know the forests well, down to individual trees. Like migrant agricultural workers, they follow the porcinis and truffles because mushrooms do have seasons.
The antithesis of the rural poor who do the harvesting is the wealthy big city resident who dines (mycophagist) on morels air shipped overnight from the NW forests. Cook gives us a taste of the gourmet restaurant business that supplies such fare.
In between is the buyer. The author follows one as he sets up shop near the harvests, cultivates pickers, deals with competitors, gets to the airport (hours away from the picking sites) on time to ship his matsutakes to waiting high end restaurants.
There’s lots of detailed information. Did you know that wild mushrooms come in fluorescent yellow (chanterelles), scarlet (lobsters), black (trumpets) and colors in between? that they have teeth (hedgehogs)?
There is also a very evocative sense of the place where they grow. “The home of the elusive wild mushroom. shot through with warm shafts of light when the sun is out…sent from the heavens and filtered through a million leafy stained-glass windows, …explains why the Pacific Northwest’s ancient forests are referred to as nature’s cathedrals.”
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For the tech challenged among us, a joke from Facebook, Sue Fitzmaurice’s column:
Some self-recognition here. It took me a few beats but then I laughed out loud.
Always a pleasure to which U look forward
Excuse auto correct – U an I
As always, I enjoyed this blog, and as I’ve read one of the books, I have two new ones on my list to read!