Author: Diane

Joined by filaments of fungi, the roots can share nutrients and water with their nearby neighbors and offspring according to choice and need. Grouping different species with varying strengths and weaknesses allows them to help each other. The implications of this cooperation are important for forestry companies that need to restore clearcuts in the most economical way and for the government agencies tasked with maintaining healthy forests and parks.

To balance the meticulous details of her scientific work, Simard intersperses the story of her personal life: marriage, children, a cancer diagnosis, a discovery about her sexuality.  There is also the history of her timber family, along with photos, that goes back several generations.

In the 1980s and 90s Simard was a young woman working in a man’s business, and the reception her revolutionary insight received was the one we can all imagine.  The idea that the forest was an entity that cooperated and shared among its parts was not an idea important men could take seriously.  They didn’t care that this had been the indigenous view for centuries.

Success is slow in coming.  Although there have been many scientific articles, speeches, YouTubes, letters in support, despite the fact that her findings have been replicated and enlarged by scientists all over the world, despite seeing that her test plots flourish while theirs decline, timber companies are still enamored of monoculture, the clear cut, and herbicides. 

To learn more about Simard’s work you can join the group she founded, the Mother Tree Project, directed at furthering research and keeping the general public informed.  Look for them at http://mothertreeproject.org

It’s a surprise that it was written by a woman. I think of Japan as male dominated, authoritarian and aggressive. But those qualities come from a later period which was controlled by the samurai and martial arts. During this earlier time, the Heian, culture and fine arts were most important and their influence is seen in the softer traditions of Japan: beautiful silks, woodblocks, the koto, haiku, cherry blossoms.

Genji is a story of court life.  Followers of The Crown will recognize the many prescribed rituals and traditions, the intense interest in pedigree, the jockeying for position, the jealousy and intrigue. Genji, the emperor’s son by someone other than his wife, is the most beautiful and brilliant of all, but cannot be the heir.  He is so beautiful that people wish he were a woman, a concept typical of the time when male and female beauty were not so differentiated as now. 

Genji, like all the nobility, excels at the arts. He writes poetry, sings, dances, and plays the flute.  Also like others in his position, he is a master of the art of seduction. The first section of the manuscript deals with his many pursuits, repeatedly describing the women and his affairs in detail.

From our 21^st century point of view, Genji’s morals are deplorable.  He pursues married women, including those married to his relatives, one to his father; he is interested in beautiful little girls.  Although he is willing to “wait” he adopts and grooms them.  He knows he is very attractive and acts accordingly.  But, the author tells us, he is very good to his women – gives them presents, cares for them in need, is kind and respectful.  It was a different time and place and I had to keep reminding myself not to judge the shining prince by current standards.  There is no tone of disapproval in the novel.

Why bother to read this?  The repetitious plot becomes tiresome; there is a huge confusing list of characters; the book is about 1200 pages.  But there is so little literature that shows life from a thousand years ago.  The picture of the Japanese aristocracy that emerges is vivid and detailed; it is a window into a time long gone. Many of the book’s themes are current today: the impermanence of youth, love, and beauty; choosing between a marriage of love or one leading to advancement; the secondary role of women.  It is a classic often referred to in literature and art.

One thing to do is look at Project Gutenberg (a website that allows anyone to read classics online for free) and choose a few chapters.  It uses the translation by Arthur Waley which was the first in the Western world. This will be enough to get the flavor of the wonderful descriptions and poetry:

A child’s guardian, who is ill, looks at her fondly and recites: ‘Not knowing if any will come to nurture the tender leaf whereon it lies, how loath is the dewdrop to vanish in the sunny air.’ To which the waiting-woman replied with a sigh: ‘O dewdrop, surely you will linger till the young budding leaf has shown in what fair form it means to grow.’

“When love is unrequited, it becomes a bittersweet melody that echoes through the soul.”

“In the garden the natural vegetation of the hill-side had been turned to skilful use. There was no moon, and torches had been lit along the sides of the moat, while fairy lanterns hung on the trees… A heavy perfume of costly and exotic scents stole from hidden incense-burners and filled the room with a delicious fragrance.” 

When Chief Elmore is called to investigate a suicide on a nearby farm, he sees right away what the sheriff, a good old boy whose limit is dealing with feisty teenagers, cannot.  This is a murder and the victim’s wife and son are missing.  Around the same time, he learns that a convict on death row has escaped.

The setting is rural Arkansas and the author, who lived there, has a very sure way of creating his characters and setting. This evocation of community is one of the strongest parts of the novel. At the end, we hate to leave his perceptive college educated deputy Ricky and his young family; Elmore’s good looking wife Ellen Mae, loving, loyal and unsure of herself; his first love Grace, who married someone else when he was too long getting home from the war;  his car obsessed teenage boys.

The time of this novel is November 1963 and a third story (but not a murder) involves civil rights activism in the South.  Chief Elmore did not like President Kennedy and the novel offers some basis for that.  We hear about state troopers preparing for Kennedy’s visit after he leaves Dallas.

This mystery is not as “cosy” as I like; the murders are graphic and corpses detailed.  I prefer my murder off stage.  But it is a page turner!

This is a love story situated in the present time in rural India where two idealistic young people, one Muslim and one Hindu, marry in the hope that their love will overcome the hatred and prejudice of their communities. It does not. The leader of the bride’s village considers their union such an affront to God, not to mention his own domination, that he persuades her brothers to burn them alive. They kill the young husband and badly maim the wife.  While most of the village including the police shrug, a city attorney represents the surviving widow and charges her brothers with murder.

An Indian American journalist reluctantly returns to India to cover the story.  She has bitter memories from her childhood when her brother and she were accosted by a mob of their neighbors. Their father, a Hindu scholar who was a Muslim, was a symbol of the tolerant future their family hoped for.  It was not to be; they were the wrong religion and driven out.

The journalist’s weekend in India stretches into weeks as the verdict is delayed.  Luckily, she has been assigned a handsome sensitive driver, and their story, juxtaposed with the first, saves this novel from too depressing a tone.  Misogyny, pride, and vengeance are not overcome.

The book is not written as a cartoon; Flush does not speak.  His observations and feelings are sensitively conveyed by a warm-hearted dog lover.

Like Woolf herself, Flush is an aristocrat with all the fine points of his breed.  He is happy as a puppy, romping outside chasing hares.  A great change comes to his life when his owner gifts him to Elizabeth Barrett and he must live inside her darkened room as she convalesces from a long illness. Things improve greatly when Barrett secretly rekindles a romance with Robert Browning and elopes with him to Italy.  Of course, Flush goes along.

He astutely compares his upper-class life in London with the poverty he sees around him. Flush is grateful for his comforts, but respectability has its price.  There is no more running free to visit the little spotted dog or their offspring.  He must walk on paths on a chain.  What a great metaphor.  Woolf, that is Flush, has other pointed observations to make about London society both in Barrett Browning’s Victorian time and Woolf’s WWI. 

In real life, both Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Virginia Woolf owned cocker spaniels. Woolf, whose spaniel was named Pinka, read about the Brownings’ dog, Flush, and was moved to memorialize him (and the Brownings) using the behavior of her own Pinka. The resultant dog is a delight.

They are invited to a writer’s conference on Alderney, a small island in the English Channel, to promote their newest book. Horowitz looks forward to it.  For once, they will be in his territory, and it will be Hawthorne who is out of his depth not him.  Yet, Hawthorne is mysteriously enthusiastic about attending.

They are at the conference only a couple of days when the first murder occurs. Which one of this eclectic group of writers is not who he or she seems to be?  Or – maybe the murders are about local politics. Only a few residents are in favor of the planned electric line that will connect England and France but ruin scenic views and desecrate WWII war graves.

Alderney is a real place and Horowitz has given his novel an historical basis.  Ten miles from France, it is the only part of England that was occupied by the Nazis, who used it to build four concentration camps.  The lingering menace makes a good setting for a present-day mystery.

Very coincidentally, on the day I finished the book, the New York Times published an article about Alderney and its place in World War II, “This Small Island Has a Dark History.”

Thea Kozak, helping to run the conference, has flown in from the East Coast hoping for some Hawaii sunshine but already missing the hot lover left behind.  She has a habit of involving herself in murders and is on the island only one day when she discovers why Martina has not been answering her door.  Thea’s hope for time off disappears.

I’m always excited to hear about a new mystery writer and Flora has given us a well plotted novel as well as a romance.  On the minus side, there is too much exposition. Actions occur and then are repeated when one character tells another what just happened.  She also has Thea give information about herself too often – “I’m a take charge person, a go-getter; I hold up well in a crisis.”  At the end, possible murder scenarios are reviewed and discussed by the characters. This repetition does help the sleepy reader keep up, but the new-to-me author is not thumbs up or thumbs down, but in-between.

The book pretends to be an autobiography, and part of it is.  The futility of trying to separate what is true from what is not is one of the main themes of this novel.  Dealing with the fear of death and realizing that “right” and “moral” are concepts that no longer apply are some others.

The strength of O’Brien’s writing is his ability to make the reader feel the ineffable, to understand what is unsayable, to tell a story that elicits strong emotion without causing a turning away.  There are twenty-two compelling loosely connected non chronological chapters.

There is the wrenching story of the gifted student who must choose between obeying the draft notice to fight in a war he hates or endure the disapproval of his community and the shame of running away to Canada.  There is the young man who makes it back to a home he can’t live in, unable yet desperate to tell what he has done. There are those who are unlucky and die, by chance, but live in the stories their buddies tell.

“And what is the best kind of war story?” O’Brien asks.   It is the one that conveys how people felt not what factually happened. “The greatest truth of a war story is the visceral feeling it fosters in the listener/reader.”  At this, O’Brien excels.

The emphasis is on factual information. But even the graphic novel with its helpful pictures isn’t enough to rescue Satrapi’s confusing treatment of the revolution.  Explaining the complexities of overthrowing the shah, how he got into power in the first place, and the takeover by the religious right is too complicated a subject to briskly gallop through.

When Satrapi leaves the history lesson behind and illustrates the effects of war and repression on her family and home in Tehran, her work shines. The story is told from the point of view of a child as she lives through the chaotic times.  Her liberal parents, determined not to be cowed, continue to bring up young Marjane as an independent thinker able to speak her mind to anyone. This would be unusual for a child in any locale, but in Iran, at this time, it was dangerous.  Her parents decide to send her to school in Vienna. 

In the second part of the book, the author details the double difficulties of being an immigrant during adolescence. When she returns home at nineteen, readjustment is equally hard as she tries to find herself amid the many restrictions of an oppressive regime.

Graphic novels are a format not a genre.  They use sequential art to tell a story which can be, for example, fiction, non-fiction, historical, or biographical.  I’m very glad to have read one as I had previously dismissed them as too juvenile.  Some of my co-readers did feel this one was superficial; little motivation is provided and emotions are not subtle.  It felt flat and we wondered if it is because the omniscient narrator is missing. On the other hand, the book deals with very serious subjects, war, theocracy, coming of age, assimilation.

I wonder if graphic novels are gaining in popularity because the interest in visuals from computer games is spilling over into books and making pictures a more acceptable form of adult storytelling.  First there was the oral story and theater, then the written word, movies, and now, the interactive possibilities of computer games and visual impact of comics and graphic novels.  Ways to tell a story evolve and we should be open to occasionally trying new forms – but I won’t be giving up the traditional well-written novel any time soon.

I went to see a new version of the old time Waikiki Kodak hula show.  The best part was the “aunties” dressed in their long muumuus singing and playing ukuleles and guitars beneath a mature hala tree.  They may have been off key now and then but they were having fun and were the most authentic part of the show.

The screen actress Evelyn Hugo is everything we expect of a movie star – a blond sexpot, wealthy, divorced seven times, manipulative – reminiscent of the movie magazines of our teenage years.   But she has a secret we do not expect.  Evelyn, near the end of her life, contacts a magazine offering an exclusive on her life story – if one of their junior reporters does the interview.

What is Evelyn’s secret and why has she insisted on this particular reporter?  Well, the novel has to have at least a part of a plot we don’t already know.  This is a great book to pick up when you want to relax and reading seems like a lot of effort.  It lulls you along and is interesting enough to encourage reading to the end to find the answer to the young reporter’s identity. 

This is a good exploration of character in both senses of the word.  What is the most important thing to Hannah and to her husband?  What will they sacrifice to have it?  What is it like to have to be the adult in the room when neither choice is good?

One ordinary afternoon Hannah learns that her husband has possibly been involved in a Madoff like scheme and has disappeared.  His last note to her asks that she protect his daughter, her step daughter.  Unable to believe that her husband has done anything wrong and fled to save himself, she begins a search to discover the many things about his past that she didn’t know.

Althugh Dave has written several previous best sellers, this is her first mystery. I hope there is another.

It is quite an accomplishment to come up with a plot twist that is remembered more than twenty years later.

The plot is a basic one that has been told throughout the world throughout time.  It is the coming-of-age story.  A young person leaves home alone and searches for something.  Along the way he suffers hardships, overcomes obstacles, slays dragons, often gets help from a god or a wiseman (think Yoda), and finally discovers the fortitude within himself to succeed. 

In this case, the main character, a teenager named Pi, is a survivor of a shipwreck in which his parents are killed. Zoo animals had also been on the ship and escape into the sea. A few, in particular a wild tiger named Richard Parker, jump onto the life boat with Pi.

Martel deepens his plot by incorporating another classic topic of discussion, the physical vs. spiritual.  Are human beings more one than the other?  Which is more important?  Pi represents both.  His father is a zookeeper and Pi understands and cares about wild animals.  On the other hand, he is religious and participates in three religions, Christianity, Hinduism, and Islam. The name Pi, based on the mathematical term, refers to the “elusive irrational number with which scientists try to understand the universe.”

Martel knows his subjects well and wants to share his knowledge.  We are tutored on three religions, zookeeping, India, ships, and survival at sea.  Whew!  I would have preferred fewer details, less gory ones, and a tighter story that moved more quickly. Nonetheless, this is a creative version of a classic archetype that was fun to reread.

Although she writes about a particular time and place, what she says frames a question for all of us.  Politically, what do we want our world to look like?

The setting is January 2018, just three months after hurricane Maria devastated the island. In many areas the electrical grid is nonfunctioning; food and health supplies are stalled in port; roads are closed; there is no communication. How can the problems be solved and prevented from happening again during the next natural disaster?

Two different answers are given.  In one, the badly performing government would be essentially dissolved and services would be privatized.  Puerto Rico would become a mecca for the wealthy who would be enticed to the island by the lack of government regulation and taxes, and bring their businesses and cash with them.

In the second, government would continue to provide essential services such as education and utilities but would be decentralized with an emphasis on helping the island be self-sustaining.  Food and fuel would not be imported into a central location but would be grown and produced (for example organic food farms and solar panels) throughout the island.

Klein is not objective in her discussion; there are definite good guys and bad guys here.  But her simplification of two disparate views lays out the choices clearly.  Learning about Puerto Rico encourages us to extrapolate and consider our own political situation.  Before we can judge the best ways our own governments, both federal and local, could provide the world we want, we have to be able to say what that is.

“In his lyrical translation of “Beowulf,” Seamus Heaney describes Grendel as “the terror-monger,” the “captain of evil” and “the dread of the land.”  He wrote that the fiend “ruled in defiance of right” and was “malignant by nature, he never showed remorse.” Yeow!  Go Maureen. 

I love the Haney translation of Beowulf that she alludes to, but almost more than the poem, I like the cover, that suit of chain mail and its subtle powerful malice illustrating the hardships of that brutal life. 

But where oh where is our hero today, the slayer of the dragon? Where is our Beowulf?

As most of the world knows, Carroll sued Trump for defamation and was recently awarded damages of 83.3 million dollars.

Bennett states that this trial was about the value of a woman, long past middle age, who dared to claim she indeed still had value…an 80-year-old woman proclaiming she wasn’t done yet, that her reputation was worth something, and that she was owed money from the person who’d trashed it. 

Yeow again!  Go Jessica….and Jean.

If you woud like to read either of the New York Times articles, just click on the underlined sections which are links.

I have read three excellent thought-provoking books: a memoir/conversation about art; a nonfiction about the relationship between a wildlife rehabilitator and an owl; and a provocative novel about computer games. Yes gaming.  I am someone who has never played a computer game, knows nothing about them, and has always faintly disapproved.  But I have read a book and it has changed my mind.

Sadie and Sam aren’t a couple but they are brilliant game designers who produce a blockbuster before they have graduated from MIT and Harvard respectively.  In much of the first half of the novel they plan and discuss their game, thus giving the average person an inkling about what is involved.  I had no idea game design was so artistic. Sadie and Sam work on the problem of making their wave realistic (what is the right amount of light, shadow, color, movement?) and how to portray something transparent.  A few days later, I read about this same problem in the following book about David Hockney as he figured out how to paint a splash.

In gaming, ideas or works of art are made to appear on the screen without the intermediaries of drawing or photography.  How does that happen?  I wish I knew at least a little about the general concept of how a computer works.  I’m not good with machines, but I am good with language.  Maybe I can start there.

Tomorrow is also a book about relationships, both friendship and love, the effects of success and tragedy.  “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow…”  is the beginning of that famous Shakespeare quote when Macbeth laments the death of his wife and the futility of life in general.  This novel puts the quote in a gaming context where, if things turn out badly, the player pushes restart and life begins anew.  Maybe tomorrow can work out just fine.

There is much to learn about Hockney’s art in general: painting, photography, theater design, and iPad(!) But the emphasis on painting green and vibrant spring amidst lockdown and discouragement was wonderful to read. I love the title, both rebellious and hopeful at the same time.

More than the tutelage on art, I appreciated Hockney’s views on life.  1. “Pay attention,” he says. “Most people wouldn’t notice the Garden of Eden if they were walking through it.”  2. Immerse yourself in something you love; getting “out of yourself” is the highest thing most people can do. 3.  People should not frantically hang on to youth; old age should be valued as an important phase of life in its own right.  Artists live to ripe old age because they don’t think about bodies as they age; they think of something else.

I was lucky enough to discuss this book as part of the Honolulu Art Museum book club. It was chosen because there is a Hockney exhibit here, Perspective Should Be Reversed.  This is a very art-knowledgeable group and our leader not only led our book talk, but afterwards steered us through the exhibition as well.

In Alfie and Me, Carl Safina writes about the time, also during the pandemic, that he had a relationship with a wild owl. He had rescued her from death as a nestling and followed her through early maturity when she found a wild mate and became a successful mother raising three owlets.  The author emphasizes feelings of community with this small being who would initiate social friendship chirps, answer when called, and come to say hello, not to be fed.  Named after Alfalfa from The Little Rascals, Alfie learned to negotiate both worlds.

Safina is very concerned about the state of wildlife and the diminishment of a supporting wild environment.  Interspersed with Alfie’s tale are detailed philosophical summaries of two opposing views of nature.  The first, and oldest, are the indigenous and Asian philosophies which see the world as a balanced unity with humans as one part of it. 

The second, more recent, starts with Plato and Christianity, which see humans as special and above nature.  The physical world is believed to exist to be conquered and exploited by humans, to serve us.  It is this mindset, which is in the ascendance with so many, that is the cause of our environmental troubles today.

Safina goes into great detail about both philosophies and the need to return to an outlook that has served humanity for millennia.  The reader who enjoys philosophy will like his provocative views; the reader who doesn’t care for that can skip those parts and read this book as a charming story about an owl who definitely can think, communicate, and share human feelings – plus do so much more in its parallel universe than we can know.

For those of us who lived through the times, the book brings together in one place memories of the first women in an area to do things – the first woman lawyer in an office or the first journalist for a newspaper – and the obstacles they faced.  Totenberg tells us that those first women stuck together; friendships were important.

She and Ruth Bader Ginsburg became friends before either became famous.  Totenberg was a reporter covering Ginsburg when she asked the Supreme Court to declare discrimination on the basis of sex unconstitutional.  Over the phone, Ginsburg answered her questions, tutored her on the subject, and a friendship was born.

Although the title names Ginsburg as the dinner partner, Totenberg describes, sometimes with too many gossipy details, lunching, wining, and dining with many others in the Washington D.C. circle of power.  A large part of the book is about Totenberg’s own life and her climb to prominence.

But it is a pleasant straight forward read, nostalgic for an older age group and informative for a younger.

But Birds of Hawaii by George Munro, published in 1944, paints a portrait of what the Hawaii bird world was like almost a hundred years ago, and tells by implication how much it has changed.

The bittersweet fact that comes through is the vast abundance and variety of birds and the expectation by birders, that although conservation was needed, the birds would be ok. There were so many nene (Hawaiian geese recently on the endangered list) that they were commonly hunted, even by Munro himself.  Kolea (plovers) were served on toast.  Munro is not especially worried about the endemic Hawaiian forest birds, so many of which, not quite 100 years later, are not ok at all, but are endangered or gone.  

Munro was fine with the introduction of foreign birds into Hawaii’s environment.  There was even an organization, Hui Manu, dedicated to doing just that.  They recognized that the native birds had fled to the hills and they missed their songs in the backyard.  (How many people today in their headsets would even notice?)  Birds were brought in from elsewhere to take their place. 

Maybe Hui Manu was right.  Many of the imported birds have flourished while the native birds have been unable to cope with habitat loss, disease, predation, and climate change.  At least we have some study survivors to enjoy and may yet come to love the rock doves (pigeons) and mynas. 

Reading an older book puts into sharp focus the changes that have occurred. I think about the bounty of that time, the optimism, the can-do attitude, and find it hard to recognize.  Today, although there are some success stories about Hawaiian birds, much of the information, especially about endemic forest birds, is dire. 

The island is just large enough to support the single family that lives there, as are many other islands in that archipelago.

Jacobsen brings to life three generations who know the land intimately, revel in its harsh offerings, and sustain themselves in often brutal conditions.  The children are the most interesting characters, remarkable in their self-sufficiency as they take on adult chores.

The islanders, producers of what they require, and poor, are not consumers sought after by the rest of the world and are thus “unseen.”  But the author teases us with other possible meanings for the term.  At the very beginning, a visiting priest looks back across the water at his home parish and realizes he has never seen it from this perspective.  Father and daughter ponder messages in bottles, cast up by the ever-present storms, about lifestyles they will never know.  A convict arrives on their island and “steals something they didn’t know they had.”

The Unseen reminded me of Sweetland by Michael Crummey.  Both memorialize hard physical ways of life passing out of existence even on remote islands.  Both have characters who are marginalized in broad society but flourish in the rough agricultural, fishing environment.

What were they talking about?  They were debating the merits of various libraries – which had the better selection of children’s books.  All is not lost yet.

The artist, who is unnamed throughout the book, finds a meticulously packaged old painting stored in the attic.  Called to it by the sounds of an owl that has taken up residence, he unwraps it. This unleashes the strange happenings that soon begin.                   

A neighbor, wealthy, handsome, almost perfect, hires him to paint his portrait for an exorbitant amount of money.  A young girl, just thirteen, especially perceptive and obsessed with her developing body, who may or may not be the daughter of the neighbor, makes up the third of this triad.  

In the middle of the night an ancient bell rings in the forest summoning the artist to investigate. Before long there is a dark pit reminiscent of other caves and holes; there is a mysterious constricting dark passageway he must traverse to reach the light; characters in a painting materialize and speak just to him; teleportation occurs as he visits his estranged wife without leaving his bed.

There is a lot going on here.  Murakami is interested in communication of abstract ideas through music, art, and especially metaphor.  He also wonders if there is something out there that occasionally communicates with us to provide a helpful nudge.  How thick is the line between the real and not real and how is it bridged?  I suppose that communication is a subject of great importance to a writer, and in this novel Murakami is doing riffs on possibilities just like his beloved jazz composers do.

While all these intellectual ideas are flying around, a very traditional plot is buried beneath them to anchor the story, ordinary after all. “Something happens to a young man to make him leave home; he is compelled to search for something; he finds it and returns home.”  It’s the plot of the hero’s quest, an ancient archetypical myth, also a very good example of a metaphor.  Does our hero find something valuable to take home?  I think so, but it is up to each reader to decide.

“Transmitting ideas into written words is hard, and people do not like to do it… Writing is thinking, but it’s thinking slowed down — stilled — to a point where dimensions and nuances otherwise invisible to you appear.” 

Also in that opinion article is another paean to studying the humanities: “(they) reject the assumption that value and utility are synonyms… literature and philosophy seemed to begin from a quietly revolutionary premise: There is thinking that does not exist merely to become work, and knowledge that does not exist merely to become capital.”

Why should her heroic action be punished so badly?  It is 1922 and Perveen Mistry, Bombay’s only female lawyer, is determined to answer that question.  Her investigation encounters murder, rape, attempted land fraud, and the wall of male privilege.

While character and plot are well done it is the setting that dominates. This mystery is rich in detail about Indian food, dress, customs, religions, prejudice, paternalism – and the British.  Massey, whose parents were Indian and German, shares the intricacies of a culture she has learned to love.

When he learns that she has been murdered, inspector Jimmy Perez must call in his superior Willow Reeves, a woman he is starting to think of as more than a colleague.  Together they follow every small hint to learn the dead woman’s identity.  When they discover her connection to a prominent councilman and mysterious deposits into his second bank account, they unearth a secret hidden in Perez’s rural hometown.  But even closer to home are the suspicious behaviors of his neighbors and his daughter’s schoolteacher. 

In this mystery, the plot is the thing.  Intricate, with red herrings, it’s a page turner.  Cleeves’ Shetland series is the basis for the television program of the same name.

The time is December 1941, shortly before the Japanese invasion of Penang, when the loyalties of multi-cultural Philip, now the master’s student, will be tested.  The history of the invasion and occupation, with the parts played by the British, Chinese, and Japanese, is the backdrop for this exploration of free will and duty. 

Much is made of these lofty concepts and after a while I was reminded of Dan Brown’s DaVinci Code – mysterious ways, secret societies, allusions to ancient power and knowledge.   I usually like some hints of mysticism, but here, they felt forced.  Duality, the ability to hold two opposing views at the same time, was an important lesson for Philip to learn, and the word sums up my view of the book. Some parts I liked and some, I didn’t.

Eng’s strongest point is his beautiful descriptive language.  In remembering Philip’s youth, “the one impression that remains now is of rain, floating from a bank of low-floating clouds, smearing the landscape into a Chinese brush painting…like threads entwining with the perfume of flowers, creating an intricate tapestry of fragrance.”

Most disturbing is that its subject matter is probably true.  The story is about the infiltration of Russia into the social media of the West promoting discord and radicalizing conspiracy theorists.  One of the tools is large amounts of cash. Not just seven figures; that’s almost laughable.

Part of this book is a tutorial about how vast amounts of money laundering is done.  What is scary is that even after the detailed explanations, I have no idea. I don’t like to think that there is a whole class of people out there (not just Russians) getting obscenely rich – and powerful – by manipulating money, probably illegally, in ways I won’t ever understand.

In Bleeding Heart Yard by Elly Griffiths, newly promoted Harbinder Kaur must look to a death in the past to solve the murder.

Griffiths, as always, does an excellent job of building her characters, who develop from one book to the next. Delightful Harbinder has finally moved out of her parents’ home to a flat in London where she finds herself a partner.  The characters at the reunion, one possibly guilty of murder, are intricately drawn daughters, lovers, old flames.

The exciting and unexpected climax is a bit of a stretch, but these days, I’m glad to have a happy ending.

Yes, we want intricate (but not too confusing) plots with satisfying endings.  But we want to like the detective and his/her friends and family.  If there is no connection, we’re less likely to pick up another book in the series. It isn’t just about solving the case.

She and Jimmy presented themselves as a team; she was his political partner in the presidency. “I can’t stay at home and do Cokes and teas,” she said. Few people complained and she was a respected figure. 

A few years later, there was Bill and Hilary.  She was also a political partner who didn’t want to stay home and bake cookies and serve tea, but she was reviled not respected.

What was the difference?  Maybe we gals should reconsider the demure submissive front.

In The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell, sixteen-year-old Lucrezia is looking at the wedding portrait of herself that her husband, twenty seven year old Alfonso, the Duke of Ferrara, ordered to be painted.  In a slip of the tongue, he exclaims over the beauty of his “first” duchess.

Set in Renaissance Italy, this novel creates a slice of court life from the 1500s.  Lucrezia, too independent and artistic, is not a favorite child, but she has value.  Her marriage will cement an alliance between two noble families. Once married, she must fulfill her role.  She must quickly produce an heir to forestall claims to her husband’s position.  Ruthless and powerful, he expects a son. Nightly, he does his part, but when a pregnancy is not forthcoming within a year, he begins to plan for a solution.  Meanwhile Lucrezia has met the artist and his assistants who have been hired to paint her portrait.

O’Farrell excels at creating a richly detailed past and fully drawn characters from a few bits of historical information. Were things really that way?  Probably not. Could they have been? The massive fortress, the dark dripping forest, the talented young girl forced into marriage? I was certainly a believer while I was reading.

This is how I got to enjoy Ozick’s wit – exaggeration, sarcasm – as she pokes fun at New York lawyers, municipal government, lovers, greed, laziness, elitism, charitable works, innocence, idealism, herself.

She describes the Municipal Building as: “…a kind off swollen doom through which the bickering of small-voiced officials whinnied.”  She describes the “right” kind of young men hired by the law firm: “…one or two of them were groomed – curried, fed sugar, led out by the muzzle – for partnership…they developed the creamy cheeks and bland habits of the always comfortable.”  She describes the kind of man she wants: “He’s got this mind.”

In each of the “papers” there is a story about part of Ruth Puttermesser’s life.  First, she is a lawyer; next a civil servant; she has a lover; she takes in a niece who is a Russian Jew; she dies and goes to paradise.  What seems to hold the sections together is the theme of getting what she wants and finding it not what she hoped for. 

She is unhappy as a civil servant and conjures up a golem (I had to look it up) which solves her problems and makes her mayor.  But, alas, the golem continues to grow; it becomes sexual; its appetites grow; everything falls apart.  In another section, Puttermesser is infatuated with the novelist George Eliot and her partner George Lewes.  Puttermesser longs for an intellectual lover like Eliot’s and she gets one with results similar to the golem situation. At the end, she dies and goes to paradise.  Again, she gets what she wants, but even in paradise, it doesn’t last, or lasts forever, which is the same thing.

I suppose there is some erudite philosophical concept that talks about the seeds of destruction being carried within, but even in paradise??  This unusual intellectual book is for the reader who wants to sit by the fire this winter and think about big questions.

Martha’s gentle ways are successful, and soon she has a steady business.  The reader interested in horses will appreciate the detailed information about her job and the animals she loves. 

The perspective widens as Martha settles in.  It is 1917 and the war in Europe that seemed far away is starting to affect their small community.  She meets the neighbors who, she is not surprised to learn, have familiar problems: alcoholism, illness, lack of farm sense, prejudice against the families with German names.  The young people, including someone in particular, enjoy simple entertainments, ice skating on a frozen lake, hunting for petroglyphs, sleigh rides to the movies.

I was stunned to think that the main character felt safe riding up to isolated strange farms asking for a job and shelter and this was presented as normal. I was surprised that some of the remote ranches were owned and run by women – equal opportunity was already a fact.  And an unusual small bit of information, as Martha’s eventual fiancé tells us: it was illegal to send condoms across state lines then.  Not all change is bad.

“She cut brush all day, grubbing out thickets by the roots with a blunt mattock…It was black and cold inside the shack…she took the dead rats out of the traps…She felt along the quilts cautiously looking for vermin…her hair was not entirely dry, she hoped it would not freeze overnight.” 

Molly Gloss grew up listening to stories about her four pioneer great grandmothers, all “westering women,” in addition to reading diaries, letters, and journals of women who settled the West.

“It’s impossible to read the sad saga of Mr. Bankman-Fried without thinking he, and many of those around him, would have been better off if they had spent less time at math camp and more time in English class. Sometimes in books, the characters find their moral compass; in the best books, the reader does, too.” New York Times

His main idea is that the tasks of the first half of life are different from the tasks of the second.  In the first half of life, young people ideally flourish in a family and community that is loving, secure, and has boundaries.  They concentrate on themselves, learn how to get along, and build their identities according to the established framework of their culture.

As they mature, it is time to reconsider the comforts of the familiar, think independently, find the true self, and give to others.  Moving to this second phase can be painful; people who begin to think or behave differently from their peers are often discouraged.  Others don’t want to change but are pushed out of the comfortable nest by circumstance.  All stumble and fall, but this zig zag path is the way forward, or upward.  My interpretation is probably more secular than the author had in mind as he talks quite a bit about the spirit that is doing the guiding.

Rohr’s ideas are not new, as he says himself, but he does a good job of gathering and presenting them in an understandable and memorable way. This is a short book, dense, and like many religious and philosophical books, sometimes obscure. But the main points do emerge and offer timely ideas to second-half-of-life individuals.

This happened recently with Gravel Heart by nobel prize winner Abdulrazak Gurnah.  I read and wrote about it two years ago  (Skillful Writing). Then, I was interested in the plot.  What is the family secret that causes so much trouble? This time, I knew the answer and could emphasize setting and character.

I could enjoy the visual details of the setting, a village in Zanzibar, where our hero, Salim, grows up.  Later, when as a young man he travels to London to study, there is the immigrant experience he shares with other single men from Africa.

There was time to think about the characters’ behavior.   Why does Salim’s father react to betrayal by withdrawing into permanent self-imprisonment?  Salim, despite his apparent advantages, cannot find a place between his two worlds.  Maybe “gravel heart” has a more subtle meaning than the obvious selfish or evil intent.

In addition to this Wonder Woman, Bonnie Garmus in Lessons in Chemistry also gives us a fairy godmother and a daughter nicknamed Mad, an allusion to the comic books.

But there is lots of science.  Eizabeth’s research is an esoteric subject, abiogenesis (the study of the origin of life from an inanimate substance).  Her popular television show, Supper at Six, deals with the intricacies of the chemistry of cooking as well as turning out great dinners.

Raised by her bootstraps in the 1950s, independent Elizabeth does not suffer fools gladly.  She has few friends, never mind dates.  But then she meets Calvin Evans, Pulitzer Prize nominee for chemistry.  A soulmate!  However, as Elizabeth tells us, life is chemistry and chemistry is change, and change comes for Elizabeth leaving her a single mother of a daughter.

This delightful story with its quirky characters is more than a fun read.  Garmus has a point to make and like any good teacher she repeats it often. “Sometimes I think that if a man were to spend a day being a woman in America he wouldn’t make it past noon…Too many brilliant minds are kept from scientific research thanks to ignorant biases like gender and race…No more holding yourself back. No more subscribing to others’ opinions of what you can and cannot achieve” When Elizabeth is congratulated on being forward thinking for wearing trousers, she congratulates the man right back for wearing them also.

Is there really a need for another book about equal opportunity for women and the elimination of harassment in the workplace?  As our heroine says, to educate we must repeat, repeat, and repeat.

Should I ignore Gauguin’s paintings because he abandoned his wife and five children to run off to the South Seas?  Should I not support the Audubon Society because its founder was racist?  Should I give up my Tesla because I dislike Elon Musk?

Recently, this question has come up in publishing about an author who is not guilty herself of doing anything, except by association.  Adania Shibli is Palestinian but neither a member of Hamas nor a terrorist.  Yet, an award celebration for her new book, Minor Detail, was cancelled by a prestigious book fair because of her nationality and its subject, which is the gang rape of a young woman by members of the Israeli army.  Should this book be shelved until a more appropriate time? Or is doing so the equivalent of book banning?

Pamela Paul, in a thoughtful article for the NYT, “A Chill Has Been Cast Over the Book World,” October 18, gives a stirring answer.

Cher is talking about the many older music groups that are putting out new albums and having a resurgence. The younger generations are finally starting to realize that oldtime rock n roll really is the best.