Author: Diane

Political change is underway.  The control by the West, England and the United States, is waning.  The powers of China and Japan are rising.  Smaller Pacific islands are rediscovering indigenous strengths.  Australia is suffering growing pains as it sorts out its white/native identity.

While largely political, the book also deals with changes in natural history.  Coral reefs have been depressingly despoiled, but there is excitement about the discovery of new life forms in the deep and a stronger understanding of the global influence of Pacific weather.

The most compelling and shocking chapter was the first, The Great Thermonuclear Sea, about the US testing of atomic weapons on Bikini Island in the Marshalls.  Reading that chapter, I found it hard to know which was worse – the appalling environmental destruction or the uncaring horrific attitude towards the islanders displaced or put in harm’s way.

On the opposite end, the epilogue, The Call of the Running Tide, was a favorite of my book group.  We were all taken with the story of Polynesian exploration – sailors who knew where they were out on the ocean with no navigational instruments, not even a compass, because of their knowledge of the winds, tides, stars, birds and (lying on the floor of the canoe) sound of the ocean.  This lovely chapter tied together the others and ended the book on a hopeful note.

After navigating the depths of Pacific, I was ready for some easy reading.  Two gems came my way. 

Each chapter starts with a quote from one of A. J.’s favorite short stories, thus giving his customers, and us, plenty of possibilities for future reading.

Penny’s ability to evoke a sense of place is superb. I can smell the hot chocolate in the bistro and hear the crunch of ice underfoot as I’m walking away.  There is always an element of moralizing in Penny’s books and this one is on the edge of too much.  Nevertheless, I was happy to sit by the winter fire in frigid Quebec for a few afternoons this summer.

I look forward to seeing what these two do with this popular series.

I would like to say that it was my interest in birds that made me look at this headline, but no, it was really its feisty non-pc attitude.    Andrew Paul, in the AV Club, describes scientific research done in Australia that shows birds are already physically adapting to climate change by enlarging the sizes of their beaks, ears, and legs to help themselves cool in the face of a warming world.

Ethan Hawke is terrific as the fanatical John Brown, playing him with nuance and sympathy.   Yes, Brown is a zealot, but sincere in his faith, large on courage, loving to his family and fellow man.

The well-chosen music, perfectly matched to each scene, gives the movie a dimension the book can’t match.  Its outstanding score is a compilation of negro spirituals, folk tunes, and jazz performed by musical greats ranging from Mahalia Jackson to a hymn by Elvis Presley.

But like the book, the movie raises some uncomfortable issues.  What are we to do with a religious fanatic, one of the sparks of the Civil War, who appears to be right when he said only war would effect the broad social change of freeing the slaves?  I never think of violence and fanaticism in positive terms, but in this case…

I should have been more suspicious, because the subject of this book is persuading blacks to use sales, the hard selling, cold calling kind, to get the success that has been traditionally denied them.  In his view, skill in selling leads to a high paying job in the tech industry.  This novel is fiction with quirky characters and an engaging plot used to drive home a point of view.  Along the way, the tech industry in particular is chided for the lack of minorities in the sales force.  Askaripour encourages blacks to follow this path to success while he says plenty to the whites who would keep them back.

I kept waiting for him to suggest to his readers that they consider WHAT they will skillfully sell, that this bit of moral consideration would be part of the book’s ending.  But no, it wasn’t, and he never did.

But – like the main character, Little Onion, I fell under the spell and became fond of the fiery, fanatical John Brown and wished the story wouldn’t end the way I knew it must. More than an unusual homage, this thoughtful book has a lot to offer.  

The none too flattering depictions of John Brown and Frederick Douglass are timely as we examine our old heroes and find them wanting.  Must heroes be flawless super beings, or is doing just one history changing thing enough to qualify?

Slavery was the flash point subject throughout lawless Kansas in the 1850’s when strangers were accosted wanting to know their stance.  Answering the wrong way could be deadly.   This reminded me too much of our current vax, anti-vax division; although at this point, it is only one choice that is potentially fatal.

The language is funny, “but with me traveling incog-Negro…and the Captain…famous as bad whiskey;” The observations are pointed, “Being a Negro’s a lie, anyway.  Nobody knows who you are inside.  You just judged on what you are on the outside…You just a Negro to the world.”

It is a fine description of Brown and his legacy.    Did McBride pick a bird feared to be extinct because he thought there weren’t enough John Browns left in the world?  

For example – birds’ stomachs and livers atrophy when they are ready to migrate and plump up again at the feeding grounds.  (I wish I knew how to do some of that atrophy part.)  Whimbrels fly into hurricanes and use the winds to propel them on their way.  A new program being developed will use acoustics to identify what kind of birds are in that mass picked up on radar.  Learning exactly where birds stop along the way is helping conservationists target their land purchases or work with peoples who want the birds in their pots.

I am comforted to read about the dedicated biologists in countries all over the world who are working to help birds survive.  It is no longer a given.

But – on the package was a blurb about their “Earth Friendly Packaging.”  Really?  I did not believe them but followed the link to their website – and I think I’m convinced.  There was excellent information about the environmental costs of molded paper egg cartons vs. their cartons made from recycled plastic.  Plus – they will send a postage free label so their customers can return the containers which will be recycled once again.  Reading – such a great tool for evaluating assumptions.

And then there is…

So, a pun, a play on words, and an anecdote walk into a bar…

No joke.

This vignette is the beginning of Mozart’s Starling by Lyanda Lynn Haupt.  Intrigued by the story, Haupt used it as a starting point to explore starlings, Mozart, 18^th century Vienna, music theory, physics, and even linguistics.  Whew!  Although the book is meticulously researched and full of information, it is not scholarly in tone, but an enjoyable, easy read.

The song of the world so often rises in places we had not thought to look.

To educate herself, Haupt procured and kept a pet starling which flew free in her home.  She united this new firsthand knowledge with research to create stories of possibilities.   About Mozart’s mysterious piece, A Musical Joke, she has an idea.  The Magic Flute?  Another theory.  She riffs on the nature of time.  Does it pass differently for short lived animals who have a faster heart rate?  For the musically trained, there is a chapter comparing music’s structural technicalities with bird vocalizations.  But mostly, this is a charming upbeat story comparing her life with starling Carmen, to Mozart’s life with starling Star.

I especially liked Haupt’s openness to wondering about the unity of nature, and her thoughts on creativity:

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The world of the Native Americans of 16^th century Virginia was ruled by the manito aki, the spiritual underpinning of the world we think of as real. Pocahontas, its priestess, represents that world.  This fascinating book is a well-researched nonfiction study of a culture that knew its time was at an end.   It is also a story of birth as the Indian holy woman and her European wizard alchemist husband (John Rolfe) are brought together by the manito aki to bring forth the new world order that we live in.

This formidable book requires at least a little openness to alternate realities.  An interest in the history of Jamestown and the infighting of English religious factions is not enough to get a person through this tome as the emphasis is on an alternate way of seeing.  At the beginning of the book, my American 21^st century world view made some of this a little hard to swallow; at the end?  Well…I will think about it.

Allen’s sometimes droll tone and abundance of interesting facts make this scholarly book fun (albeit in small doses).  She instructs us in the similarity of the English view of witches, magic, and fairies to the Native view of the gods and shows us that the Indians changed the English as well as the other way round.  We learn that John Rolfe was shipwrecked off the coast of Bermuda and this was the basis of Shakespeare’s The Tempest.  The story that Pocahontas saved John Smith’s life because she was in love with him was just the English version, reflective of the times.  (There are two Johns – Smith and Rolfe.)

As I read her book, I pictured her as a young very au-courant woman, so was very surprised when I learned that she died in 2008 at the age of 68.

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Poverty, drugs, violence, stunted dreams are all here.  The characters, though, are street smart and sympathetic; the plot includes a couple of minor mysteries and is engaging; coincidences abound; old folks fall in love. 

The language is superb.  Yes, there is the blue language of the streets throughout.  But mixed with that are the poignant passages.  Sportcoat, in his 70’s, remembers, sees, his dead wife:

She stood, clasping her hands near her chest, emboldened with the enthusiasm of love and youth, a way of being he’d long forgotten…The newness of love, the absolute freshness of youth…She was so pretty.  So young.

Hettie, his wife, speaks to him:

Back home you gived life to things nobody paid the slightest attention to: flowers and trees and bushes and plants. These was things that most men stepped out on. But you…had a touch for them things.

McBride is not above a lesson or two for his readers:

The world was becoming clear to me then. Seeing how we lived under the white folks, how they treated us, how they treated each other, their cruelty and their phoniness, the lies they told each other…

The threads of the story are tied up neatly providing a satisfying ending.  But after I thought about that happy ending, I realized that it was happy only for the people who got out of the projects – the cop who retired with his lady love; the minor mobster who left to make bagels; the talented baseball player who was the one in thousands good enough.  For the rest, who stayed, the dark clouds gathered and the rain fell as big time drugs moved in.

Although the Taoist symbol yin-yang, black and white, is not about right and wrong, it is the picture that kept coming to mind.  The black darkness is the devastation of war, the destruction of home, shattered family, greed and cruelty of individuals.  The balancing light is found in the human characteristics of tenacity and courage, love, friendship, kindness.  The intertwined structure of the novel, past with present, contributes to this image. 

There are few details about the war in Syria but many about the state of refugee camps in Turkey and Greece.  To endure these, the characters draw strength from the stories they tell themselves, illusions they create, and memories both real and embellished.    Without these, this book, like their journey, would have been too depressing to finish.

One of the legends that particularly resonated with me was the quest for the City of Brass: 

After years, when the City of Brass is finally reached, it is a shiny paradise of beautiful mosques gleaming with brass and jewels, but there is nothing alive in it.  There is a table with etched words that say “At this table have eaten a thousand kings blind in their left eye, a thousand kings blind in their right eye, and a thousand kings blind in both eyes.  Every king who ever ruled this place was so blind that they left the place full of riches and devoid of life.” 

Nations may come and go but greed is apparently ubiquitous and lives forever. 

She tells us the new word “arborglyph,” that is, a communication carved into the tree.  We know about lovers’ hearts, but this was a serious method of communication among people before paper and books.  At this same time, I was reading Pocahontas by Paula Gunn Allen where she also uses the word to illustrate communication methods of native American tribes, thus proving the point that when you learn a new word it will inevitably pop up somewhere else.

There’s this meme going around now that says, “Dinosaurs didn’t … and look what happened to them.”  One I especially like is, “Dinosaurs didn’t eat chocolate and look what happened to them.”  But even better is, “Dinosaurs didn’t read and look what happened to them.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates uses it often in Between the World and Me to castigate those who will do anything to shore up the belief they are “better than” simply because they are white.   I have read other books by angry black men and dislike the tone despite agreeing it is justified.   I much prefer the approach of Isabel Wilkerson in Caste – she lays out her argument in precise, powerful straightforward terms.  But, there are times when rage is appropriate and measured discourse just doesn’t do it.  Coates’s point is that we have reached that time.

He is outraged over the lack of control that blacks have over their own bodies.  Of course this was true during slavery, but he contends that it is still true today.   He cites the harassment and many killings of black men by the police with the tacit approval of society who prefer what they perceive as safety to justice. 

I tried to imagine what it would be like to have that fear any time I got in a car.  Suppose the traffic police started to target white old ladies and give them tickets for minor or made-up issues.  I would be incensed at such harassment.   And then I tried to imagine what would happen if the police started pulling these white old ladies out of cars, frisking them, and regularly shooting them for resistance.  I failed in picturing this.  It is too preposterous to think about grandma being treated in this way and the country would be in a furor.  Yet – this is exactly what happens to a portion of our society, black men.

Coates does an excellent job of portraying the black man’s fear of being killed.  When he ventures into side subjects such as school failure or the limited horizons of black children, he is less successful.  I wish he would have acknowledged that there are other groups who are poorly served by public schools, whose children have stunted dreams, or who do not have control over their own bodies.

The soaring cadences of the last couple of pages remind me of a black preacher rising to the hopeful end of his sermon, but Coates’s tone is ambivalent.  Maybe there is hope, but “Through the windshield I saw the rain coming down in sheets.”

Like Tea Girl, Sea Women starts with an exploration of the historical cultural practices and beliefs of a unique group of people, in this case, the haenyeo, or deep sea divers, of Jeju, South Korea.  Only the women dive, leaving the men at home to care for small children.  See has a good time with this inversion of our norm.

The harsh condition of the divers’ lives is leavened by See’s favorite topic, relationships between women:  mothers and daughters, and girls who vow to be best friends forever.  When World War II and its aftermath comes to their island, their hardships increase and relationships are tested.

Although full of interesting information, both about the divers and seeds of the Korean War, this book is too dark to say I really liked it.  The difficulties of the characters in Tea Girl are balanced by the pleasant topic of tea; here, their difficulties are intensified by the cruelty of war.

In The Spectator Bird by Wallace Stegner, the opposite is true. The first chapter could have been describing my life these days.  Joe Allston, the main character, observes the fat towhees in the yard, goes for a walk, looks through old photos, thinks about volunteering somewhere.

How does an author tell a satisfying story about old age?  He must deal with the general ennui, waning abilities, chronic illness, friends dying, yet bring his characters to contentment at the end.  Stegner uses the device of a postcard from an old friend.  When Joe and his wife Ruth receive it, they relive the time, twenty years ago, when they rented rooms from her in Denmark.  Interspersed with this emotional remembered story is the routine discontented present.

Some of the ruminations about old age go on too long and the story drags.  Then, when the reader is lulled into accepting this pace, there comes a wallop.  Somewhat like life.  I like that the story begins with birds, and ends with this lovely image: “It is something…to have found a fellow bird with whom you can sit among the rafters while drinking and boasting…go on below; a fellow bird who you can look after and find bugs and seeds for…” 

Stegner was 67 when he wrote this; it was his next to last book.

The Pint of No Return details the festivities of Octoberfest complete with descriptions of the beautiful Northwest in the fall.  A film crew making a documentary, talented female brewer (main character), budding romance, plus much information about making and drinking beer provide a needed respite from all the serious books out there.  Her three other series, The Bakeshop Mysteries, set in Ashland, Oregon, Pacific Northwest Mystery Series and Rose City Mystery Series all sound appealing to this Oregon reader.

 Virginia Woolf lived in a time when all upper-class people had live-in servants.  How else would they haul water up flights of stairs, light fires, empty chamber pots, and produce, on a wood or coal stove, three formal meals a day plus tea.  The huge difference in housekeeping between one hundred years ago and now is clearly brought home.

The relationships between Woolf and her servants interest the author as much as their duties and living situations. The information is presented mainly from the upper-class point of view.  Woolf left diaries and voluminous written material.  Her servants did not.  The author tries to equalize the situation by a thorough examination of government and institutional records, but there is little personal material available.

Light’s book would appeal to the reader who wants to learn more about Virginia Woolf’s life and writing.  I was caught by Woolf’s conflicting emotions about the servants.  Here was a self-proclaimed feminist, a liberal thinker of her day, who tormented herself over the question of the poor, but was unable to see those who lived in her home under her nose as worthy of concern.  The way she writes about her servants is appalling.  If it was so hard for someone like her to overcome the straitjacket of convention, is it any wonder we continue to have trouble?

This book would also appeal to the reader interested in women’s history of the early 1900’s in London.  Light tells about the high number of abandoned children left in the poor houses who were trained with one goal in mind – to be servants.  And third are Woolf’s exhaustive ruminations on social structure and her conflicting desire for an independent life with leaving her underwear for someone else to wash.

Reading this made me think about what it would be like to have outsiders in the house day and night.  What would they think of me if I read or napped in the afternoon?  Would their observing presence make me uncomfortable?  It would, and I understand better why Woolf and her class created enough barriers,  both mental and physical, between themselves and the servant class, so that they would not care.  Their opinions just didn’t matter.

And a last thought – currently, we are very concerned in our culture with the residual effects of slavery which ended 150 years ago.  Shouldn’t we also recognize that the long-lasting effects of a class system that produced mind numbing poverty, ignorance and grueling working conditions less than 100 years ago might be responsible for some of the problems among whites today? 

She wants to balance the masculine Thoreau, Muir, Audubon names that control our view of nature writing by inspiring us to read some of the women authors who have made so many contributions without equal fame.

Aalto whets our appetite with summaries, excerpts and commentaries about twenty-five diverse writers ranging from Dorothy Wordsworth who journaled in the early 1800’s, more well-known authors like Mary Oliver and Rachel Carson, to current native American and black voices, like Robin Wall Kimmerer and Carolyn Finney.  In addition, there are many honorable mentions.  What a wealth to choose from!

This is an excellent selection from the many Western women of the last two hundred years who are receiving recognition for nature writing of all kinds: Vita Sackville-West, the developer of the famous English garden Sissinghurst;  Saci Lloyd, a teacher who writes “cli-fi” (climate change fiction); Camille Dungy, a poet who writes about the very scientific concept of trophic cascade (what happens when a top predator is reintroduced into an area).   Living in an environmentally oblivious neighborhood as I do, I am comforted to know that the expanse of nature writers is so broad (and these are just the women).

Those of you who know my less-than-avid interest in history will be all the more impressed with Aalto to learn that she has enticed me to choose one of the “honorable mentions” that reeks of history to put on my “list,” Pocahontas: Medicine Woman, Spy, Entrepreneur, Diplomat by Paula Gunn Allen.  Sounds fun!

And there is a new word – mudlarking – which is one of the author’s hobbies.  It means scavenging in river mud for objects of value, commonly on the tidal River Thames.  The term can be expanded to include finding an unexpected treasure such as when searching through old research files; I think of garage sales.

So it is in Run.  Patchett introduces us to a prominent white politician, happily married, one child. The couple adopts two black infants.  The wife dies.  When the boys are grown there is an automobile accident that gets the story rolling.  A black woman who saves one of the boys turns out to be the mother who gave him up for adoption.

The story gently explores the relationships among all these people – the neglected first son, the white father pressuring the adopted boys to succeed; the black mother who wanted a good life for her boys – and now, her daughter thrust into the center.  One unguarded, careless moment that changes everything is a common theme, but Patchett does a good job with it.

Comparing the treatment of race in this barely fifteen-year-old story to how it is treated in novels written currently is thought provoking. There are comments about black children being ignored and not seen, about black uninsured hospital patients receiving more casual care, but oh how mild these comments are compared to what we read today.  Is it the age of the book or the white author?

Are there other female Native American detectives in fiction?  Bernie, the Navajo wife and daughter, fills the empty spot.  The grandeur of the Southwest, valuable tribal pots, Navajo customs are all here in this compelling mystery.

Do any of you follow Books with Sue Fitzmaurice on Facebook?  She always has the best quotes!  Notice that this one comes from Powell’s Compendium of Readerly Terms.  The Compendium is a real thing put together by Powell’s Books in Portland.

Here’s another:

It is easy to find these very fun definitions online.

The storyline follows the main character Li Yan as she emerges from her village’s restrictive superstitions into the modern world.  Mentored by her teacher, she leaves the village for a coveted position at a new tea school where she will become the tea equivalent of a sommelier. 

This novel twines three threads.  Number one is Li Yan’s story which explores several things:  an enduring mother/daughter relationship, changing friendship between two young women, the courage of one who finds her way into the new while keeping what is worthwhile from the old.  Second, is the story of the tea.  I had never heard of pu’er tea, or tea cakes, or vintage teas.  Mild green tea bags have been my choice.  But there is a whole world out there and See steeps us in it.  The information is accurate, and the places are real.   The third line threading through the others is the adoption of Chinese infants by wealthy Americans.  We meet Haley who grows up both Chinese and American, both grateful and angry at her position.  See expertly weaves the three parts to give an integrated compelling story with a satisfying ending.

Tea Girl reminded me of Song of the Lark by Willa Cather in the sense that we see the importance of mentoring.  In both novels, someone in the town spots a bright child and cares enough to “interfere” and give assistance.

It must have been true for Ernest Hemingway because he wrote A Moveable Feast about his life in Paris forty years after he lived there.  It is an idealized memory of Paris in the 20’s when he was young, healthy, optimistic and still in love.

After the Hemingway television series, we wanted to read something of his, but I didn’t want the war stories or violence of the bull fights.  A Moveable Feast is not one story, but a series of vignettes, recollections of restaurants, wines, people he knew and places they went.  It’s a nice homage to Paris and a lifestyle of a hundred years ago.  I still think of Hemingway as a somewhat current writer, so it is a shock to think about that hundred-year part.

A law clerk to one of the justices discovers she has been given his power of attorney when her boss falls into a coma.  There is a case; he is the swing vote; one side (with the impeachable president) will do whatever it needs to win.  The judge, having anticipated what may happen, left her a set of instructions encrypted in chess moves.  The case revolves around genetic manipulation and along the way we see evidence of the exciting medical possibilities but also receive warnings about misuse and terrorism.  Having just lived through a pandemic year, I was receptive to the concerns of this timely book.

Although this is the first mystery published under her real name, Abrams has written eight romantic suspense novels under the pen name Selena Montgomery.  I’ve read a couple and found them lighter and more relaxing than this one – but fine stories also.

“The Great Silence” by Ted Chiang is a twelve-page gem that comments on the near extinction of the rain forest parrots around the observatory.  These are birds who address each other by name and, studies have shown, don’t just “parrot” words, but understand what they are saying.  The feathered narrator, judging from the experience of its kind, thinks that extra-terrestrials might be wise to avoid humans.

The text of this very short story can be found free online at Electric Literature.  It can also be purchased for your Kindle for 99 cents.

“The Great Silence” was recommended in a NYT opinion piece by Ezra Klein called “Even if You Think Discussing Aliens is Ridiculous, Just Hear Me Out,” dated May 13, 2021.  Apparently, UFO’s, like the psychedelics I wrote about last time, are now being taken seriously.  The Pentagon, CIA, and other government agencies all have information on the subject that has been consolidated into a just released report.  In true political fashion, the report doesn’t assert a definite opinion, but if the CIA thinks it might be true – does that make us more or less likely to think so too?

There is a part of our culture that is discovering, or rediscovering, the use of psychedelics for spiritual awakening, enhancing creativity, pushing us out of our rigid habits.  Pollan’s book is full of information, history, credentials, universities and scientists – all needed to provide the gravitas to make the average reader take a serious look at a subject usually dismissed or joked about.  Pollan has a long way to go to educate us away from our view of psychedelics as 60’s party drugs.

He is successful in this very thought-provoking book.  The similarities of altered states described by mystics, shamans, faith healers, saints, monks, and Pollan himself convinced me they are describing the same thing – a different consciousness that is a real part of the human psyche, not some drug induced hallucination. 

What are the implications?  Will psychedelics give us a short cut to the elusive meaning of life?  Researchers today are extremely careful to talk about controlled settings with trained assistants.  Neuroscientists work hard to keep up with rapidly expanding knowledge about the workings of the brain. There is excitement in the mental health field because of successes in the treatment of PTSD, depression, fear of death in the terminally ill – stubborn areas with currently few successful treatments.   And the mid-life crisis?  That remains to be seen. 

Shortly after reading Pollan’s book, I found an article in the New York Times entitled “The Psychedelic Revolution is Coming.  Psychiatry May Never Be the Same.”  It states, “Psilocybin and MDMA (Ecstasy) are poised to be the hottest new therapeutics since Prozac.  Universities want in, and so does Wall Street.”  Well, if Wall Street wants in and the New York Times is writing about them, psychedelics must be something to pay attention to.

But there is a double meaning.  The phrase also refers to being in the water, as in under the water, with the wave above.  Not where the surfer is supposed to be.

Theroux, who lives on the North Shore of Oahu, Hawaii, captures the beauty and attraction of the ocean, the culture of the big wave surfers, the grandeur of the island, as well as the poverty of the local residents, the ignorance of the surfers (“There’s a difference between Arkansas and Kansas? who cares?”), the homeless encampments.  Ostensibly about surfing, this is a book about how to live life.  The details of the surfing experience are exquisite in and of themselves, plus they draw in the non-beach, non-surfer person with their metaphorical quality.

Joe Sharkey, known to all in the area, is a competitive surfer who has lived just the way he wanted to – day after day in the surf, sex and drugs at night.  But now, he is 60, that precarious time of life when he realizes he is no longer at the top of the pack.  At this vulnerable point, an accident occurs that sends him into a tailspin – under the wave.

Theroux examines Joe’s life choice: the childhood in Hawaii that led him to be a surfer, the joy and exhilaration that kept him doing it. (Joseph Campbell of bliss fame would approve of these passages.)   Joe’s rescue is a counterpoint to the things left out of his loner surfer’s life: human connection, love and kindness.  

An unusual topic also explored is that of adult hero or celebrity worship which rears its head throughout, leading the reader to ponder just why it is that adults fawn over other adults they don’t know.    Maybe it is some genetic thing that pushes us to connect ourselves to someone successful.  A stray mastodon scrap may come our way.

Summing up the things wonderful in Joe’s life, and the things missing, is this quote about reading: “Talk of books, here especially, seemed irrelevant.  What was the point of mentioning these inert objects while on the beach, facing the moonlit sea flickering with chop and now and then a wave bursting in blackness offshore and crusted in white; these palms, this mild air and moonglow – it was all beyond books…”   (Maybe it is, but can’t we have both?)

I read this alongside Michael Pollan’s book and couldn’t help but compare the portrayals of drug use.  Theroux’s portrait is the antithesis of Pollan’s carefully choreographed, privileged experiences.   Drugs here are not for supervised medical use or spiritual development but instead crush the lives of disturbed school children, dropped out surfers, the jobless poor.

This is a good description of Cynthia Ozick’s book and her views on life.  Her characters each have plenty of darkness in their lives – intellectual Jewish refugees from Germany in the 1930’s tossed into the U.S. without position or respect.  And, a young woman who lost her mother when a child, living with an impoverished gambler father uninterested in her.  And, a young man like Christopher Robin who lived with a father who preferred his created version to the real son.  The light of their happiness is fleeting.  Love, success, or money appear but are often lost or unsatisfying.

In addition to happiness in their lives coming only intermittently, glimmering refers to their partial understanding of the reality around them.  The scholar has a reverence for the ancient past, but will never understand those lost thinkers in full.  The physicist has an insight, but it needs to be enlarged and developed.  People fall in love but have only a superficial understanding of their beloveds.  Our heroine leaves for a hopeful, but uncertain future.

I like Ozick’s language.  Her use of glimmering is a creative way to prod the reader into reflecting on the meaning of the novel.   Her descriptions sparkle: “I had endured typing for three hours…The tender balls of my fingers tingled, as if sparks had shot up from the keys; their glass shields had captured the light, and sent violet streaks into my pupils.”   I liked the double meaning of, “Or was she Ophelia, whom true madness submerges?”

This book starts out slowly, but the characters soon exert a fascination.  Add to this a poetic command of language, the author’s insights on life, and we get a novel well worth reading.

But it is Ozick who wins the prize.  She celebrated her 93^rd birthday in April and in the same month, published her latest novel, Antiquities, to excellent reviews.  According to Random House, she has been at the “height of her powers” for fifty years now.   What an example!

Early in the day, Henry watches local demonstrations against the Iraq war on television.  As the day progresses, the demonstrations intrude on his own life when he has a small automobile accident because of a detour.  The repercussions of this build, leading to a crisis in his home.

This thin line of a plot ties together the episodes of his day.  Each activity is very heavily detailed.   In the description of the squash game with his friend, lob by lob, serve by serve, return by return, every action and emotion is reported.  When he talks about his profession of neurosurgery, word after esoteric medical word describes his specialty.  What is the point of this onslaught of detail?   Does McEwan expect the reader to enjoy a vicarious game of squash? Educate himself on the details of brain surgery? 

This part of the book doesn’t work.   Instead of providing a link into the situation, the dense details build a wall too thick to penetrate.  The interesting concepts of a life told in one day, the invasion of a distant war into a happy life are offset by a surfeit of unwanted details.

Her appealing detective is well developed and after a few books I knew him well.  Brunetti, lover of gourmet food often cooked by his wife, drinker of excellent wine found throughout his home city of Venice, reader of classical literature, is the star around whom the novels revolve.    There is also Leon’s devotion to social justice and environmental issues, her love of Venice, and the ability to compose a compelling plot with a riveting climax.  When she gets the balance right, the book is terrific.

Among thirty books, all are not equally terrific, but her latest, Transient Desires, is one of the better ones.  Here, the issue is human trafficking and the difficulties of apprehending just one player.   Leon’s familiar jabs at bureaucracy, interest in the skilled reading and playing of suspects, her admiration of Elettra’s magical computer skills are all present.  I don’t usually think of pacing as a characteristic of a novel, but Leon’s is distinctive and shines here.  It is like a piece of music, slow, stately, powerful, building to a crescendo, gripping, and tragic. 

Our detective, Kubu, which means hippopotamus, is black, very heavy, and like the Venetian Brunetti enjoys his meals and wine.  Like the real hippo, his instincts are sharp and he moves surely through the twists and turns of an intricate plot full of red herrings.  The mystery unfolds against the grandeur of the Botswana countryside, diamond mines, witch doctors and traditional cultural practices leavened with state-of-the-art satellite imagery and computer technology.

I thought of this when I watched the Hemingway special on PBS.  His first two wives commented on how they would devote their lives solely to him, and so they did.  They would always be available.  One said he would come before her children.  And how did he treat them?  Doormat is the correct answer.

I meant to end here, but in thinking further about Hemingway, I would like to add that he is a good example of the difference between an artist and his work.  I really like his spare style and whenever excerpts of his work were read my head came up from the catalogs I was browsing through and I was caught by just those few lines.

In the note at the end of the book she tells us that the captured children adapted to their native lives, became Indian, rarely readjusted when returned “home,” and wanted to return to their Indian tribes.  I wonder if some genetic memory ingrained in us for millennia is triggered by a return to hunter/gatherer life.

One of the two main characters, the captain, is an older Civil War veteran tasked with returning the rescued captive child Johanna, the second main character, to her less than welcoming aunt and uncle. The return to her relatives is the plot that drives their odyssey through lawless Texas.  The very likable characters are the strongpoints and invest the reader in the outcome.  Johanna, only ten, has been traumatized by two violent uprootings and struggles to understand the incomprehensible white ways.  The one good fortune in her young life was to be entrusted to the captain, grandfather, kontah, as she eventually calls him. 

The captain, in his 70’s, earns his living by reading newspapers to assemblies in small towns, presenting them with news of the world.  We in turn get to read the news of the west in post-Civil War times. 

There is a movie based on the book which does an excellent job of bringing the times and the place to life.  Tom Hanks makes a fine Captain.  The story line, though, is very different – not as believable as Jiles’s with quite a few sappy touches.  But it is Johanna who spoils the show.  The fire, strong willed independence, and Indian fierceness of the book’s character are all missing, and we are left with a sympathetic little girl in a “nice movie.”

The first introduces Antonia, a new widow exploring the supposed tried and true methods of dealing with grief.  The second presents her as part of a closely knit family of four Latina sisters.  The last is the rocky love story of illegal teen immigrants whom she befriends while she vacillates as to how much she can offer them as she tries to recover herself. 

The title brings to mind at least two possible meanings:  how the one who has died lives on in the words and actions of those left behind, but also what it is like to build a new life after the known life ends.  I thought all three of the story lines sounded promising and I could foresee how they could all weave well together.  Alas, I was too optimistic; Alvarez’s stories fell flat.  But perhaps she was more realistic than I as life’s sections don’t tie themselves into nicely resolved packages.

I don’t like books, or movies, about war, but the summary I read didn’t alert me strongly enough, and there I was with a purchased book and an agreement to read it for a book group, so I struggled through.  By the end, I found this novel and the questions it raised compelling.  What is it that has to be missing from life for someone young and healthy to prefer death?  What is it exactly that we want to live our lives for? 

In the story, the martyrs-to-be are religious, but I didn’t see that as the underlying motive for their desire.  The author explores the other reasons that have brought this group to “this place of assisted suicide,” to fight one chaotic senseless battle after another and to find a kind of peace in doing so.  The dismal scenes are balanced by the unexpected presence of poetry and art, brought to the space by artists, journalists, and the soldiers themselves.

Cleary, an Oregon author who died recently, wrote about the universal experiences of childhood: getting a new sibling, the first day of school, jealousy and anger.  Although her stories are about children, adults can extrapolate and recognize the situations of meeting a new manager, walking alone into an unknown group, exasperation with a family member.  These timeless children’s stories with simple family plots are a good respite from more serious fare.