Friends and Family

These last few months I’ve had the pleasure of reading three books written by people I have a connection with, in some cases a tenuous connection, but a connection.

The most recent was a gift from one of the members of my “other” book group.  When I was struggling with getting this blog online, Merrily kindly put me in touch with a friend who “publishes and might help.”  Indeed she publishes.  Agnes Bushell has written a dozen books and has helped start her own publishing company, Littoral Books situated in Portland, Maine. 

A group of students and travelers interested in classical archeology are touring Turkey to visit ancient religious sites.  At one of them, The Oracle Pool of Apollo, an incident occurs that breaks up the group.  One of the members doesn’t continue with the tour, nor does she go home, nor contact anyone, and is apparently missing.  The search for Ruth is the plot line that drives the story.  The wonderful characters draw you in.  There is the white-haired pastor named Grace, her ex-hippie boyfriend Artemas, her lesbian friends who want her to marry them, the journalist Orestes and his business partner Pete.  The religious names add to the fun and support the theme.  Plus, there is the occasional bit of playfulness with them:    “ ‘…I feel rain is coming,’ Cassandra said, meekly, trying not to sound prophetic.” 

This was also an educational book for me.  I am ignorant of the geography of the Middle East today, never mind two thousand years ago.  What were all those Greek archaeological sites doing in Turkey?  Luckily, I have historically minded friends, one of whom, the ex-librarian, kindly sent me a map showing that ancient Greece surrounded the Aegean Sea and included what is now Turkey.  This support from real life friends is something Agnes might appreciate, as an exploration of friendship is one of the themes of this book.  You can find it at www.littoralbooks.com. 

I was interested in this subject and when, before her book was published, I read a different one about wealthy individuals, I recommended it to my book group.  We read it, but Uneasy Street, The Anxieties of Affluence by Rachel Sherman received mostly thumbs down and didn’t spark the conversation I had hoped.  Readers didn’t like its statistical methods and had little patience with the problems and justifications of the wealthy.  Now that I’ve read Jen’s book, I wonder if something else was going on as well.  Did we illustrate one of her points?  Talking about money is hard; we are conditioned all our lives not to do it.

 Jen proposes that we work to change this cultural practice and become more open on the subject of personal means.  Through her own personal experiences, she lets us see that refusing to discuss money leads to false assumptions about those whose income is different.  They are no longer seen as individuals, but as part of a homogenous group, “the wealthy.”  Awkwardness arises even among family and friends.  For example, who pays the restaurant bill?  Is the wealthy one expected to pay for everyone?  Or would people think she was flaunting her money by offering to do so?  Jen reminds us that being wealthy is only one of a person’s many characteristics and like everyone else, wealthy people are all different from each other.  Being open to acknowledging differences diminishes feelings of separateness. Her book is available through local book stores and Amazon.

I thought it would be fun to ask my friend, Jennifer’s mother, to write a little something about her daughter’s book.  Would we write the same thing?  We don’t often get to hear from someone so close to an author.  Here are her comments.

We Need to Talk is my daughter’s “memoir about wealth” which she wrote to help very wealthy women overcome their guilt and insecurities about having “too much” money.   There is a great deal of prejudice against the very wealthy—the 1%—and having been brought up in a normal middle class family, she wants to share some of the problems she had and the techniques she had to learn about how to handle great wealth gracefully.  And she found in her research that women of all backgrounds and all income levels share this same insecurity.  It surfaces when you offer to pay for lunch and hurt your friend’s pride or when you find yourself not talking about where you shop for clothes or where you are vacationing.  Siblings with different incomes often have issues involving expectations and generosity. I found her ideas very insightful and I hope you will share my interest.

I thought about Steph’s book when I read Drive Your Plow Over The Bones of The Dead.  Both deal with subjects on the edge of implausibility.  In his book Presidents’ Day, Stephen Werbel gives us an ordinary 90 year-old grandmother who, in an unpremeditated attack, successfully assassinates the president of the United States and remembers nothing about it.  Did she really do it?

Sylvia, unhappy, angry, and depressed, finds an outlet for her feelings in competitive bridge.  Participation in a tournament puts her in a hotel at the time the president is there also.  She carries a gun at her husband’s insistence because she is often out alone at night.  For some reason she sits down in the area the president will pass through.  And then??  Sylvia can’t remember.

 Steph, who in an earlier life was a school psychologist, meticulously builds his case.  Here is an opportunity to learn about some of the more unusual workings of the mind.   Having been in the educational field, Steph is a good teacher who explains, repeats and summarizes.  While some of this is helpful, too much slows the pace of the book and keeps the story from moving along.

Sylvia’s hatred of Trump and her action offer a bit of wish fulfillment for the author.  I was worried that Presidents’ Day would be out of date after the election, but apparently, as the ex-president continues to draw attention to himself and generate strong feelings, it is still timely.  Despite the subject, this is a feel-good book, as the author adroitly works things out in the end.  It is available through Amazon.

I always look forward to visiting the Waikiki library.  Yes, it is open.  There is a limit of 15 patrons who wait outside the glass doors until waved in.  Once inside, there is a sharp-eyed security guard watching intently to make sure six feet distancing is kept – and masks go without saying.  Computers have heavy plastic shields over the keys that can be easily sterilized.  At the checkout counter, (no automatic check out in Hawaii) there is a five-foot table between patron and librarian to ensure distancing.  Whew.  But it worked – and probably next time I go I won’t think it at all unusual.  The new normal.