Old Ladies Read and More

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.

Parents of a teenage daughter, Arturo and Alma brought her to the United States to attend a good special education school on the advice of her doctors.  Beloved Maribel had been in an accident that left her brain damaged – but how seriously and permanently no one could say.  The parents gave up their home, his successful construction business, their relatives and friends to seek help for their daughter.  They became immigrants, legal aliens. He had a work visa and a job.

This novel is an excellent depiction of the loneliness and hardships of immigrant life but also the comfort and help they receive from their neighbors from Panama, Puerto Rico, or Nicaragua, many of whom are now permanent citizens. There is a wonderful scene when, at Christmas, the heat goes out in the apartment building. The residents, natives of hot weather countries, cram into one small apartment to try to forget the cold, and end up experiencing the friendship and fun they used to have at home. We begin to see “them” not as immigrants, but as people with universal concerns – how can I meet new friends? how can I pay my rent if I lose my job? how can I make the best decision for my child?

Two characters tell the main story from their individual perspectives.  Others also speak, thereby widening our view of why people leave their home countries and how they manage when they get here.  In this way, each person expresses him/herself and we get to “know” the Americans in the title.

I especially like how tightly constructed the plot is. Every situation and every character is important; there is neither padding nor rambling on.  This spare well-told story starts with one immigrant family, enlarges to the general immigrant experience, and ends with a powerful statement about the precariousness of life, somthing all humanity has in common.

Her ex-husband William rents a house and takes her to Maine where they shelter during the pandemic.  Lucy talks about what that fear and isolation are like, how her daughters are coping, the few people they meet.  It is low key, but out of a combination of action and memory arise life questions – and some answers – from a warm and perceptive thinker.  I like her books!

The first new fact was that libraries send books to troops during wartime.  I had never thought about the downtime from fighting and that soldiers would appreciate a respite from anxiety or boredom. Lolling around reading books and combat just didn’t go together in my mind.

So, I learned something from the novel The Paris Library by Janet Skeslien Charles. The not-in-character ending spoiled the story, but I liked the information. During WWII, The American Library in Paris, the largest English language library in Europe, stayed open. The intrepid staff kept it going, sending books to troops all over the world plus offering solace to Nazi occupied Paris.

The main thrust of the article, published during Banned Book Week, is that in the 1940s, patriotic Americans were considered those willing to donate unabridged, uncensored books to the military. Also, special paperbacks were published that would easily fit into a pocket.

“The paperbacks were intended to help soldiers pass the time. But they were also meant to remind them what they were fighting for and draw a sharp contrast between American ideals and Nazi book burnings.” 

While I thought the novel was just ok, I was interested in its subject, the subtle prejudice and dehumanization of being a type who always lives among gongs, dragons, chop suey, and kung fu.

As I was reading the book, I found an ad referring to a more overt prejudice against Asians, hate crimes on public transportation. Café Maddy Cab is an organization in NYC formed to protect Asian women and the elderly from harrassment by providing free cab rides to those in need.

I wish the two subjects, soldiers at war and prejudice against Asians, weren’t so current. I wish the definition of patriotic wouldn’t have been co-opted and changed since the 40s and the feelings towards Asians would have been updated and changed.

It is cherry picking time in Michigan.  It is also the pandemic and Joe and Lara’s three adult daughters are sheltering with them at their cherry orchard.  Picking crews are scarce so the whole family goes out from morning till night to bring in the crop.  To help pass the time, the daughters persuade their mother to talk about a brief time in her life when she was an actress having an affair with an actor who became a famous movie star.  How could she have left the glamorous life of the theater and him to marry a cherry farmer? 

When she was in her 20s, Lara had the lead role, Emily, in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town.  It was summer stock in Michigan; she was made for the part; the sun was hot; the lake was clear; the cherries were ripe; she was in love. But as in Our Town, the idyll came to an end. 

There is, however, a second love story in Tom Lake. Lara, now in her 50s, has been happily married to her much more than cherry farmer for a long time and has no doubts about her choices. Her husband and their daughters, the friendship and continuity of farm life, the bounty of the cherries, the pleasures of ordinary life, all more than hold their own for her.  The two stories, thirty years apart, intermingle, sometimes in the same paragraph, but the timelines are chronological and  easy to follow.

 I wonder if Patchett, who loves Our Town, thought about a “what-if” scenario and wrote Tom Lake to give Our Town a happy ending.  Lara, Joe, and their three children live the life George and Emily wanted, but didn’t get, in the play.  The titles are even similar – two short words – same number of letters.

There is a second famous play that inhabits Tom Lake.  After all, it is a cherry orchard they live on, not a wheat farm or cattle ranch. How does Anton Chekov’s The Cherry Orchard, about social upheaval in Russia, fit into rural Michigan?  In both plays, the families must confront the eventual loss of their beloved cherry trees.  At the end of Chekov’s play, the orchard, in the family for generations, must be sold to pay debts. In Tom Lake, global warming threatens the trees and Joe and Lara’s children look towards having to replace them with a different crop.

It isn’t necessary to be familiar with the plays to enjoy the book, but the overlap of themes and techniques is lots of fun to spot and adds an interesting layer.  The texts of both are easy to find online and free.

In 1930s prewar Japan, Masuji Ono belongs to a school of painters who record the world of the pleasure districts.  Here, at night, men live in camaraderie and good spirits, laughing, drinking, basking in the praise and flattery from the women who work there. True, all disappears in the morning, but it was real for a time, and shouldn’t its beauty be recognized? 

But times change. War is coming and Ono rethinks the kind of art he should be making. His paintings change to sharp militaristic images that support Japan’s quest for power.  He is rewarded for his patriotism and savors his success.

As the book opens, the war has been over for two years and the artist is looking back on that decision. Was he wrong to use his talent to encourage aggression? It seemed so right at the time. The image of lanterns flickering “causing one picture to fade into shadow and another to appear” is the metaphor used for passing time and changing perspective. The story is told in non-chronological flashbacks, as memories surface.

To balance this philosophical main plot is a secondary one exposing the less pleasant customs of Japanese life. Ono’s family is involved in marriage negotiations for his younger daughter. Both families hire detectives to ferret out anything unfavorable, either socially or financially, about the potential partner’s relatives. There is an obsession with status and appearance; there is pride and fear of making a mistake; nothing is said about love.

But it is the men’s disrespectful view of the women that is the most appalling. Grandfather says to his grandson, “What a nuisance these women are…Tell those women…” He is speaking to the child about the little boy’s own mother and aunt.

As befits a novel about an artist, the book is filled with beautiful imagery, the floating changing worlds and the flickering glow of lanterns.  Even the presentation of the physical hardback book is striking.  It is totally lime green, including the edges of the pages. The unusual setting, Japan under American occupation so soon after the war, adds another layer of interest.  I liked this complex thought-provoking book. 

The title of the play, Morning’s at Seven, comes from the poem “Pippa’s Song,” by Robert Browning.  But he has the sweet song sung by a child.  Just a bit too sentimental for the adult world?

The year’s at the spring, And day’s at the morn; 						
Morning’s at seven; The hill-side’s dew-pearl’d; 							
The lark’s on the wing; The snail’s on the thorn; 							
God’s in His heaven - All’s right with the world!

She says it will be “Ordinary” Barbie, not a president nor an astronaut, just an ordinary woman, because that is enough. Alas, that new doll is only in the movies.

The good news is that it has been published as a book; the bad is that it is now on the “restricted” or banned list at a Florida school because of just one parent’s complaint. “It might cause confusion,” she says. 

We've braved the belly of the beast.
We've learned that quiet isn't always peace,
And the norms and notions of what "just is"
Isn't always justice.

As it gained speed and howled through tinder dry forests it fanned the many existing small fires into an inferno that came to be known as the Big Burn.  

After meticulous research, Egan wrote what reads like a firsthand account of the fire that destroyed three million acres of forest, Wild West mining towns, timber camps, isolated family cabins.  The fire claimed the lives of idealistic young forest rangers, immigrants, drunks, convicts, men who barely knew how to hold an axe, all who tried to try to control what turned into a roaring wall of flame.

The Forest Service was five years old.  Teddy Roosevelt, Gifford Pinchot, and John Muir were the spearheads of a seminal change. New words and concepts: conservation, public lands, national parks, had just come into existence.  As always, the progressive view of helping the many slammed into the greed of the few.  The robber barons were used to old growth timber for the taking.  How, as a result of a catastrophic fire, Americans came to view forests as something worth conserving for all citizens, is the second subject of the book.

As the book ends (2009), environmentalists (a still newer word) are rethinking the role of fire and how to live with it. That we have a very long way to go is evidenced by the many wildfires and heavy smoke throughout the country these last few years, including the disaster of Lahaina. Our book group couldn’t have found a more timely read.

On the way home, the girls, tired from a day out, stop to help someone who has injured his ankle, and are not seen again.  These opening stories of sudden unexpected loss make up the thread that weaves together the chapters of Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips. 

The setting, the Kamchatka peninsula, is on the eastern edge of Russia.   Taking her cue from the location, Phillips writes a book with overtones of a Russian novel including a large cast of characters, each with several names.  Some, white, are city dwellers; while others, darker, represent the indigenous tribes of the North, some of whom are still reindeer herders. The suspicion and disdain, on both sides, between light and dark skin peoples is familiar despite the foreign location.  One group represents modernity with its freedom and possibilities but loneliness; the other, tradition with its security and comfort but rigidity.  The clashes between the two groups and two ways of life are among the major themes of the book.

Although the novel starts as a mystery, it is so much more. Each chapter is a beautiful independent story of a woman coping with loss or change.  One loses a second husband on the same date she had lost her first; another, left by a philandering husband, falls apart when her dog disappears; a teenager is heartbroken when she learns online that she has been dropped by her best friend; a college student learning traditional dance chooses between her village fiancé and someone new.   All are affected by the abduction of the two children; for some it magnifies personal loss; for others it stirs deep seated fears.

At the end, the mystery returns to the fore, and the various threads are brought together in a terrific suspenseful conclusion.  What a great story!

Fifteen years ago, a young archeology student went missing after a field trip to Neolithic flint mines.  When Ruth ascertains that the bones belong to her, Nelson interviews her former tutor, with whom she had a “special” relationship; their good friend Cathbad, the Druid wizard and responsible friend and father; four other graduate students now grown and successful, all of whom who had been on the outing with her.

This good mystery is full of allusions to archeological sites in Norfolk, ancient myths and ritual.  Balancing this is the levelheaded approach of Nelson’s staff who work to discover who murdered the young woman.

The plot is good; the setting better; but it is the relationships among the characters that make up the best part. Families in all their variations find ways to make things work.  Single mother Ruth who recently discovered a half-sister; Ruth’s daughter’s father Nelson, who is married with three other children; police officer Judy whose partner is the spiritually seeking Cathbad; ambitious Tanya who lives with her wife; all form a tight group who support each other through harrowing disappearances, and the still present hand of Covid.  

There is Arby’s French-fry-flavored vodka, Oreo Thins wine, Hellmann’s mayo-nog, and the Velveeta martini.  Hmmm. Not a fan? Maybe a good book would help.