One night, she crossed the shallow frozen river intending to spend a few days sightseeing with distant relatives.  In her memoir, The Girl with Seven Names, she tells about that fateful crossing and the years of hardship and fear that followed.

The book is chronological, so we first meet her when she is a happy child, living with her family in a land where relatives are most important.  Her parents, well versed in the bribery and illegal trade necessary for survival, provide a comfortable living.  As she gets older she starts to question the omnipresent political indoctrination; she sees the hunger of so many North Koreans and notices the well fed Chinese.  She wants to look closer. When she does, fate intervenes, and she is trapped in China.

The harrowing journey from North Korean defector through China to safety in South Korea goes on for years with one setback after another.  There is a lot of information about the different countries, their rules on immigration, the behavior and plight of the illegals.  Lee’s imagination and tenacity get her out of trouble many times.

Since her book was published in England, we know how the story ends.  But does it really end?  In the final chapter, she talks about the present time and how she feels about herself, her family, and the things she has done. 

The book provides insight into a certain kind of immigrant.  I’ve read several books about the immigrant experience, but I don’t think there has been another where the characters worried about being apprehended and executed by their mother country because they dared leave.                               

Stella’s mother (almost an evil stepmother) dies and leaves her a small inheritance with the caveat that she must go to Paris and spend it there.  Mousy Stella, having barely survived the uncaring mother, abusive boyfriend, and absent father is afraid to do something so daring. 

When she finally finds the courage, the trip changes her life.  First, she meets the mysterious shopkeeper who declares the gorgeous Christian Dior chiffon dress, with accompanying slippers, to have been waiting for her – and allows Stella to wear it for a day.  But there are rules.  She must go to a magnificent restaurant for lunch, order oysters and Chablis, visit a particular Parisian art gallery, have a dinner that only Paris can provide.

Thus, Stella is propelled into a sensuous world beyond her self-imposed restrictions.  Dressed in the couture dress, she looks –  beautiful.  As she is introduced to some of the great art of Paris, she develops an admiration for one painting in particular and finds a mystery waiting to be solved.  This leads her to the literary world of Shakespeare and Company and the “tumbleweeds” who live in the English language bookstore. 

Most of all, she discovers a talent for and appreciation of food and cooking.  Reichl was a food editor, restaurant critic, and editor of Gourmet for years.  She draws on her experiences of unforgettable meals for the mouth-watering descriptions found in the novel.

At the end, we’re happy for Stella who, as a modern Cinderella finds not just the prince, but her own special talent as well.  

A widow is suing a tobacco company for causing the lung cancer death of her husband. Others have tried this, but the tobacco companies have always won.  Will this time be different?  Both sides will spend whatever is needed to win, but the actions of the tobacco company are the more egregious.  If they can’t buy the juror directly, there is a spouse’s business to purchase or a doctor to bribe for embarrassing private information. 

Maybe a comeuppance is at hand.  A quiet unassuming young juror insinuates himself into the confidence of the other jurors. Suggestions are made. Outside the jury, there is a mysterious young woman calling the “fixer” of the defense with information about what the jury members might do on a particular day.  How does she know?

Grisham does his part in the anti-smoking campaign by having his characters detail the damage that smoking causes and the actions of big tobacco to keep people puffing.

The story is a bit farfetched and we’re not too surprised by the ending. But getting there is well worth the trip, and it does have a satisfying little twist.

2019 sets the scene for the five main characters. Robbie, the brother, lives with his sister Isabel and her husband Dan and their two children. Robbie is asked to leave what was supposed to be temporary accommodations and find his own place. Dan’s brother, Garth, agreed to be a sperm donor when approached by his lesbian friend Chess and unexpectedly finds himself wanting a family relationship with the woman and her son.

Even though we are with each character for only a day each year, we get to know them well.  Each person has a chapter and speaks in his or her own voice.  They all have a difficult time.  Living life in the 21^st century when roles and expectations are changing is not easy.  The women have careers and don’t want marriage and children as the center of their lives.  The men take on child rearing and have chosen jobs that should have been fulfilling – art, music, teaching.  Despite privileged middle class lives, they are unhappy.  Ennui, boredom, and self-doubt fill the pages (maybe too much).

Except for Wolfe (the fake online creation of Isabel and Robbie) whose engaged energetic life, detailed in several posts per day, is self-assured and content. He is wish fulfillment personified and gets many likes.  Through the contrast between made up Wolfe and the real characters, Cunningham makes it plain that “happiness ever after” is available only in a fairy tale.  In real life, success and happiness come in small hard-won doses. 

As he lives with the birds daily, he becomes convinced that the turkeys play and find joy in their everyday lives. If so, it was easier for the turkeys to find happiness than it was for Cunningham’s characters!  Maybe too much choice is more a burden than a pleasure.

Now that I am in my 80s, it isn’t so easy to find an admirable woman my age in the media.  And finding one as a main character in literature is almost impossible.  I can think only of Miss Marple and Olive Kitteridge – but now there is also Mimsy Bell.

The feisty Mimsy is introduced to us in The Buoyant Letters of Mimsy Bell, the debut novel by Laurel Dodge.  Mimsy, 81, has returned to her childhood home in small town Maine, and we meet her sending letters to the love of her life, her teenage boyfriend who drowned sixty years ago.  She puts each letter, about what she is doing, the local gossip, her worries and regrets, her memories, into a bottle which she tosses into the river where he was lost.  These thoughtful, bitter-sweet letters make up the novel.

She had quite a life after she left home in the 60s – flower child, talented fiddle player, wife of a famous rock and roll star, touring with the band.  Now the husband is dead, there has been a falling out with the band, there are no more drugs except for blood pressure, and she has returned home.  Her perceptive thoughts about grief and loss, her determination to live in the present, to build a new life with new friends, her interest in preserving the beauty of the countryside around her – all give a second meaning to the book title’s “buoyant.”

I like that literature is starting to acknowledge the importance of the music of the 60s and 70s.  Besides this book, I’ve recently read Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood (click to see my blog Nostalgia) and Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad (Obscure Puzzles) and The Candy House (Now and Soon).

Although Buoyant’s main character is an octogenarian, the novel speaks to all ages.  Fitting into a new environment, finding purpose in life, making oneself useful, overcoming hardships, all are universal issues.

As a bonus, it is beautiful book – with a lovely translucent orange front page.  I didn’t find it in any libraries yet and it isn’t on Amazon, but it can be ordered from Littoral Books, Portland, Maine. https://littoralbooks.com

In Bill’s, the novel is suspenseful from the beginning.  President Duncan faces a terrorist threat so dire that he takes the extraordinary step of leaving the White House and his security detail to meet with someone alone.  The threat is a computer virus that has been patiently infiltrating all computer systems for three years: banks, Wall Street, insurance companies, hospitals, utilities, military, plus the Internet of Things which was a new term for me.  It means the connections of our appliances, phones, thermostats, engines, etc to the internet.  When the virus is activated, it will wipe clean all software, thus getting rid of all records at one time.  Its nickname is “Dark Ages.”

Patterson keeps his plot with its many twists moving along.  The President’s part is slower.  We hear about vicious struggles for power within the government and the delicacy of international relationships. There is a long political speech at the end.  But the President is brave and honorable and puts his country first; he reminded me more of Biden than Clinton.

Possession is a tour de force.  There are parallel love stories – one today and one in the 1800s.  In today’s, Roland, a young scholar studying the poet Robert Ash stumbles upon the original drafts of Ash’s letter to poet Isabel LaMotte. Roland seeks advice from a LaMotte scholar, herself young and beautiful (played by Gwenyth Paltrow in the movie). Together they follow the clues of old letters and journals to discover a month-long tryst between the two Victorian poets with far-reaching consequences.

It’s a lovely story and, with lots of skimming, can be read just for that. Or – the reader can ponder the many ways the author presents the idea of “possession.”  What and who exactly is being possessed? Plus, there is the gorgeous language:  “…the sighing song of the West Wind, full of fine rain and glancing sunshine, streaming clouds and driven starlight, netted him around and around.”

On the downside – this is a dense book, slow to start and full of pages-long tedious poetry, purportedly written by Ash and LaMotte. There are mystical fairy tales; there are flowery Victorian letters full of obscure allusions.  Byatt was an intellectual and proud of it. 

The book is beautifully written, has very engaging characters, a plot with a mystery to be solved, a satisfying ending.  The reader can choose just how much of the “richness” Byatt has provided to read.  If you want the poetry and letters, they are there to enjoy; if they get tiresome, just skip them and read on.

Bennie Salazar was a bass player in a teenage rock ‘n roll band that he managed with his buddy Scotty, a talented lap steel guitar player.  Bennie wasn’t a good musician, but he had an ear for music and a sense of what would work. He is discovered and mentored by thrice married producer Lou who loves music and women in their 20’s.  For a time, Bennie’s capable assistant is Sasha, but she steals – often, is fired, and eventually finds herself penniless in Naples.

The story is not chronological; time fluctuates from the 90s to the 70s to the future. Characters are close to one another, they separate, and years later reconnect.  Different chapters have different main characters; a minor character may star in a later chapter – but the time of that chapter is earlier.  I think that Egan may be replicating memory which surfaces in unpredictable ways. She is interested in the passage of time and wants us to compare the ideals of the young with the behavior of the mature (in age). 

The settings are vivid and memorable – the drug-soaked music world, the snobbish white tennis club, the lions in the African bush.  Nevertheless, keeping track of the different scenes and characters is a challenge and I’m not sure that such difficulty is necessary to fulfill her aims.

Through them, we get a glimpse of her childhood, her first jobs teaching in China and Saudi Arabia, her developing love of music, especially opera and Handel, and a late life interest in bee keeping.  What we don’t get is anything remotely personal.  After finishing this memoir, I have no idea if she ever married, had a partner, had an affair, had a child.  She refers to dinner parties and having a best friend but gives no more information than that.  There is a casual mention of being a “crime writer” but nothing about her huge success with Venetian mysteries and the much-loved Brunetti.

Well…this is not an autobiography.  I had to look up the difference and this book is rightly called a memoir – a series of things chosen by the writer to make a point, perhaps in this case, to illustrate the joys of a certain way of living.  It is not meant to be a complete story of her life. Once I realized this, I was much happier with the book.

Too many technical musical terms, too many obscure references, too many Italian phrases without translation, too many mistresses!  This book may appeal to a musician or researcher, but I’m sticking with the old crew at the Venice Questura.

It stars Marcia Muller, Sue Grafton, and Sara Paretsky.  Each is interviewed so we get a peek at her personal life and hear her speak about her relationship with the sleuth she has created.  The three together were among the innovators.  Their main characters are not helpless females waiting to be rescued by the hard-boiled male police chief or detective.  Rather, they are the detectives, capable, resourceful 20^th century women solving crimes on their own. 

The movie is a thought-provoking discussion about the changes female detectives have brought to the genre. It is dated as Sue Grafton has since died, but both Muller and Paretsky, in their 70s, are still writing and bringing Sharon McCone and V. I. Warshawski into the 21^st century.

I watched this on Kanopy, our free library streaming service. I also found Possession at the library, but it was a DVD.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yeow again!  Go Jessica….and Jean.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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