Stevens sits by the ocean at sunset waiting for the colorful lights of the pier to be turned on. His neighbor on the bench, appreciating the view, speaks to him. “Evening is the very best time of day,” he says. “It is what most people look forward to.”
When the speaker later refers to retirement, we realize that his “day” is symbolic. People look forward to completing their work life and anticipate satisfaction and comfort. But what happens when a person looks back and finds the disquieting fear that all effort was for the wrong thing? Such is the plight of the main character in Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro.
Stevens is the quintessential English butler who served at the end of World War I, when the grand houses were still occupied by the nobility. He gave up all thought of a personal life to completely inhabit his role. Service to a great man at the center of power, to someone working for noble things, was the highest achievement. Now, both the great man and his reputation are gone; the idealistic world they lived in is gone; the woman who loved him is gone; and he is left alone to consider his past.
This wonderful story is told in the quiet restrained manner Stevens would have approved of. In addition to a perfect tone, Ishiguro uses nature to echo the scenes. When Stevens meets for the last time the woman he has frozen out, it is raining. As he contemplates his remaining days, it is sunset. Although the setting is of a time long gone, the fear of having wasted your life is universal.
A book like this is my favorite kind – easy to read on the surface but thoughtful and perceptive. Exploring the large questions of life in literary fiction is one of the best reasons to read.
Totally different is Hooked by Michael Moss detailing what the fast-food industry does to make us crave their burger, fries, and coke. Chock full of information, this work of nonfiction discusses scientific concepts in an easy-to-understand manner, big words excluded. Why is it that some people gorge on potato chips and others can eat just one?
Can fast foods be as addictive as cigarettes and cocaine? Moss explores our genetics and what we are programmed to desire in food by eons of evolution. Storing fat for times of famine. Getting the most calories possible from the least effort. Variety (think leaves, bulbs, fruit, and the occasional rodent) to ensure all needed nutrients.
Fast forward to the ubiquitous availability of cheap sweet fatty foods in unending variety (New! Improved!). I counted approximately fifteen kinds of Coca Cola along with orange, ginger, and garlic (!) being tested in other countries. Big Food deploys an army of scientists to figure out how to exploit natural desires developed over millennia. As with other addictions, science is unable to say why some people are happy with one Oreo and others must have the whole bag, but will-power is not the reason.
Reading non-fiction for information, whether to keep up with new things or learn about the past, is an excellent reason to tackle a meaty book, magazine, or news article.
A spectral woman in grey who walks through walls, suspicious college students who disappear, mysterious suicides, tales of the plague from the 1400’s, these are some of the aspects of The Locked Room, the most recent mystery by Elly Griffiths.
Written in 2020, it resurrects experiences from our own plague. Woven into the story are the first intimations of a pandemic. Next come experiences all too familiar. Ruth is a professor and a single mother who must learn to teach online plus instruct and entertain her daughter who will miss graduation festivities as she leaves elementary school. Friends meet outside, two meters apart (this is England), bring their own wine glasses which they put on the ground to be filled. Yikes! that is what we did as we worked to maintain social contacts.
This was a great story whose plot (even the title) echoes what we remember from that year – lockdowns, fear of illness, closing of public facilities, loneliness and suicide. Is it too soon to read it? The book did bring back the anxiety of that first year.
But I loved this series and binged this summer and fall and read all fifteen! What makes a reader connect so strongly with one particular set of characters? There is the occasional similarity – Ruth has only one child, a bright, lively daughter; she prefers ginger cats; she mentions some of the same authors I like; she even orders the same brand of ethically sourced toilet paper (maybe that is pushing it). I don’t think it is the similarities themselves but the attitudes and choices they represent.
We term the mystery “cozy” because we are comfortable and at home in it. We can relax–-a very valid reason to read a good book.
Sometimes we read because words themselves are so interesting: “Fossicking” at flea markets.
And sometimes we read because we want some fun.
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