Month: May 2021

Lost Children Archives

By Valerie Lusisella

Published 2019

Read April 2021

This reader is still trying to decide what to think about this book.

The mother/wife/woman narrates most of the book but not all of it.  She describes their beginning—she and the father/husband/man both signed onto a project to record sounds in New York City.  She was a journalist and glad to get work that would last awhile and have medical benefits. They were assigned as a team to record as many of the 800 some languages spoken in the city.  They worked well together, fell in love, and decided to move in together.  She brought her daughter, then a little less than two years old. He brought his son, five years older.  We learn the boy lost his mother during childbirth.  We learn nothing of the girl’s father.  The adults marry and begin filing joint tax returns.  They use choose to use pronouns for the various family members that show they are one family.

The narrator picks up the story as the project is nearing its end and the adults are thinking about their next projects, although they aren’t discussing their next steps with each other.  His new sound project, for which he has secured a grant, will involve the last Apache leaders and he eventually tells her he will need silence and solitude and relocation to the southwest.  She had become involved with a Mexican woman living in the city whose daughters had tried to sneak into the country but had been abandoned by their “coyote”, found by border patrol agents, and prepared to be deported back to Mexico.  This leads her to get funding for a sound documentary about the immigrant children’s crisis at the border while still hoping she can help her friend find her children.  It becomes clear they aren’t on paths that have a clear intersection.  She tells us that she decides to find an intersection by refocusing her project on a site near the southern border.  This leads to a family road trip to the southwest.

The woman narrator gives us an interesting picture of that road trip.  They choose not to go quickly to their destination but rather avoid the interstates and fairly slowly meander their way to the southwest.  The father/husband/man declares the final destination will be in the Chiricahua Mountains as that’s where the Chiricahua Apaches had lived before they had to surrender to the “white-eyes”.  During the slow trip west, we hear stories the father/husband/man tells the children about the Apaches.  We learn more about the lost girls that the mother/wife/woman is seeking and we hear her read from a book called “Elegies for Lost Children” (a book that the author creates for this novel) that describe the journey of seven children being led by a “coyote” from Mexico into the United States.  We hear about the games the children (now 10 and 5) play in the back seat of the car including role-playing the lost children in their mother’s book.

The picture of the road trip leads us to understand that the family unit, which has only been together four short years, is coming undone and perhaps has already completely disintegrated as far as the father/husband/man is concerned.  We don’t hear anything from him.  The mother/wife/woman’s acceptance of the disintegration of the family unit grows over the course of the trip.  They become father/man and mother/woman but the bond between the two “parents” dissolves with limited effort from either party, it seems, to hold it together. 

The picture presented made this reader question the parenting capabilities of the adults.  For instance, the parent’s choices for audiobooks astounded this reader.  Cormac McCarthy’s The Road?? This reader found that book quite astonishing but the extremely dark post-apocalyptic world includes people who raise babies to eat them.  They would play this for the children?  The parents do decide this book might be a little dark for the children but when the woman’s audio-player starts up each time, the first line of that book always plays.  They decide on The Lord of the Flies as the best book they have for the family and proceed to listen to it.  This reader shouldn’t have been surprised considering how dark the “Elegies for Lost Children” is.  Fortunately, the children are clearly very connected to each other and can carry on quite well with each other despite little attention from their parents. 

Eventually the boy takes over narration of the book.  He has certainly been listening to his parents and understands that they are likely separating and that this is their last family trip.  He wants to help his mother (he has certainly fully accepted her in this role) and eventually decides to help her find the lost children his mother is desperately trying to find—the two little girls who are being sent back to Mexico.   He takes his sister on a trek across the desert to find them and leaves behind a map for their parents to let them know where they are headed—to Echo Canyon which their father has been discussing.  Thus we leave the haunting narration by the mother of the parents distancing themselves from each other and seemingly their children too as they become increasingly focused on their respective projects.  We enter an even sadder narration by the son telling about the two young children trekking across a desert with little to eat or drink but with a mission to find the lost girls.   The boy has concluded that saving the children may be more important to his mother than they are themselves. Can this book become more tragic?  This reader will leave to your own reading to learn how things turn out.

This book has received many accolades.  This reader agrees that “The Elegies for Lost Children” paints a very dark, and likely accurate, picture of the trek many immigrant children are taking to come to the United States.   The author conveys the pain parents feel as they send their children on such a trek to rejoin family already in the United States.  The author makes the reader question the rationality and humanity of the policies that create this situation. 

However, the story of the family’s disintegration is troubling.  The parents allow their four year relationship to die with seemingly little attempt to save it and with little thought of how this might impact their children.  Of course the boy will stay with the man and the girl will go with the woman.    Their children not only get lost trying to help their parents find the lost children in their mother’s book, they are about to be very lost when they lose their sibling, and are left only with their biological parent who seems to have limited interest in them.     It remains unclear to this reader why this is the story the author chooses to tell while reeling out “The Elegies for Lost Children”. 

Snow

By John Banville

Published 2020

Read March 2021

As noted in a previous entry, this reader found a Benjamin Black novel in a Little Library on a road in the Finger Lakes and learned two things:  Benjamin Black is the pen name of Dublin’s famous writer John Banville; Benjamin Black’s mystery novels are well “crafted” (as the author describes) and quite the worthy read.  This reader has enjoyed another Benjamin Black novel since then and commented on it.

Recently this reader found John Banville’s Snow in a Little Library in Naples Park, Florida.  While this book was found 1500 miles away from the other Little Library, the discovery was just as welcomed as the first.  Apparently Banville (a highly celebrated Irish writer) has decided it’s acceptable to sign his “entertainments” with his real name.   

This book too is has a mystery in it.  While the book suggests it may have a classic Agatha Christie plot—the victim is found dead in the library and the killer must have been inside the house when the family retired—the book also provides a unique look into the 1957 world of Wexford County via depiction of a  fraying Anglo-Irish Protestant family and its interactions with the Catholic priest who is murdered in their slowly decaying house.  St John Strafford, the investigator from Dublin, is an unusual Garda member as he is from the same class as the family and also a Protestant.  We hear his thoughts as he moves through the investigation and through his days and nights while staying in this small town south of Dublin.  We watch him slowly unfold a number of family secrets and we see him interact with the Catholic Church as it defines what is expected from the investigation of the death of one of their priests.  

This reader won’t divulge more about the plot which is certainly darker than hoped for by this reader but as dark as should be expected by some of the details of the murder.    Rather this reader will leave you with a passage that quite took this reader by pleasant surprise and made her sit upright.  Strafford has been forced to stop his car to wait for a flow of sheep to pass across the road.  “Strafford idly studied the milling animals, admiring their long aristocratic heads and neat little hoofs, like carved nuggets of coal, on which they trotted so daintily.  He was struck too by their protuberant and intelligent-seeming shiny black eyes, expressive of social resignation tinged with the incurable shame of their plight, avatars of an ancient race, being herded ignominiously along a country road by a snot-nosed brat with a stick.”

This reader is glad Banville has decided to expand his literary efforts to this new form of “entertainment”.  Benjamin Black’s novels are much more than simple mysteries providing terrific language about not only the characters but their physical and social environment.  Banville has upped the ante even more with this entry and this reader looks forward to more. 

Coyote Waits

By Tony Hillerman

Published 1990

Read March 2021

Skeleton Man

By Tony Hillerman

Published 2004

Read April 2021

This reader has encountered Tony Hillerman and his characters Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee, Navajo Tribal Police officers, in the past.  Then, as now, this reader read two this series (of eighteen) nearly back to back.  Joe is the older and wiser officer and Jim Chee the younger officer trying to find his way in his world that straddles the Navajo and white world.  He straddles as well his draw to be a traditional healer and his pursuit of being a good investigative officer.   

The stories are set in and around the Navajo Nation and include either a mystery to be solved by Leaphorn and Chee (in cooperation or in parallel) or some kind of suspense story (as in Skeleton Man.  Over the course of the series, the stories of Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee are revealed.  As with the Massie Dobbs series by Jacqueline Winspear, the reader is treated to an interesting mystery/suspense story set in a different culture and/or time and the story provides some insights into that culture/time.  In both series, the story of the main character(s) is slowly metered out but in a way that doesn’t dominate the mystery/suspense plot .  Both the character(s)’ story and the mystery engage and propel the reader into both stories.   It’s not critical to read either series in chronological order of the story(ies) of the main character(s) as there is sufficient background provided to enable you to participate in their story(ies) as told in a particular  book.  Interestingly, all three characters, Massie Dobbs, Joe Leaphorn, and Jim Chee, have entries in Wikipedia that are fairly detailed regarding their life stories. 

Unfortunately the world lost Tony Hillerman so the eighteen books are all the world will get describing the lives of Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee and the mysteries they solve.  Lucky for this reader, there are a good number of Hillerman’s book left to read.  

The Great Santini

By Pat Conroy

Published 1976

Read March 2021

Pat Conroy wrote a fictionalized account of his childhood and published it 14 years after the 1962 setting for the story. The main character, Ben, based on Pat, is the oldest child of Lt Col Wilbur “Bull” Meecham (who calls himself “The Great Santini”).  Bull Meecham is a Marine fighter pilot who fought battles in his plane in WWII and the Korean Conflict and now finds himself in a command position for which he was far from the first choice.  He has been assigned to lead a group of Marine fighter pilots.  He intends to make the best of the best and prove he should be promoted despite the reports in his record that suggest he is not leadership material.

Bull Meecham, a Chicago native, met his wife while stationed in the south.  She was 18 when they married.  He was considered quite a catch.  She converted to Catholicism for him, sends their children to Catholic school when there is one in town, and sets up a small alter in each house they occupy—-they move frequently from base to base. 

Bull Meecham was an amazingly abusive father and husband, expecting complete obedience and respect from all members and beating any of them who don’t live up to his expectations.  He pays little attention to his daughters who he expects to be “great tail” for their future husbands—-Marines of course–and he expects his sons to become Marine fighter pilots too.  The scene in which he and Ben are playing a game of backyard basketball was extremely telling.  Bull is going to be beaten by his high school son and he can’t stand it.  He can’t lose to anyone ever.  After being struck in the head with the ball repeatedly by his father, Ben goes inside while his father remains outside practicing basketball so he won’t ever lose again.

This was actually a difficult book for this reader to endure.   Being aware that it was based on the author’s life made it even more difficult.  No family member can possibly be left undamaged by the environment Bull creates in the household.  The only semblance of peace they get is when Bull is on assignment overseas and the family returns to the mother’s childhood home and stays with the grandparents.  These readers hoped that Ben would at some point get beyond the constant bickering he does with his sister and actually hear her pleas for help.  The two of them are each other’s dates for a school prom.  She tries to seriously talk with him and tells him that she isn’t sure she wants to live but he doesn’t hear it.  The stories of the abusive treatment by Bull of his family and squad continue for 536 pages.  This reader wondered how it could ever end.  Fortunately it does.  

One hopes that military life has changed during the nearly 50 years since the setting of this story.  One hopes that women have real avenues to break out of abusive relationships.  One hopes that children are never raised in this kind of environment so they aren’t permanently damaged by it. Obviously changes are incomplete on all accounts. 

By writing what he lived, Conroy left a canon of writing that never feels inauthentic—-he lived most of it himself.    Hopefully this writing helped him heal and hopefully this writing will help others recognize that there is much healing needed by too many people.