Category: Modern Fiction

Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows

by Bailli Kaur Jaswal

Published 2017

Read May 2020

Jaswal gives us a novel that provides some insight into the culture of Southall, a Punjabi Sikh neighborhood of London and the challenges London-born daughters of Indian immigrants face as they mature into adulthood.  When Reese Witherspoon added it to her book club list in 2018 she indicated it was “a mystery, a romance, a family drama….and yes it’s 🔥 🔥 🔥!”

Nikki is a modern young woman, born of parents who emigrated from India.  She no longer lives with her widowed mother and sister in London, but rather lives in an apartment above the bar in which she works, the small apartment being part of her salary.  She quit law school before her father died, which disappointed him greatly, but Nikki was uninspired by the law.  A couple of years later she remains unsure what does inspire her but she is certain she is not interested in marriage soon.  Her sister, a nurse, is interested in an arranged marriage despite having a job that can support her outside a traditional marriage situation.   She sends Nikki to a Punjabi Sikh temple in Southall to post an advertisement about her to attract a potential mate.   While there Nikki manages to land a job teaching a writing class at the Sikh Community Association in Southall. 

Nikki assumes she will be teaching creative writing but quickly learns that her students, Pujabi widows, aren’t all literate.  One of the widows can read and write well and discovers a book of erotic stories that Nikki has purchased for her sister as a joke.  When this widow reads aloud from it while Nikki is out of the room, the other women become eager to tell erotic stories as well. 

In between the women’s erotic stories which are recounted in this book, we follow Nikki’s budding romance with a Sikh young man who also seems interested in pursuing a non-traditional route to love and marriage, a mystery around the death of the coordinator of women’s classes at the Sikh Community Association, the progress of Nikki’s sister’s plans towards marriage, and we are provided dark glimpses of a “brotherhood” of young Sikh men in the community who have become self-proclaimed enforcers of appropriate behavior of women.  Some, but not all, of these threads are carried to some conclusion while others are left dangling leaving the reader to wonder their real purpose in the book.

The book is entertaining and engaging.  We get a small look inside a traditional Sikh community co-existing with a modern city.  But some of the themes are quite universal beyond that specific culture, in particular the question of parental expectations of their children.  Fortunately the main character learns her father had accepted his daughter’s life choice before he died (she learns this from her mother).  The murder mystery is solved which relieves the family of the victim (a young Sikh woman whose reputation has been tarnished inappropriately) of some guilt.  But both of these aspects drilled home to this reader the impact parents’ expectations can have and challenged this reader to consider her own expectations of her adult children and whether they are appropriate or helpful.  Thus this reader was more impacted by this book than she expected to be.

The Overstory

By Richard Powers

Published 2018

Read March 2020

The Overstory has received much attention and some critics wonder why.  This reader does and doesn’t agree with that question.  While at times Powers can seem to beat his drum a little loudly, the novel is a great read for those who appreciate often delicious writing, multiple complex characters, several interpenetrating plot lines, and endings that aren’t tidied up with a bow.  This book certainly offers all of that.  

Powers begins the novel with individual chapters devoted to each of  nine characters.  These chapters are essentially short stories each providing a story about a character that will be either revisited in the rest of the novel or who will become firmly connected with the others characters being similarly introduced.  This reader found the first such chapter to be absolutely beautifully written. 

In this  first chapter introducing Nicholas Hoel, we learn about several generations of his family.  Newly emigrated from Norway, Jorgen Hoel meets and marries Irish Vi Powys in Brooklyn and they move to Iowa.  They bring with them chestnuts which Jorgen plants into the Iowan soil.  The trees and the family take root.  In twenty-three pages we learn the story of the family and the chestnut trees they plant.  Jorgen’s son John takes over the farm when his father dies and decides to photograph the chestnut tree with his newly acquired Kodak Brownie camera.    He takes a picture once a month until he dies and his son continues the task.  That Hoel tells his son:  “Listen.  I made a promise, and I kept it.  You don’t owe nobody.  Leave that damn thing be.”  “He might as well command the giant chestnut itself to stop spreading.”  Thus a set of over 1000 pictures of this maturing chesnut tree is the first artwork produced by this farming family.  We meet Nicholas Hoel, a descendant of Jorgen, who goes to art school instead of becoming a farmer, and who will be an important character in this novel.  We also learn about the blight that took out every Chestnut tree in the US.    Powers thoroughly engaged this reader through his concise and beautifully told story covering multiple generations of a family and the maturation of the chesnut tree.

One complaint this reader has heard about the book is that it takes 153 pages to get all the characters introduced before the “real story” starts.  This reader enjoyed each and every one of those 153 pages as interesting characters emerged from individual short stories about them which sets them up for engagement with one of the several stories in the novel:  1)  activists desperately trying to prevent the cutting of centuries old trees in the northwest; 2) a boy who becomes CEO of a videogame company that captures the minds of players world-wide; 3) a couple whose relationship evolves over the course of a couple decades in ways they would never have predicted; 4) a budding scientist whose original and startling publication about interactions between trees is initially heralded and subsequently scorned sending her into a sort of exile from the world. 

The only significant complaint this reader has about the novel is that after the initial set of chapters/short stories introducing the various characters, the book consists of only three chapter, the first being about 200 pages long and the second 119 pages long.  In these chapters, all four of the major stories are progressed.  This reader prefers shorter chapters that make it easier for readers who aren’t able to simply read through 200 pages in one sitting and who like to revisit parts of the book. The lack of delineation within these long stretches makes the latter action very difficult.

Powers can be a bit heavy-handed in trying to drive his points, but this reader appreciates his approach of using a story (or multiple stories) to engage people into learning new perspectives, learning about new cultures, and learning about new science findings. Regarding science and technology, which Powers often includes in his various novels, his character Patricia Westerford is likely based on real-life ecologist Suzanne Simard and the book she writes is likely a fictional portrayal of The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohleben.   He uses his characters Ray and Dorothy to drive the case for books and reading.  Both characters are avid readers but Ray (a patent attorney) reads only non-fiction while Dorothy reads only fiction.  They try over their years together to convince the other of the value of their preferred reading material type.  After a tragic even, they start reading both types together—-long novels and a book useful for identifying and learning about trees—and each comes to appreciate the usefulness of both kinds of books. 

For whatever flaws readers will find in this book, and, given its length, breadth, and structure, many critiques are possible, Power’s The Overstory has much to be appreciated and enjoyed.   It gives us new perspectives to consider.  Likely its readers will consider trees very differently than they did prior to reading this book. 

The Friend

By Sigrid Nunez

Published 2018

Read March 2020

This rather short (225 pages) book is a number of things.  We learn in the first chapter that the narrator has lost to suicide her long-time friend and mentor.  Much of the book is sets of reflections on their relationship and her grief.  She explores the course of grief following a suicide – disbelief, anger, despair, and unending pain.  Another thing the book has is the story of the narrator temporarily housing the friend’s Great Dane dog.  The narrator is a cat person and lives in a building that does not allow dogs.    She convinces the superintendent of the building that the dog won’t be staying, but she never actually makes any moves to accomplish that. She realizes the dog is undergoing great grief as well.  So the dog becomes another friend as they grieve and learn to carry on in the face of their grief.

Intermixed among the narrator’s reflections on grief and discussion of the dog are two other sets of reflections:  one about how the narrator views the calling of writing (yes a calling not a chosen profession for profit) and a second about her job as a writing instructor.  Her views regarding the calling/profession aspect of writing and the writers in each category are often amazingly blunt.  Yet while she seeks to write because that’s what she must do, she also needs to teach to make the rent. And feed the dog.

This is a brilliant piece of writing by an author that has herself remained out of the limelight and says she has sought quiet places to be alone to write.  Fortunately her genius has been recognized in this book which was the winner of the National Book Award in 2018.  That recognition will likely incite this reader and others to read her previous novels and other works.  This reader looks forward to that exploration. 

The Dutch House

By Ann Patchett

Published 2019

Read March 2020

Mr. and Mrs. Van Hoebech in 1922 built a unique house on 200 acres of farmland on the outskirts of Elkins Park, a suburb of Philadelphia , using their fortune made in wholesale distribution of cigarettes in WWI.  Over time their fortunes change and they slowly sell of acreage to pay debts and upkeep.  Mr. Van Hoebech dies in 1940; his wife passes in 1945.  The house and contents went back to the bank but Fluffy, the daughter of the cook and driver for the Van Hoebechs, continued living in the apartment over the garage, commissioned to watch over the house. 

Enter Cyril Conroy, a soldier in WWII who has lived peacefully with his wife and two small children in a small apartment on a nearby military base.  Cyril is beginning to make investments in real estate.  A deal gone really well allows him to buy the Dutch House, as it is always known, in 1946 and he moves his wife and children to the house.  They hire Fluffy to be a nanny and helper to Mrs. Conroy. 

We learn this background from our narrator and son of Cyril, Danny, who provides his family’s long story with this house. 

We learn that the Cyril bought the house without any input from his wife.  She finds the change from a small apartment on base to this large home complete with hired help disorienting.  The Conroy couple change nothing in the house, keeping in place all the furnishings and possessions left by the Van Hoebechs.  The only addition made is the portrait of daughter Maeve which is hung across the room from the portraits of Mr. and Mrs. Van Hoebech and was painted when she was about ten years old because the original subject, her mother, refused to sit for a portrait.

We learn that Danny and Maeve’s mother left them after about a year in the house, when Danny is three and Maeve is ten, and never returned.  The abandonment nearly literally kills Maeve who developed type-I diabetes and ends up in a coma.  Danny’s memories of his mother are sparse given his young age when his mother left. 

Cyril eventually marries Andrea who moves into the Dutch House with her two daughters.  In fairly short order, and with no obvious objection of Cyril (at least heard by Danny) Andrea effectively displaces Maeve, who has just started college, from the household.  When Cyril dies of a heart attack, Andrea sends Danny to live with his sister who has just graduated from college and has a small apartment funded by her new job. 

Danny’s narration tells how he and Maeve react to this predicament and over the years and decades live their lives.  Danny joins Maeve’s habit of regularly looking at the house from a vantage point across the street from the house in Maeve’s parked car.

The narration weaves back and forth in time slowly dispensing Danny and Maeve’s story pre- and post-Andrea.  Since the narration is only from Danny’s perspective that’s the only view on this history that we are allowed by the narrator. 

Their story is an interesting one.  Maeve wages war on Andrea by seeking to drain an education fund set up by Cyril—for Danny and Andrea’s two daughters but not Maeve.  All of Maeve’s feelings about this situation can’t be revealed to us but Patchett gives the reader a chance to ponder them—especially as Danny and one of the daughters attend Medical School, but Cyril provides for no further funds for education for Maeve.  We can only imagine he didn’t think it necessary as she already had more education than most young women her age. 

Danny can’t remember his mother, but he can readily describe his close relationship with Maeve who played a motherly role for Danny after their mother leaves.  Their relationship deepens after Danny is sent to live with her.  We also learn this relationship is tested when Danny and Maeve’s mother comes back into the scene. 

Since Danny’s mother left him at age three, he has limited ability to understand the motivation for that event.  This incomplete picture of the circumstances provides the reader an opportunity to consider why a mother would abandon her children and how the time period of the story could influence the situation. 

In contrast, Danny has a very special bond with his father for the few years they had together.  Cyril took Danny with him on Saturdays when he collected rent from his tenants.  Danny develops his desire to follow in his father’s footsteps from these times together.  Danny is aware that Maeve’s relationship with her father is much more limited and includes the stark direction “move on” during Maeve’s grave illness following her mother’s departure.

The descriptions Patchett provides of house known as The Dutch House through Danny give us a vivid sense of how extraordinary it was.  It’s then quite believable that Andrea could be very driven to live in that house which she occupies until her death.  It’s quite believable that Maeve and Danny could spend many hours looking at the house from across the street.  It evoked in this reader the memories of a special house in the reader’s own past and how strong the memory of the essence of that house remains to this day.  They say “home is where the heart is”.  For Danny and Maeve, that home was irreparably disrupted and The Dutch House describes their long journey dealing with their personal catastrophes.  Are they able to “move on” as Cyril instructed Maeve?   You will need to read The Dutch House to learn the answer. 

Asymmetry

By Lisa Halliday

Published 2018

Read Feb 2020

This book has received multiple accolades as a stunning first novel and so this reader began with some expectations.  The first section did not stun this reader.  Alice, a young, pretty assistant at a publishing house who is hoping to be a writer, meets a famous writer, Ezra, forty-some years her elder, and begins an affair with him.  For quite some time he keeps her hidden from others he knows and she accepts this.  She becomes his assistant in many ways—-picking up his various tonics and prescriptions for him as well as specific food stuffs he requires.  They watch baseball in bed together.  They talk about writing.  He goes to his summer home on Long Island without her, part of the keeping their relationship hidden.  Eventually he does allow her to come to that summer home where he enjoys watching her swim laps.  One reviewer commented that she could have enjoyed 200 more pages of this section.  This reader did not share her enjoyment of this story.  What was she getting out of this relationship?  What he was getting was far more obvious.  What would propel her to begin a life beyond him?  Not clear.  Why would she stay with someone who clearly went through young women with little intention of having any commitment to them.  He does eventually pay off her student loans and, of course, buys her expensive clothing.  These acts did little to enhance my view of the character nor change my disappointment that Alice stayed with him.

I learned through reviews that the male character is a thinly disguised Phillip Roth, with whom the author had a relationship with while in her 20’s.  This came as quite a surprise to me.  Why would an author write about a former lover like this?  Was this to be homage or an indictment?  The fact that Roth was still alive when the book was published was also puzzling, knowing that he would likely read it.  Was this to get some validation from him or to sting him? 

Certainly this reader’s views of this part of the book are not shared by several reviewers which may indicate something about this reader’s literary capacity or taste.  Perhaps it’s an age difference.  In the end, this reader is not enchanted by May/December romances that seem quite out of balance when the December man seems to be taking advantage of the situation and seems to show little respect or appreciation for the May woman aside from providing expensive clothes and some cash.

The good news is that the second section of the book was extremely engaging and displays laudable author talent.  The story centers on Amar, a person of interesting citizenship (born of Iraqi parents on a plane while in US airspace and while the family is traveling to the US to live).  Amar is passing through London on his way to Iraq to see his brother who stayed in Iraq when Amar was a teenager and the family was visiting family in Iraq. The brother never embraced being a resident in the US and decided to study and practice medicine in the country he considered his home.  Amar is planning to spend the evening in London with a friend, who is a foreign correspondent, while he waits for his flight the next day to get him close to Iraq.  Heathrow Airport security has “just a few more questions” for him and these few questions take many, many hours.  While Amar is waiting between various questioning sessions, his thoughts take us back to different periods in his life and give us unique insight into the way Amar sees himself given his interesting beginnings, his childhood, education, and work experiences.   

The third section was fairly short and comprised an interview of Ezra by the host of a long-running British show that includes discussing the interviewee’s favorite musical pieces.  Ezra throws out comments about his various young lovers and suggests that one of them has become a writer of sorts although he names neither the writer nor the piece.  Is he trying to help her or hurt her with this approach?  Readers are left to decide this for themselves.  But the reader can conclude that the Amar piece was written by Alice and likely published after their relationship had ended.

Interestingly, this reader was experiencing Assymetry as the controversy over white author Jeanine Cummin’s new novel, American Dirt, about a Mexican bookseller and mother who flees to the US from Acapulco to get out of sight of a drug cartel.  The controversy seemed to center on what “authorized” Cummin to write about a non-white character whose experience wasn’t hers?  So the biggest “asymmetry” in this novel for this reader is that the author offers us Alice’s story, which she is clearly “authorized” to tell as she knows it first hand, and as well gives us the Amar piece, which some could contend she is not “authorized” since she is not male and certainly doesn’t have this kind of history or dilemmas with which to content.  If the author had to write Alice’s story in order to bring the Amar piece to publication, this reader is glad she pursued that path.  This reader has not read American Dirt and cannot comment on its quality. But this reader does believe that authors should not be confined to write only about people like themselves.  This reader has read Asymmetry and hopes that Halliday will write more pieces of the quality of the Amar section and that she finds a publisher willing to allow her to publish it without needing to drape an Alice section in the book as well. 

The Testaments 

by Margaret Atwood  

Published 2019

Read Dec 2019

Although Atwood wrote The Testaments as a kind of sequel to the The Handmaid’s Tale to address a question from readers about what brought down the country of Gilead,  this book can be read without reading The Handmaids’ Tale.   

The structure of this book is interesting.  Individual chapters are either excerpts from The “Ardual Hall Holograph” or transcriptions of testimony from Witness 369A or from Witness 369B.  We eventually learn the identities of the writer and witnesses.  The “Ardual Hall Holograph” was written by Aunt Lydia, a character in the Handmaid’s Tale who we learn in this book was an architect of “the women’s sphere” of Gilead and its leader.  Witness 369A was Agnes Jemimah, an upper-class girl who grew up in Gilead and was the daughter of an important Commander.  Witness 369B was Daisy/Jade/Nicole, a young woman living in Canada who marches in anti-Gilead protests and watches new of its horrors on TV. 

In both this book and The Handmaid’s Tale, there is an appendix which is a set of excerpts from a symposium on Gileadeon Studies.  The symposium described in The Handmaid’s Tale is the 12^th Symposium on this topic and takes place at an International Historical Association Convention in 2195.  That symposium discusses the cassette tapes found in a footlocker that became the basis of The Handmaid’s Tale.  In this book, transcriptions of the 13^th Symposium, held in 2097, are provided.  The same keynote speaker discusses the new findings—Aunt Lydia’s papers and the transcriptions of the witnesses.  Atwood’s humor shows through in these appendices as the academics bemoan the poor dating information on the various materials uncovered and spend time considering what social events the symposium offers. 

While Atwood has indicated she started writing this book to answer questions from her audience about what brought down Gilead, she also uses this book to discuss how the structure and culture of Gilead evolved.   Aunt Lydia’s Holograph describes the breakdown of the government from her vantage point as a family court judge.  She quickly describes the scene prior to the collapse of the government:  floods, tornados, hurricanes, droughts, water shortages, earthquakes, decaying infrastructure, a tanking economy, joblessness, a falling birth rate. The implementation of martial law and suspension of the constitution apparently almost seemed reasonable as armor against Islamic terrorists.   She remarks “you don’t believe the sky is falling until a chunk of it falls on you”.  She provides her personal story from her arrest to her rise as the leader of the “women’s sphere”, telling us: “You take the first step, and to save yourself from the consequences, you take the next one.  In times like ours, there are only two directions:  up or plummet.”  She understands what she has done and why.  She understands why she has been able to stay alive and stay in power [for approximately 20 years] (Gilead has gone through several regime “clear-outs”).  We eventually understand she has over a long time developed a plan to bring down Gilead and are amazed by her patience and persistence.  Atwood has Aunt Lydia hide her manuscript in the cavity of Cardinal Newman’s Apologia ProVita Sua: A Defense of One’s Life,an actual book written by John Henry Newman in 1864 to defend his religions opinions which resulted in his leaving the Anglican Church and becoming Roman Catholic, and to defend himself from the attacks of his opposition, Charles Kingsley. 

The transcription of Agnes/Jemimah gives the reader insight on the structure and culture of Gilead.   She describes her earliest recollections (she was “chosen’ by her mother –she eventually understands this means she was one of the girls taken from their mothers), tells us about her primary school education in Gilead (approximately age 5 to about age 13) and her marriage preparation education where she learns how to behave as a Commander’s Wife. 

So Atwood uses this interesting structure to give us a look at the beginnings of Gilead and the culture and structure that have raised the first generation of girls born in Gilead (or shortly before it is formed).  Blended into this is an exciting story of how these characters come together and undertake actions that are intended to impact the future of Gilead. 

Atwood doesn’t provide a neat ending to the adventure tale.  Neither does she detail the history of Gilead between that adventure and the Symposia she references in the appendix.  However, and as usual, she writes this ‘speculative fiction” to provoke her readers to consider what might happen if….  She claims that she writes nothing that hasn’t already happened somewhere sometime….  Among the questions she leaves us are include: 1)   How does our country not lose its way and devolve into something like Gilead?  2)   Why is a reactive course in a time of substantial strife one of de-evolution of the rights of women and how do we insure against that?  3)  How would we behave if we were arrested and treated as Aunt Lydia was?  4) How do we know if we are heading towards a government breakdown?   We read Atwood to experience both her excellent writing and to be provoked into difficult questions.  This reader looks forward to more from this author. 

The Girls at 17 Swann Street

By Yara Zgheib

Published 2019

Read Feb 2020

This book is written in 91 short chapters which propel you forward through the story of Anna as she spends six weeks at 17 Swann Street, a residential eating disorders clinic.  Anna, a French ex-pat living in St Louis with her husband Matthius, checks into the residential eating disorders clinic at the urging of her husband after he realizes he can no longer ignore the path his wife behavior has taken and the threat to her life it poses.  They had met in Paris, where Anna had been a ballerina until an injury prevents her from dancing.  She and Matthius fell deeply in love and wed.  He leaves for a job in St Louis ahead of her and she accompanies him several months later. 

The plot arch focuses on the six weeks she spends at the clinic—meeting the other residents, getting through the meals that are difficult for all residents (included the dreaded bagel with cream cheese for breakfast), feeling guilty about her situation, and visits from Matthius.  She is told by other residents that she is lucky—she has a reason to leave—Matthius’s unwavering love for her.  Flashbacks provide some of Anna’s backstory and reveal several difficult situations in her past—an abusive boyfriend, deaths of her brother and mother, difficulties in her ballet career.  The author does not tie these issues directly to her current diagnosis of anorexia nor does Anna discuss them with her counselor. 

Although this reader was surprised that Anna’s state is assessed as improved several times through her stay, seemingly early, and she is released after only six weeks, the author does not suggest that she is fully healed and will certainly be successful in the out-patient program she enters.  Having a loving and committed spouse whom Anna clearly loves seems to be a driver for optimism and a reason to move her into an out-patient setting.  However, the author provides examples of other residents’ relapses, lengthy stays, and sometimes deadly failures. 

This is an interesting, engaging book that provides a look at this difficult disease and difficulties faced by sufferers and their families and friends. 

Olive Again!

By Elizabeth Strout

Published 2019

Read Nov 2019

This reader finds the title somewhat unfortunate as it suggested this should be read as a second installment about Olive Kitteridge.  However, this reader believes the thirteen stories in this volume allow a person unfamiliar with Olive Kitteridge or her neighbors and friends to participate fully in her world of Crosby during this period of her life.

Strout masterfully, thoughtfully, and empathetically creates a picture of Olive from shortly after the death her husband, Henry, of four plus  decades, through the next ten years—from about age 75 to 85.  Most of the other characters are also in this approximate age group or at least nearing retirement. 

The book opens with a story about Jack Kennison and so introduces us to this man who will eventually become Olive’s second husband.     We learn the circumstances leading to his move with (now deceased) wife Betsy to Crosby, Maine.  Jack was initially asked to take some time away from Harvard following an accusation of sexual harassment.  Jack acknowledges to us an affair with a younger faculty member and that he eventually voted against her tenure, along with other members of the department.  The school settles with the woman and Jack retires.  He and Betsy move to Crosby, Maine to be away from all of that.  We learn he and Betsy had married decades previously when both were on the rebound from failed relationships.  Their marriage wasn’t a classic “happy” one, although they had enjoyed many happy times.  He now misses Betsy deeply, even after he learns that she had carried on an affair with a former boyfriend for some period of time during their marriage.  We learn their only child, a now middle aged daughter, came out to them as a lesbian.  This revelation fractured the relationship between father and daughter although not apparently that of mother and daughter.  Jack is wrestling with all of this and then manages to get stopped for speeding, an incident that doesn’t go smoothly.

Thus in a matter of twenty-one pages that comprise the opening story, the stage is set for viewing scenes of people facing their past choices, both good and bad, for missing lost spouses regardless of the happiness of their time together, for regretting lost opportunities for better relationships with their spouse and with their children, for dealing with bodies that are losing capabilities, for having medical issues, and for trying to avoid loneliness as their world is changing in ways they can’t control.  The stories are sober, lovely, refreshing, and occasionally uplifting.

Olive misses Henry terribly and Jack misses Betsy similarly but sharing this grief openly is something that initially brings them together.  They are both wiser and more mature than when they married their long-term spouses so they are pleased and feel lucky that they can turn arguments into long useful discussions.  Jack can tell Olive he loves her for who she is but sometimes it would be helpful if she was a little less Olive with him.  Olive tells us she feels Henry was her first husband but Jack is her real husband.  Jack comments to us through the narrator that Olive has become less anxious after they’ve been married for a while and he is very happy about this.

After Jack dies Olive faces life alone again, this time in Jack’s house which no longer feels like theirs.  Now Strout explores more deeply the lives of single older people and the paths that they never thought they would need to take as their ability to “safely live” alone degrades.  Strout is remarkably articulate and sincere as she has Olive face issues such as “those foolish diapers for old people” and staying in independent living versus being sent “over the bridge” to the other part of the “retirement” facility. 

Strout’s pictures of Olive’s relationship with her son, Christopher, were remarkably vivid for this reader.  Christopher is now a successful podiatrist in New York City and lives there with his second wife, her two children from two previous relationships, and their own two children, the older of which is named Henry for his grandfather.  They have never been to Olive’s home before this story’s three day visit.  The first night, after the daughter-in-law and children have gone to bed, Chris and Olive sit and talk in Olive’s living room, or more accurately, Olive listens as Chris talks.  “Olive didn’t care what he talked about. … On and on he talked, her son.  Olive was tired but stifled a yawn.  She would stay here forever to hear this.  He could recite the alphabet to her and she would sit here and listen to it.”  But of course the high hopes Olive has for the visit, although she has no idea how to really prepare for the invasion of all these children into her house, aren’t met.  Chris takes poorly the news of Olive and Jack’s impending marriage   Olive realizes her family isn’t like others—those where children come to visit with their children and everyone laughs and is happy.  She now thinks about their time, Henry, Olive and Chris, in the house Henry and Olive had built and that is now torn down for a new build, “never , ever realizing that she herself had been raising a motherless child, now a long, long way from home.” 

Some stories bring in characters from other Strout books.  She provides a story in which Jim Burgess and wife Helen, long-term residents of New York City, visit Jim’s brother, Bob, and his second wife who live in Crosby.  The Burgess Boys brothers visit their sister, Susan in nearby Shirley Falls.  Olive becomes friends with Isabelle from Isabelle and Amy.  No familiarity with either book is required to appreciate these stories (this reader can accurate attest to this as she has not read Isabelle and Amy) and their relevant themes.  Strout is very gifted in her ability to create characters “on the spot” in short stories and later pick them up and continue their story elsewhere, requiring nothing from the reader except their interest in engaging with them. 

Olive isn’t a central character or even a peripheral one in all the stories.  “The End of Civil War Days”, in eleven pages, dives into the lives of an estranged couple still living together thirty-five years after Fergus’s affair (because “back then there was no forgiveness and no divorce”).  An annual visit from their older daughter from New York City throws their lives into turmoil as they try to understand her chosen profession.  “Cleaning” is about a high-school aged girl living in an apartment with her depressed and emotionally distant widowed mother.  Shortly before his death, her father had confided that she had been his favorite child while her sister was her mother’s favorite child.  The girl cleans houses for several Crosby residents and we learn about her relationships with her clients.  Strout gives us an interesting story of someone who just wants to be seen and valued by someone. 

The photo associated with this blog was chosen because Olive reflects on her life several times in this volume.  She considers her behaviors with husband Henry, son Chris, and husband Jack.  She sometimes understands herself or her motivations but often she doesn’t.  Strout doesn’t tie up loose ends for the reader nor answers for us the questions Olive asks about herself. 

When Strout was asked in an interview whether Olive might reappear again, for instance in a book about becoming Olive, Strout indicated she didn’t think so, but she couldn’t fully know that.  This reader is content with this being the last book about Olive but this reader will also continue reading Strout’s work and hopes it will continue in this form—somewhat connected and extremely rich stories that provide scenes in people’s lives that shed light on universal topics and  themes we don’t always expect to explore but are glad when we do. 

Hum if You Don’t Know the Words

By Bianca Marais

Published 2017

Read Dec 2019

 June 16, 1976, Robin is a white nine-year old girl living in Boksburg, Johannesburg, South Africa  with her parents and her imaginary twin sister.  Her parents are killed that evening while (black) maid Mabel babysits.  Police come to her home and take her and Mabel to the police station.  Mabel is questioned by the police and leaves abruptly.  Aunt Edith, her mother’s sister, picks her up from the police station.  Both Robin and Edith’s lives are thrown into turmoil as they try to deal with the loss of Robin’s parents and how Edith, an international flight attendant with no intentions of being a parent, will care for her niece.

On June 14, 1976 Beauty Mbali, an educated black woman living in rural Transkei, South Africa (an area later set aside by South Africa as a homeland for Xhosa-speaking people, recognized as an independent country by South Africa then reabsorbed into South Africa), receives word from her brother that Beauty’s daughter, who is living with him in Soweto, Johannesburg, South Africa while going to high school, is in trouble.  Beauty leaves her two sons at home to search for her daughter.  On June 16, 1976, between 10,000 and 20,000 black students protest a recent decree requiring Afrikaans, versus their indigenous language, be the language used for teaching.  Beauty learns her daughter is a leader from her school in this uprising.  Her life is turned upside down as she seeks a means to find her daughter and take her home.

Through Marias’ novel the reader become acquainted with a number of apartheid laws under which black live during this period.  Among them, the requirement that blacks carry passbooks, that they must have clearance to be in an area outside their home district, and that is illegal for a black person to sleep in a white person’s home.    Robin has been raised with other aspects of this culture including the requirement that Mabel use only a designated toilet and that whites don’t eat or drink from dishes used by blacks. 

The stories of their days just before the uprising through approximately a year later are told through chapters told by either Robin or Beauty.  The author’s rendering of each character’s voice is convincing.

Of course these two characters are brought together to partly mitigate the turmoil in their lives.  Beauty is hired to care for Robin (also not quite legal as she can only be a maid, not a caregiver, and certainly not one that sleeps in their apartment) while Aunt Edith is doing her job for the airline.  Beauty gets a passbook and a stamp allowing her to be in Aunt Edith’s district and to travel to and from her home for visits.  An organization supporting the demise of apartheid is a key component enabling this situation.   The novel gives some perspective of the risks the organization’s member assume to press their beliefs of injustice of the system. 

A few other characters, friends and neighbors of Aunt Edith, are needed for the story as they fill gaps for Robin’s care when neither Beauty nor Aunt Edit is available.  The author uses this opportunity to inform the reader of the laws against homosexuality and that anti-Semitism is rampant.  Robin is, of course, confused by these prejudices as the Goldmans and Victor and his friends seem completely normal and unworthy of any contempt by anyone.  Again, Robin’s nine year-old voice is believable and can conveniently provide some teaching.

The story has a good amount of suspense as Beauty pursues many avenues to find her daughter.    Robin gets in the investigative act as well since she’s enamored by a detective series she reads and can effectively plot with the Goldman boy to provide her cover.  It is interesting that Robin is allowed to walk home from school and take care of herself until dinner-time, sometimes, when Beauty can’t be there while she’s following a thread that might lead her to her daughter.  The complete helicopter parent routine of our current culture hadn’t fully invaded Robin’s neighborhood yet. 

Beauty wonders “what quality of freedom be if it is won with blood.”  She worries that violent uprising will poison its participants, eliminating their ability to do the difficult post-revolution work in a peaceful manner.  She has a point. 

The book is engaging.  It gives the reader an opportunity to learn more about this period in South African history and provides some very useful perspective regarding the apartheid-era in South Africa.  While we would like to think that the United States “got past” these kinds of irrational and abusive laws and customs through our own brutal Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement, it does give readers pause as to whether or not that is truly the case.   Similarly it’s not clear neither the United States nor any other political entity has evolved beyond the use of force to win its battles for what it sees as “right”.

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous:  A Novel

By Ocean Vuong

Published 2019

Read Dec 2019

Vuong uses, as the structure for his novel,  a long letter from the narrator to his mother when he is 28, after the narrator has graduated from college and progressed beyond his origins.  He starts with a series of incidents indicating that his mother routinely used corporal punishment.  In the first chapter he implies his mother suffered from PTSD and this was a partial driver for her hitting him.  In this first chapter he agrees with his mother that she is not a monster, but also says this is a lie.  He then  explains that a monster “is not such a terrible thing to be.”  “A monster is “to be a hybrid signal, a lighthouse; both a shelter and warning at once.”  He ends the chapter with a message to his mother that he is a monster too “which is why I can’t turn away from you.  Which is why I have taken god’s loneliest creation and put you inside it. “

The narrator doesn’t tell us then why he is a monster but this reader assumed we would learn he is gay.  How that makes him a shelter and a warning at once is not so clear then nor frankly, for this reader, later.  Vuong’s language is certainly sometimes gorgeous.  “But the work [on a tobacco farm near Hartford, CT} somehow sutured a fracture inside me.  A work of unbreakable links and collaboration, each plant cut, picked, lifted, and carried from one container to another in such timely harmony that no stalk of tobacco, once taken from the soil, ever touches ground again.  A work of myriad communications, I learned to speak to the men not with my tongue, which was useless there, but with smiles, hand gestures, even silences, hesitations.”  His detailed and vivid language can only come from personal experience.  We believe what he says.  Unfortunately, this will eventually include his explicit descriptions of gay sex. 

This book is difficult to read.  Partly because of the explicit scenes of violence of mother upon son, of mother and son trying to calm schizophrenic grandma, of gay sex, and more. But also because the author invokes a style, for which this reader does not know the name, but has been encountered when reading heralded authors like Flannery O’Conner and Virginia Wolf.   It’s just plain hard to figure out what is going on at times.  

So this reader will attempt to list what might make the various characters briefly gorgeous.  The narrator’s grandmother as a young Vietnamese girl during the Vietnam War flees from her arranged marriage and is turned away from her mother’s house.  As a result, becomes pregnant by an unknown American soldier when she is earning her living on her back.  She meets a nice American soldier who is not a customer.  They fall in love, marry, and he accepts the boy as his own.  Unfortunately they become separated during the withdrawal of Americans from Vietnam.  But the couple is briefly gorgeous in their happiness and love.  The narrator’s mother, a struggling single mother, now in Hartford, CT, drags the young narrator and her mother through the streets late at night, trying s to find the right foodstuffs to make a traditional holiday meal.  Although she fails, the narrator understands the beauty of her desire.  Trevor, the narrator’s first love, is the most beautiful being the narrator can imagine during their summers of love.  Trevor doesn’t accept that his actions suggest he too is gay, but his response to their first “real fuck” (author’s language) show the narrator that he really must love him.  The narrator sees many gorgeous things and recounts them to us, in particular the beauty of the monarch butterflies and the triumph that is Tiger Woods, another many mixed-race young man who is deemed black by others and, so, his family.

This is certainly a book this reader wouldn’t choose to finish, but one this reader anticipates will become more gorgeous after the book discussion for which it is scheduled.  Thanks be to book discussions to drive us to expand our reading horizon.