Category: Modern Fiction

Black Water

By Joyce Carol Oates

Published 1992

Read Sept 2017

I chose this book for a book discussion group with the assignment “any book with a food in the title”.  “Water” may be a stretch but I was also interested in reading a Joyce Carol Oates book.

I knew from the book cover that this would be at least somewhat about the Chappaquiddick incident of 1969 in which Senator Ted Kennedy drove into a channel.  He survived, but his passenger, 28 year old Mary Jo Kopechne didn’t.

Oates has indicated to interviewers that the book is not about that incident.  She’s correct.  The incident in Oates’ book occurs in 1989; the actual incident occurred in 1969. The Senator in this book is in his 50’s and about 25 years older than Kelly; Kennedy was 37 at the time of the incident and only 9 years Mary Jo’s senior. The party in this book was off the coast of Maine and The Senator and Kelly were trying to make a ferry to the mainland.   The actual incident occurred on a bridge connecting a small island to the larger island of Martha ’s Vineyard.  The party in this book was hosted by a college friend of Kelly and The Senator stopped by, a welcomed but not fully anticipated guest; Kennedy hosted the party in the actual incident. In this book, Kelly packed to leave the party with The Senator and said goodbye to her hostess.  Mary Jo Kopechne did not pack and even left her hotel key behind.   In this book, Kelly’s prior connection with The Senator was her college senior thesis; Mary Jo Kopechne had worked on Bobby Kennedy’s 1968 presidential election along with the other 5 girls at the party.  In this book, The Senator had been at the 1988 Democratic party convention and had turned down Michael Dukakis’ offer of the vice-presidential candidacy and had overtly decided not to pursue a run at the presidency himself because “he’d understood, as Dukakis had not, that the Democrats’ best efforts in that election year were doomed.”  Kennedy actually did pursue his party’s nomination for presidential candidate in 1980 but lost to Jimmy Carter.  The Senator goes back to the party after the incident in this book to consult the host regarding best next steps; Ted Kennedy did not interact with anyone until the next day.

So it’s not the same incident but Oates was evidentially influenced by it.

She chooses to tell this story primarily from the perspective of Kelly.  Kelly’s backstory is revealed including her feelings of inadequacy following a breakup with her boyfriend and the devastation she felt after Dukakis (for whose campaign she worked) loses the presidential race.  She’s not financially, professionally, or personally where she thought she would be by this age.  She’s trying to break free of expectations of her parents and not live the life they would have preferred but is not consistent with her desire to be a successful, independent, sophisticated woman with substantial and noble views on important topics.  She meets The Senator, an older, very powerful, very successful politician whom she has admired to the point of writing a 90 page paper about him.  She is so compelled by his attention to her  and his physical advances toward her that she accepts his invitation to leave the island and go to the mainland with him. She is aware of what she’s doing, although she continuously fortifies herself that she’s making the right decision to leave with him .

Oates paints The Senator as an older, powerful man, separated from his family and always ready to explore short-term relationships with adoring younger women. We learn some of The Senator’s perspective, in particular after he has escaped the submerged vehicle which involved pushing against Kelly to free himself from the wreckage and move towards the surface.   His most immediate thoughts are focused on the impact of the event on his career and how the press and law will treat him inappropriately.

The story is told quickly in only 154 pages. The 32 chapters vary in length from a mere paragraph to multiple pages.  The scene changes repeatedly between the party, the drive, and spends much time with Kelly’s thoughts and actions while she’s trying to keep herself alive in the submerged car.  There is a sense of a Greek chorus that is chanting the oft repeated phrase:  “As the black water filled her lungs, and she died.”

What does this book accomplish? Why did she write it?  Oates dedicates the book:  “for the Kellys—“.   My take is that Oates has several intentions—1)  keep alive the memory of the actual incident —it occurred almost 50 years ago now and risks fading from general memory; 2) cause us to wonder about the fact that the senator remained a senator despite this incident; 3) cause us to think about the continuing situation of an older, powerful man and his pursuit of a young woman—the fragility of self-perception and the impact of sexual advances of someone with power who knows they have that power.

Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

By Anne Tyler

Published 1982

Read September 2017

I selected this book for a book discussion with the assignment “any book with food in the title”.  I struggled finding one and settled on something I hope close enough—you eat food in a restaurant….  I also selected this book because I read two of her novels in the distant past and thought this would be a great time to revisit this author.

As with most of Tyler’s work this book focuses on a particular family and relationships within it.  The reader is first introduced to Pearl Tull as she is dying with son, Ezra, at her side.   The reader learns that Pearl was surprised she wanted “extra children” after she had her first son, Cody, late in life (in 1931).  She was married (to the surprise of many including herself) at age 30 to Beck Tull, age 24 and a travelling salesman.  Pearl and Buck had three children and moved frequently from town to town as Beck had “invites” to new sales territories for the Tanner Corporation.  “One Sunday night in 1944, he said he didn’t want to stay married.  They were sending him to Norfolk, he said; but he thought it best if he went alone. ….”We’ll sleep on it,” she told him.    But he said, “It’s tonight I’m going.” And he was gone.  We learn that Pearl stays in the rented row house in Baltimore with the three children, Cody (14), Ezra (11) and Jenny (9).   She never tells them their father has left (he travelled frequently for weeks at a time) and they never asked her about him even after they realize he’s been gone for a very long time and may not return.  She takes a job as a cashier to provide for them as Beck sends only a small amount of money monthly.   Chapter 1 gives a short glimpse of Pearl’s perspective on their family and life and ends as she “was borne away to the beach, where three small children ran toward her, laughing, across the sunlit sand.”  Chapters 2-9 explore the three children and their perspectives on events in their lives and on their fellow family members.  Pearl’s voice shows up during these chapters as well.  The final chapter draws us back to Pearl’s death, the gathering of Cody and Jenny and their families from their homes back to Baltimore, and Ezra’s attempt to have a family dinner after the funeral.

Tyler told an interviewer that her work is all about the characters; plot is secondary.  That approach is evident here.  The first and last chapters serve as bookends to the exploration of mother Pearl and her children Cody, Ezra, and Jenny.  The family has little interaction with others.  Pearl and Buck moved frequently and friendships were never pursued.  Pearl focused on making the rental safe, secure, and extremely orderly. (Note “homey” is not part of the description).  Stair repair, gutter cleaning, clean clothing neatly arranged in the cardboard dressers and closets—that was her focus.  This focus doesn’t change after she takes a job where she serves the public daily but never engages with it.  Interestingly, oldest son Cody, who is extremely focused on “beating” favorite son, Ezra, becomes an efficiency engineer who travels the country bringing order and efficiency to various companies’ operations sites.  His continuous travel makes it easy for him to avoid building friendships with others but he is adamant that his wife and son always travel with him as he goes site to site.  Jenny, the youngest child, becomes a successful pediatrician who is too busy to interact with those outside the family. She has severe challenges developing meaningful relationships with any of her family including mother, siblings, husbands, and her own children. Ezra, who Pearl acknowledges is her favorite, is the only child to stay in Baltimore, and in fact remains in the row house with his mother and cares for her as she loses sight and health.  He does develop external relationships, becoming like a second son to the owner of the restaurant at which he begins working in high school. He visits her in a very devoted manner while she slowly dies and even develops a relationship with a foreign family who visits their dying family member in the same facility.  Despite his mother’s plans for him to be a teacher, he eventually becomes partner in and then owner of the restaurant.  As it becomes soley his, he fervently evolves its nature in a somewhat chaotic manner to a format focused on cooking “what people felt homesick for”.   He alone pursues a relationship with and among his family by repeatedly trying to provide a family dinner that brings the family together for a whole meal.

I appreciate the book’s deep appreciation for the remarkable but not uncommon outcome that children experience vastly different childhoods while living with the same family members, under the same roof, eating the same food, and attending the same family outings.  I appreciate that the book presents four complex characters for whom you feel empathy even while you can’t understand them.  They are characters not caricatures.  They are not simple and they are not grotesque.  They are real people.  Pearl and each of her children “make it” in that they are financially self-sufficient, have respectable occupations, and are not obviously outside the mainstream of society.  But all face significant challenges in figuring out how to deal with situations they can’t control, how to deal with family they don’t understand and how to interact with the greater society with which they feel limited connection and with which they have limited understanding.    The author doesn’t tell us why this is so; she leaves us to consider that for ourselves.  Thus I recommend this as a straightforward, unassuming read that packs a whallop.

The Heart Goes Last

By Margaret Atwood

Published 2015

Read 6/20/2017

This speculative fiction offering from Margaret Atwood was more difficult for me to stay with compared with other books she’s written.  The premise wasn’t the troubling part.  Stan and Charmaine lose their jobs (like pretty much everyone else) as the economy of the US shifts to the west coast and the economy and society collapse generally.  They are reduced to living in their car and are constantly worried about being robbed, raped, and killed by roving gangs.  This is a scenario that doesn’t seem unrealistic or surprising, unfortunately.  They learn about the Positron Project and quite readily sign on board.  They are in a cycle whereby they spend one month working in the town of Consilience and living in a nice townhouse.  The next month they spend in prison, working in jobs there while living separated by gender, but safe.   Then they cycle back to their townhouse and “town” jobs.   The couple settles into this situation for a while and generally feels safe and satisfied.  Premise established; not what?

Charmaine finds herself in a sexual affair with the man who occupies their house during Stan and Charmaine’s prison month and then Stan starts his own sexual fantasies about the woman who shares their house.   The book then follows the various twists and turns of their situation and a number of unsavory and twisted people they encounter along including characters who have been subjected to some of the experiments of the bad-guy owners of the Positron Project.  The plot feels forced (“what am I going to do with these bland, boring characters”) and is very heavily focused on various sexual fantasies and actions happening around the couple.

I made it to the end of the novel and was mildly pleased with how Stan and Charmaine are treated in the end.  Some reviewers describe the book as a dark madcap comedy.  Although I have regularly felt Atwood’s dark humor in her other books, this one was disappointing and I just wanted it to be over.   I would, however, strongly recommend Atwood’s “The Year of the Flood” for a better example of her brilliance in taking the reader for a look at the possible not too distant future and keeping the reader willingly thinking and reading until the very end.

One True Thing

By Anna Quindlen

Published 1994

Ellen Gulden is 24 and a Harvard graduate employed by a magazine in New York City when, during a visit home to see her brothers before they left for their next years in college, her father informs her that her mother has advanced cancer and will need her.  Ellen resists and suggests they hire a nurse.  But she leaves her NYC life behind and comes home to care for her mother.  She tells us this is not because she loves her mother, but because she felt she had no choice.  Kate Gulden was the mother who made everything from scratch, was on a first name basis with the hardware store employees, was on many community committees, and always designed and executed the best decorations for her assigned tree in the town square.  Kate Gulden’s life as wife of English Professor George Gulden of Langhorne College, a small liberal arts school in the small town of Langhorne, was one Ellen knew would never be hers.  But she agrees reluctantly to take care of Kate Gulden, in large part because it was another case of trying to achieve something her father demanded.

Quindlen tells the story of the months Ellen spends with her mother as the cancer slowly destroys her body, but not her spirit.  The descriptions of cancer’s impact are quite vivid although not in a way that causes recoil but rather draws you closer to Kate Gulden, her daughter, and all who suffer from cancer and all who take care of cancer victims.  The hospice nurse is carefully drawn and the compassion she brings to Kate, and indirectly Ellen, is clear whether or not Ellen can accept it.

Also during this period, Ellen learns much about and from her mother.  In the early stage of the caregiving, Ellen has “the childhood I might have had, had I been a different sort of girl, my mother a different sort of woman, and both our needs to woo my father less overwhelming”.   They start the Gulden Girls Book and Cook Club with only two members—mother and daughter.  They read Pride and Prejudice, Great Expectations, and Anna Karenina, all books Ellen has, of course, read.  Ellen learns eventually her mother had already read them too.

Eventually the disease begins to take a huge toll on Kate including losing strength so that Ellen needs to help her with more and more movements and activities.  The relationship between Kate and Ellen starts to shift more towards Kate as the child needing care and Ellen as the mother to provide it.  Pain becomes an overwhelming aspect of Kate’s life and her need for and use of morphine increases.

During this time Ellen’s relationship with her father also takes a shift and she becomes less all-adoring and more critical of him.  The biggest shift, however, occurs after her mother passes and it is determined that Kate’s death was due to a bolus of morphine well above and beyond what her morphine dispenser would allow.  Ellen is arrested for murder of her mother, although she hadn’t given her the overdose, and her father doesn’t even post bail for her.

The second half of the book deals with Ellen’s life immediately after Kate’s death and how it is impacted by the murder investigation and court proceedings.  I won’t spoil your reading by detailing how this goes.   There is some discussion about the ethics of supporting and/or hastening the end of life in this kind of case but fortunately the author doesn’t peach a line on this.

One review of this book suggests the epilogue makes the ending too tidy.  I somewhat agree with this view for the reason given—the author knows life, especially family relationships, grief, and loss, is untidy so a tidy ending is somewhat inconsistent with the rest of the book.

I very much appreciated the intelligent language of the book, its exploration of care giving and receiving care for such as devastating disease, and it exploration of the untidy nature of mother-daughter, father-daughter, mother-father, and mother-daughter-father relationships and how none of these relationships are static over time whether we want them to be or not. These aspects will enable the book to remain relevant for many decades (it’s already 23 years since publication).  Only one scene would definitely be different if occurring in the day of cell phones vs telephone land lines but by clearly stating the story occurs in 1985, this isn’t an issue.    I put this book on my “recommendation to others” list although not immediately for others whose life situation involves cancer and/or recent loss as a result of cancer.

In This Grave Hour

By Jacqueline Winspear

Published 2017

Read May 10, 2017

I discovered Maisie Dobbs, Jacqueline Winspear’s “psychologist and investigator” a few years ago when I read Pardonable Lies, the third in a series of historical fiction/mysteries.  I’ve now read all thirteen books published to date (starting in 2003) in this series and look forward to more.

If you have encountered and viewed multiple seasons of BBC’s Foyle’s War, you will likely find this series of interest.  The Maisie Dobbs series is set in England and starts in 1929, some years after Maisie returns from serving as a nurse in WWI.  In This Grave Hour starts on Sunday September 3^rd, 1939 as Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain tells the nation Britain has declared war on Germany.  Each book has an interesting mystery for Massie and her employee, Billy, to solve, often with a range of encounters with Scotland Yard, and occasionally other British agencies or their counterparts in other countries.  Of equal importance to each book and, I anticipate, a draw for her fans, is a description of the setting of the story—Britain dealing with the aftermath of WWI and eventually entering another war.

The continuing story of Maisie’s life is important to her approach to her work and the particular mystery at hand, but its telling is not a focal point of any of the books.  In fact, several years of her life including important events of marriage and loss of her husband and a pregnancy are handled in a few pages of a prologue of one of the books.  What Winspear does provide voice to are Maisie’s doubts and fears as she struggles to overcome the demons haunting her as a result of experiences in WWI and personal loss it imposes and the later losses of husband and child.  Maisie is painted as a strong and independent woman but one with much depth and many dimensions.

It’s not important to read the books in any particular order.  Winspear brings you up to appropriate speed quickly and clearly.  In various ways we are reminded briefly that Maisie Dobbs was born to a family in service and enters service herself when her mother dies.  Lady Rowan Compton learns that Maisie reads in the manor’s library late at night after her work is done and the house is quiet.  She decides to send Massie to university and engages  Dr Maurice Blanche, a family friend and neighbor to be a mentor to Maisie.  Maisie’s education is interrupted by World War I when she enlists as a nurse.  After the war, she apprentices with Maurice, an investigator with strong connections to Scotland Yard.   Lady Rowan provides Maisie some support while she gets her own business going Maisie remains close to her father who still supports Lady Rowan’s estate and to her school friend Priscilla, who is married to a wealthy WWI veteran who suffers with some war wounds.   This part of the back story provides us a vector to view the interaction of the “upstairs” and “downstairs” and corresponding changes induced by the progression of British society.

In summary, each Maisie Dobbs novel stands alone well as an interesting mystery with strong historical fiction attributes.  As a series they tell the story both of Maisie Dobbs and, of equal interest,  of Britain as it moves from post-WWI into yet another war that threatens country,  it people,  and its culture.

The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout

Published 2013

Read 4/2/2017

This book followed Strout’s Pulitzer Prize winning book of connected short stories, Olive Kitteridge and preceded her novel  My Name is Lucy Barton.  Strout returned to novel form for this book and sets the story between Shirley Falls, Maine and New York City.

In this book Strout opens with a prologue in which a woman and her mother talk about people from her hometown, where the mother still resides.  Both women are widowed, the younger one losing her husband the year after her kids left for college.  Their discussion sets up the characters of the novel.  1) Jim Burgess is a  lawyer made famous by his successful defense of a well-known singer accused of paying to have his wife killed, a case followed by the nation.  After the trial, Jim and his Connecticut born wife leave Hartford and Jim does not pursue a political career as expected but rather moves to New York City to work for an expensive law firm and defend white collar criminal cases. 2)  Bob Burgess is Jim’s younger brother, who accidentally killed his father when he was four.  Bob lives in Jim’s shadow in New York City, also as a lawyer.  He is currently divorced from his wife, Pam.  3) Susan Burgess Olsen is  Bob’s twin.  She is the only Burgess who stayed in Shirley Falls.  She  was left by her husband seven years ago when he moved to Sweden .  Susan lives with her 19 year old son, Zach, and an elderly renter.   Zach pulls a prank that lands Shirley falls on the national news.  This problem pulls Jim and Bob back to Shirley Falls.  The woman in the prologue, a writer, decides to write their story.

The conversations between the woman and her mother and their relationship (small town girl moves to NYC and marries someone not well accepted by her family leading to an estrangement that lasts many years) are clearly of interest to Strout.  Strout explores a similar, although not identical, scenario and expands on it in her next novel, My Name is Lucy Barton.

The Burgess Boys covers a lot of ground with themes ranging from trying to leave an unhappy past by moving away, the bond of siblings being strong but relationships not easy, abandonment by a spouse and resulting impact on the spouse and children left behind, PTSD (although not verbalized this way) resulting from a childhood tragedy, guilt associated with secrets kept for decades, feeling “I am living the wrong life”, sexual harassment, and the stresses of children leaving home, among others.  These human themes are considered while the story is told of the prank Susan’s son Zach plays at a Somali mosque which escalates into a civil rights case and potentially a federal hate crime case, thus providing additional themes of small towns dealing with immigrants of a substantially different culture, politicizing of crimes and the impact of this on small town police, prosecutors, and the communities within the small town.

Strout works to tell a number of story lines simultaneously.  In Olive Kitteridge, the separateness of the related short story chapters allowed her to do this very successfully.  In this book, the switches are more jarring at times for this reader.  Strout is very good at peering into real human relationships.  A wonderful quote near the end of the novel:   “You have a family”, Bob said.  “You have a wife who hates you, kids who are furious with you.  A brother and sister who make you insane.  And a nephew who used to be kind of a drip but apparently is not so much of a drip now.  That’s called family.”  Zach’s prank and resulting turmoil in the town for many parts of the community reminds us that while we work at living our lives and dealing with our personal issues there is also a broader set of issues and conflicts in the world that are actually not far from our doorstep.   That is jarring too— so maybe Strout has actually hit a tone that reflects the reality in which we live our lives.

A Calculated Life

By Anne Charnock

Published 2013

Read 3/12/2017

I’m not sure when I bought this book for my Kindle, but likely shortly after I got it in 2014.  I certainly don’t remember why I bought it, but likely it showed up on the screen and I was compelled for some good reasons to purchase it.  Fortunately I bought this book before I reigned in the tendency to purchase ebooks in such a manner.  Much more importantly, however, it’s fortunate that 47North, a publishing arm of Amazon, saw this book after it had first been self-published as an e-book and then as a paperback and decided that much more of the reading population ought to get to read it than might find it otherwise.

I started reading this book without knowing anything about it or its author.  I actually really like starting books under these circumstances although to increase the probability of it being a useful journey I generally reserve this approach for recommendations from reliable sources, specifically a few friends with whom I spend many hours discussing books.   Although this book didn’t come from one of my reliable sources, I heartily endorse it for others.

My experience with this book was not dissimilar from my experience with “Never Let Me Go” by Kazuo Ishiguro.   In each case, you are introduced to a character doing what seems to be a usual type of job living a usual nondescript life.  In both cases the novel slowly unwinds a different reality.  In this book the job is to find relationships between things so predictive algorithms can be developed.  We slowly learn the algorithms aren’t just about predicting trends in financial market but also such events as violent acts and very unexpected measurable variables such as wind speed.  The goal is to develop predictive algorithms of value to someone or some organization that will purchase it, although how they exploit it is apparently not of great concern to the employer and certainly not the to the analyst.  The person doing the job isn’t actually a human being but rather a “stimulator” created, programmed, and made available via contract to her employer by the Constructor.  Jayna is a version which has benefited from learnings from earlier versions, some of which are still functioning in different roles under contract to various employers.

In each case, the world around the characters is a not inconceivable and doesn’t even seem terribly distant in time from our own.  This characteristic is what, for me, separates “speculative fiction” from “fantasy/science fiction”.  Margaret Atwood has spun a number of terrifically well-written novels in this genre and Anne Charnock is certainly committed to playing in this territory and does it very nicely with this offering.

The plane that both Ishiguro routinely visits and Charnock’s “A Calculated Life” is now on is the one in which the primary questions being addressed are “what does it mean to be x” and “what role does memory play in our being x” (x=human or otherwise).    Not surprisingly, perhaps, these authors help us realize answers to these questions are ones they don’t claim to own and ones that will keep us reading great literature as we continue to consider them.  Like “Never Let Me Go”, in “A Calculated Life” the plot evolves slowly.  Some readers have found this trying.  I think it’s a helpful attribute because the questions being poised are profound and require slow careful consideration which is supported by the slow speed of the novels.

I will not further compare and contrast these books as they do take different trajectories with their characters and plots and to say more there will further spoil it for readers.  Take the dive yourself and consider “what does it mean to be x” (human or otherwise).