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Atwood’s Madd Addam Trilogy

The Madd Addam Trilogy

By Margaret Atwood

Oryx and Crake:  Published 2003; Read 2011 and Oct 2017

The Year of the Flood:  Published 2009; Read 2011; partly re-read Oct 2017

Madd Addam:  Published 2013; Read 2013; partly re-read Oct 2017

By Margaret Atwood

Caution:  in discussing my experiences with these book there will be spoilers.

Margaret Atwood is a remarkable writer who wove an interesting tale across this trilogy.  I haven’t been able to find out if she planned to write all three books or even the second book but they work together very well.  Her interest in the impact of technology on society and the planet are prominent themes here.  She describes her work as “speculative fiction” and indicates accurately that much of the technology she includes isn’t made up—it’s already in laboratories.  The question she explores is “where will this technology lead society if we don’t think about how we’re using it or about to use it”.  This isn’t her first (or last!) set of books about the breakdown of society and the rise of secure Compounds where the “haves” live and work (here generally focused on using biological technologies in new ways for profit) and the wild, dangerous Pleeblands where the rest of humanity lives and works.    In this set of books she also explores the theme of the role of spirituality and religious practice in our lives.  As expected from Atwood, she shows the dark side of religion-for-profit.  She also explores the ability of religious practices (note she differentiates this from religious beliefs) to provide a framework for guiding people through crisis.  She also explores if the propensity for developing religious practice is an essential aspect of the human DNA and can’t be eliminated without eliminating humanness itself.

All three books use a structure a mix of action forward in the present and discussion of the history of the characters provided either through action/dialog or story-telling by a character to him/herself or another.

Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood cover similar time periods.  Each book opens in the same “present”–shortly after The Waterless Flood, a world-wide disaster of unknown origin to the reader initially.  In each book, a survivor (Jimmy in Oryx and Crake) or survivors (Toby and Ren in The Year of the Flood) tell the reader how they are dealing with their circumstances following the apocalyptic pandemic.  None of them are certain that there are any other (human) survivors.  Jimmy is fully aware of other survivors—the “Craker children” which were created by Crake and with whom he shares an interesting relationship which is developed over the course of the book. The “present action” aspect of each book progresses the characters in this post-apocalyptic time to the same ending scene, whereby Jimmy, Toby, Ren, and others come together in the same place and time.  Both books end with no clarity of what will happen next in this encounter or thereafter.

In Oryx and Crake, the primary character with whom the reader interacts is Jimmy.  As Jimmy is dealing with the hostility of his current situation, he recalls his childhood and adolescence as son of scientists employed in a Compound.  He meets Glenn while in high school in the Compound and who also is a product of a broken marriage, poor parenting, and the impacts of our current culture if it proceeds to coarsen unchecked.  That is, they spend much of their time taking drugs, getting drunk, watching pornography and playing violent video games.  They also share an interest in complex games and discover a web-based game, Extinctathon, run by MaddAddamm; Glenn takes “Crake” as his game name.   Following graduation, brilliant Glenn goes to the well-funded Watson-Crick Institute and “word-guy” Jimmy goes to the run-down Martha Graham liberal arts school.  Jimmy recalls his days at college and post-college which involve a continued amount of drugs, drinking, pornography, and sexual conquests.     I frankly had some difficulty staying with the book, hearing about Jimmy’s “interests”, his lack of desire to do anything productive with his life, and the general terrible state of society.  However, once Crake contacts Jimmy to join his well-funded project, over which he has sole control, at a company in a Compound, I became much more engaged with the book as it began to reveal what had happened.  Crake’s life work is taking a different path than intended by the for-profit company for which he works.  While the plan of his company and their competition at other Compounds is to take to a whole new level  genetic modification, gene splicing, and development of new species (like the Pigoons)—tailor made babies,  Crake is inventing a new species that will replace the current human species.  Crake also recruited Oryx, a girl Jimmy and Crake had first encountered as a child in a porn show on the web and for whom Jimmy has carried a life-long crush, to teach the Craker Children what they need to know.  My recent re-reading of this book, prompted by an upcoming book discussion of it, was much more positive than my first reading.  Now not naïve of the overall story, I could see the seeds of various aspects of the story I missed initially—when I read it without the benefit of any “blurb” about the book that would have informed me about its plot.

In The Year of the Flood, there are two primary characters that are survivors of The Flood and whose history we learn:  Toby and Ren  They were both previous inhabitants of a Pleeblands complex created by God’s Gardeners did not die during The Waterless Flood.  They now are trying to survive in the aftermath, also possibly as sole survivors on the planet. We learn that Toby’s parents were financially ruined while trying to deal with her mother’s failing health and she eventually loses both parents.  She eventually becomes an employee of a vicious man who likely will kill her soon but she is whisked away from harm by members of the God’s Gardeners, a green sect building a community fed by the gardens they build on roof-tops, and doing other things that aren’t apparent to Toby or the reader until later in the book.  Toby never becomes “a believer” but does begin to practice herb-based homeopathic remedies she learned at the Martha Graham liberal arts school, becomes an Eve in the sect, and continues Gods Gardner member Pilar’s bee keeping and mushroom growing after Pilar passes.  Ren is a pupil of Toby after she comes to the Garden with her mother, Lucerne, who has left her Compound scientist husband, and Zeb, Lucerne’s new lover.  Zeb is also clearly not “a believer” but is clearly associated in some way with Adam One, the sect’s leader.  Zeb teaches a course on survival post-the Waterless Flood that Adam One anticipates.  The flashbacks cover Toby’s time at the Garden as well as the departure of Ren, Zeb, and Toby from the Garden prior to The Waterless Flood.

An important, and in my opinion a delightful, element of The Year of the Flood are the sermons given by Adam One, and the songs the God’s Gardeners  sing after the sermons.  The sermons are given at celebration such as The Festival of Arks, Saint Euell’s Week, Mole Day, April Fish Day, and The Feast of the Serpent Wisdom.  I listened to an audio-version of the book and the songs were set to music.  Not being one to read poetry nor poetry within a novel, I might have otherwise missed Atwood’s wonderful words in these selections from the God’s Gardener Oral Hymn Book.  Nearly every day in The God’s Gardener’s oral calendar is named for a saint (such as Saint Rachel Carsen).  Adam One’s creation of a set of religious practices is fascinating and provides, to Toby’s surprise, grounding for her post The Waterless Flood.

MaddAddam begins immediately after the final scene in The Year of the Flood and  Oryx and Crake.  Atwood provides a several page summary of each of these two books so the reader has the required background to begin this part of the trilogy.  The “present action” story in this book takes the reader forward post The Waterless Flood as a group of survivors from the God’s Garden sect and the MaddAddam group wrestle with building a new community which will now interact somehow with the Craker Children they’ve met through Jimmy.  They are also working to heal the physical and mental wounds of Amanda, Ren’s friend from God’s Garden, who was abducted by the Painballers (men whose de-humanizing punishment when jailed was that of televised gladiator games), as well as protecting their community from the Painballers who still roam the area.  The story also shows us more about the Craker Children.  Atwood develops the character of one of them, Blackbeard, as he matures (very quickly per the species’ design) and describes his role in dealing with the Painballers and the pigoons, a man-made species we’ve learned about in Orxy and Crake and The Year of the Flood.

The historical part of this novel is that of Zeb and Adam One, who we learn are brothers and children of a corrupt for-profit minister who founded the PetrOleum Church and then pilfered great sums of money from its parishioners.   Zeb’s voice tells his story to Toby.  It connects together various strings of the overall history of Crake, God’s Gardeners, and MaddAddam.

Toby tells a few parts of Zeb’s story to the Crakers as she has been propelled into the role of providing them a daily story now that Jimmy is in a delirious state due to infection of a wound he received in Oryx and Crake. (Jimmy had been recruited into this role originally played by Oryx.)

As MaddAddam ends, we see that Crake’s vision has not played out as planned.   In particular, he has not eliminated the propensity of human nature to develop religious practices that are important element of humanity and provide a humane grounding for individual and community growth.  Atwood thus emphasizes her theme that unbridled technology always has unintended outcomes.

This trilogy is an interesting one.  The first two books cover essentially identical time periods but from two perspectives—a boy/man growing up in a safe, privileged, wealthy Compound; a woman living in the unsafe,  desperate Pleeblands.  The third takes up from where each leave off, telling the story of two men dealing with rejection of for-profit religion and fighting against the current progression of society and its horrid results for the planet.

 

Of the three books, The Year of the Flood was most engaging for me from the very start of the book. Toby is a strong, independent, but not perfect, woman who frankly admits her lack of faith and her limitations, but preserves for survival in the Pleelands and post-The Waterless Flood.   Ren’s story is interesting and provides a different view of Jimmy’s high school period as they were both at the same Compound.  These voices, combined with Adam One’s sermons and the hymns, as well as the cast of interesting supporting characters and sub-plots within the God’s Gardener story make The Year of the Flood my recommendation if only reading one of the first two books and remains my favorite among the three books.  I anticipate that the male perspectives in the other two books and their descriptions of drugs, sex, and pornography as part of their lives made these books harder to read.  However, I do recommend reading the entire series.  Atwood’s writing is tremendous—she creates a believable world that could be quite close in the future; she develops interesting characters, has interesting themes, and uses wonderful language to convey it all.

Grief Unabated

Mr. Ives’ Christmas

By Oscar Hijuelos

Published 1995

Read Oct 2017

This novel is not about a single Christmas in Mr. Ives’ life but rather many of them and the time in-between.  We learn on the very first page that Christmas time was always special for Mr. Ives. In particular, in that first small chapter we learn that being in a church at Christmas time was an extremely powerful experience for him.  In that section we also learn that he was a foundling but adopted by a man also substantially moved during Mass.  We learn in the very next section, on page 8, that Mr. Ives’ son Robert was murdered a few days before Christmas, just six months before he would have entered the Franciscan order as a young seminarian, and that for the rest of Mr. Ives’ life he has struggled with this loss. “A kid, now a man, whom Ives should have long forgiven but couldn’t, even when he tried to—Lord, that was impossible—so filled was his heart with a bitterness and confusion of spirit that had never gone away.”  So in a few short pages the stage and tone for the novel are set.

Through the course of eights sections comprised of numerous short unlinked chapters with multiple shifts forward and back in time, we learn the story of Mr. Ives:  being in a foundling home; being adopted by someone who was a foundling himself; memories from growing up; studying at the Art Students League where he meets his to-be wife Annie McGuire; their courting and having a family; working at the advertising agency and making enough money to move out of the city to the safer suburbs, which he never does; meeting and becoming lifelong friends with Luis Ramierz, a Cuban who works at the Biltmore, his wife and family; the murder of his son at age 16 by a Puerto Rican boy, aged 14;  subsequent interactions with the murderer’s family and later with him directly; middle-age and retirement life; the Christmas-time encounter with the paroled murderer of his son; and his marriage to Annie.

Through the descriptions of Mr. Ives’ life we also receive many details of life in New York City at the various stages of his life.  We learn a bit about the parallel evolution of New York City over this time with respect to the businesses and customs that fade away while Mr. Ives progresses through his life in a rather trudging way, always burdened by his sorrow following Robert’s death.

Mr. Ives’ life is divided into two parts—before and after Robert’s murder.  After the murder, Mr. Ives does many good works, has a successful career, and remains faithful to his family.  However, his grief never abates.  He and his wife drift apart as a result of his grief, but they remain committed to the marriage and family.  He continues practice of his religion and has a mystical experience which he wishes to understand but can’t.  The book ends in Church at yet another Christmas with Mr. Ives meditating about Christmases past and being once again filled with the promise of a final blessing that would be his when Jesus calls him to join him.

Author Hijuelos chooses to provide the story and some of its interpretations by telling them to us directly versus using a “show-me” approach available with dialogue.  The narrator focuses on telling us about Mr. Ives’ experiences, his thoughts, and his dreams.  There are a few time when he directly tells us about Luis Ramirez’s perspective.  Hijuelos is also direct when connecting Mr. Ives’ story to Charles Dickens and his work.  I personally was not engaged well by this style and had to work harder than I would prefer to stay with the novel to its end.

The novel is unique in that engages directly with the themes of the role of religious practice, the experience of celebrating Christmas, and the struggle of grief following loss a loved one “too early”.   In particular, Hijuelos engages with the theme of grief that never ends nor even fades for a devout person.

 

Non-sameness confronted

This is How It Always Is

By Laurie Frankel

Published 2017

Read Oct 2017

This book first showed up for me on a suggested summer reading list.  I looked into it and decided to consider others on the list instead.  Then the book appeared on a discussion group list for the 2017-2018 season and I was confronted with choosing to read or not participate in a book discussion group I very highly value.  So I read it.  Be advised that this essay contains “spoilers” and some personal considerations.

I didn’t want to read about a transgender three year old.  I didn’t want to read about the decisions the parents might make. I didn’t want to read about a boy who said he wanted to be a boy at age three and his parents let him. I didn’t want to confront the fact that this was a real question for some people.    I didn’t want to be preached to by an author with an agenda.

After reading most of the book I found an “Author’s Note” at the end of the book.  We learn that the author has a daughter who started as a son.  We get no further details about that fact.  She clearly delineates that the book is not her daughter’s story nor her family’s story nor her own.  The book is informed by all of that, however.  I appreciate that the note is there and I appreciate that the author seeks to tell an informed story.    My overall comment:  The author tells the fictional story of Claude/Poppy  in a generally engaging way and I was informed  and enriched by it.

At times I was annoyed that the life Mother-Physician Rosie and Father-Writer Penn (as they describe themselves) create for themselves and their family was too perfect.   Doctor mother, stay at home and writer father, big house full of rambunctiously interesting boys  who enjoy listening to dad’s fairy tales nightly for more years that seems conceivable, all in Madison WI (a pretty progressive town as I know from personal experience while a grad and post-doctoral student there).  Claude’s a articulateness at age three (which is likely attributable to his highly articulate environment and inherited IQ) enables him to proclaim at age 3 that he wants to grow up to be a girl, an idea for which he shows much commitment.  Perfect parents so tolerant of all their boys’ weirdness (one son is quite adept at creating interesting practical—but knitted—items) so they take transgender into stride –at least until he starts kindergarten.  After a few days of being forced to change into boy clothes before going to school his parents let him go as a girl.  Not surprisingly for a progressive community like Madison, the school is apparently well equipped to handle this; Claude’s classmates accept it in a heartbeat; the parents are generally supportive (“you’re so brave”).

But even Madison, Wisconsin isn’t progressive enough so they pick up the household and move to Seattle, WA which the parents expect to be sufficiently safe for Claude.  The author (almost finally) provides two sources of conflict at this point—-the eldest son is very unhappy they’ve chosen Claude’s interests over his and the really big one—they decide to keep Poppy/Claude’s situation a secret.  All is nearly perfect again—a playmate for Poppy/Claude right next door in a family that becomes a “best family friend” for the Walsh family.  Son Ben likes the change the move allows for him.  The twins are unaffected by the move.   But all is not preface after all.  Dad recognizes some serious decisions are ahead as Poppy/Claude gets closer to puberty and Mom wants to not think about it.  Son Roo flunks an English class after turning in an assignment that the teacher and parents interpret as homophobic.  Then the efforts spent on keeping their secret are unraveled as Poppy/Claude is outed in fifth grade.

The author does a generally good job of “showing versus telling” us about the very real issues confronting transgender individuals and their family.  She uses the exercises provided the parents by  a Madison “multi-degreed social-working therapist-magician”,  Father-Author’s investigations into transgender issues post-puberty, and Mother-Physician’s volunteer experience in Thailand to inform them and us about the realities this family will need to confront about Poppy/Claude.  The author also helps the reader confront our culture’s focus on gender as one of the most significant aspects of identity and what we do to ourselves and each other as a result of that focus.  She exposes some realities for the lives of people trapped in the wrong body.  She reveals there are decisions pre-puberty that could actually be responsible ones and that these decisions are life-shifting ones for both the person and the family.  Fortunately she helps you to this possible opinion while ending this story before the family must make such a decision.

Throughout the book the Author-Father has been spinning a fairly tale, first for his wife as he wooed her and then for his boys, that is both autobiographical for the family and instructional for his audience.  Fortunately he eventually calls out the family on the fairy tale aspects of their lives and tells all of them that fairy tales must address the “hard stuff” and “the rest of it” too.  Their fairy tale doesn’t answer the hard questions ahead and recognizes that their love and strength will be required and challenged as they make the decisions.

Thus the author does address the challenges the family has faced to date and tells us there are even more challenges ahead, but where this family will go next is left for us to consider.  The more important consideration the author leaves with the reader is how that reader will move forward in their views of the reality that she presents in the introductory quote from Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods:

It is always “or”?

It is never “and”?

 

This particular quote resonated with me very strongly.  While I’ve advocated for the concept of “and” vs “or” for decades, I’ve never considered how it does or doesn’t apply to gender.  I can’t yet advocate strongly for enabling a transgender journey for a three year old but maybe it really is better if you do if you can be clear it’s a reality for that child.

 

I appreciate that the author raises the question of why our culture is so focused on gender classification from birth and compartmentalizing what’s acceptable for each (of two only) gender and what’s not:  dress, play, jobs.  It’s accepted that Rosie is a physician, a “boy” job until reasonably recently, but Penn “doesn’t work” according to much of their community.  Our culture has broken down many previously gender specific roles and rights—girls can be educated, drive cars, own property, do “boy” jobs, make money, remain unmarried and choose to not be a mother, even live with and marry another woman.   We don’t always appreciate the strides our culture has made in this regard until we realize that not all cultures in the world allow these “basic” rights.  Less accepted but becoming more “normal” are men who choose to be stay-at-home dads or do “girl” jobs.  In our culture, acceptable “girl” dress has included pants for some 50 or so years.  Girls can enjoy “boy “games and play “boy” sports with boys in high school.  Even the Boy Scouts soon will let girls participate fully in their most prized program of seeking the Eagle Scout title.  So it seems the social pressure to declare a gender identity isn’t forced on a trans girl very early.   But our culture does not accept boys wearing “girls” clothes to school so parents are faced with a situation that will likely stretch their parenting skills and force uncomfortable decisions at a pretty early age, especially as a large fraction of kids attend day-care and/or pre-school.

 

Good books often lead the reader to read more—more from that author, more about a topic, etc.  This book definitely met this bar. I was prompted to (finally) read the chapter on Transgender in Far From the Tree:  Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity by Andrew Solomon, an extraordinary book that covers a wide range of “non-sameness” situations including Dwarfism, Down Syndrome, Autism, Schizophrenia, Disability, Prodigies, Rape, and Crime.   While the author doesn’t delineate in this book, I became aware of the benefits of suppressing puberty for a transgender child, the decisions that transgender can or must make, and the suffering that transgender people experience throughout their lives.  I now can allow this “non-sameness” situation into my consciousness and discuss it.  Author’s mission accomplished?

 

I look forward to the upcoming book discussion of this novel.  I expect the capable leader to enable an extraordinary experience for all participants.

Half of a Yellow Sunby C.N. Adichie

Half of a Yellow Sun

By Chimananda Ngozi Adichie

Published 2006

Read:  sometime in 2016; reread Sept 2017

This is a truly remarkable book.

First let me share that when I started reading (actually listening to) this book, I did not know its subject.  I only knew that I appreciated Adichie’s more recent book Americanah , was interested in more by this author, and a friend recommended this one.  I purchased the audiobook, but did not read it for several months.  By the time I began to read it, I only knew it was set in Nigeria, the birth country of the author.  What a powerful and wonderful surprise to be treated to a deep story of three characters through which I learned much about Nigeria—its history and impact of that history on the relationships between various regions, ethnic groups, and classes–and the brief history of Biafra as it sought to split from Nigeria and form a separate independent republic.

Adichie tells this complex story in 4 Parts and 37 chapters from the perspective of three characters.  In addition, eight extracts from “The Book:  The World Was Silent When We Died” are dispersed through the book.  The reader eventually understands this book is being written by one of the characters and the book is about the history of Biafra.

In Part One: The Early Sixties we meet the three characters whose perspectives we will view the overall story.

Ugwu is a 13 year boy from a poor village who gets a job as a house boy for a math professor at Nssuka University.  His aunty learned about the position through her job as a cleaner in the university building housing the math department.  The aunty assures Master that Ugwu will learn quickly.  Odenigbo (Master) fails at getting Ugwu to call him by his name vs “Master” or “Sah” but does get Ugwu into school so that he can substantially extend his education beyond his very few years of elementary school.  Through Ugwu’s perspective we learn, in Part One, about the his awe of modern plumbing and appliances, his role in the house, the arrival of Odenigbo’s lover Olanna and the impact she has on Ugwu’s cooking and personal hygiene, and Master’s friends who argue about politics of Nigeria .  Thus the story through his perspective starts teaching us about the various socio-economic classes and gives us a picture of the political problems in Nigeria in the early 1960s.

Olanna is a London educated daughter of an Igbo Chief who resides in Lagos and whose business interests and personal finances benefit from this political position.  She does not “support” her father’s business interests by having a relationship with another Chief nor does she take a job in Lagos as her parents would prefer, but rather accepts a job as an instructor at Nssuka University so she can cohabitate with her “revolutionary lover”, as her twin sister, Kaninene calls Odenigbo.  We learn through Olana’s perspective, in Part One, about her mother’s sister and family who live in Kano (in the north) in a 2-room apartment in a compound and make their living selling goods in a market, about her former rich Muslim boyfriend (also lives in Kano), and about the stresses of establishing herself in life post-grad school as Odengibo’s  lover, with his group of friends, and her new relationships with her family. Thus we gain insight about more socio-economic classes, religious conflicts, and politics in Nigeria.

Richard is a young British expatriate who has come to Nigeria with an interest in Igbo-Ukwu art and a desire to become a writer, or at least a journalist of more substance than he’d accomplished so far with a tiny column for a paper in London.  His Aunt Elizabeth (who raised him after he was orphaned) connected him with Susan, another expatriate who is a little older than Richard and who had been in Nigeria for some time.  She helps him get established with living essentials, introduces him to her (exclusively) ex-pat friends, encourages his writing by setting up an office for him in her home, and makes him her boyfriend.  He meets Kainene, Olanna’s twin, and leaves Susan.  He takes a position at Nssuka University and moves to Nssuka.  Kainene has Olanna get him a houseboy and introduce Richard to Odenigbo’s friends, fully linking these major characters.  Through his perspective we learn about the British attitudes regarding Nigerian people and Nigeria’s recent independence from Britain, get an impression about Kaninene’s business life, and meet Major Madu, a friend of Kaninene’s since childhood and a member of Nigeria’s army.  Thus we gain more understanding about additional aspects of the Nigeria political and business scene at the time.

In Part Two:  The Late Sixties Adichie uses her characters to tells us of the political coups, massive violence against the Igbo people following the second coup, secession of the Igbo region from Nigeria as Biafra , and  the beginning of the military action Nigeria begins to force reunification.  Her characters, which she has by now richly drawn for us, can now provide us a human view of these events—the devastation of losing family members to the massacre in the north, the excitement of Biafra’s declaration of independence, and the confusion and disorientation of becoming an in-country refugee while fleeing “the vandals” (the Nigerian army).

Part Three:  The Early Sixties takes us back before the coup.  In this short part we learn about personal wars and betrayals that nearly break Olanna’s relationship with Odinigbo and Richard’s relationship with Kaninene .  Through these issues the story shows us the expectations of a village mother (Odinigbo’s) and the role of magic and spells in villagers’ lives again informing us of Nigerian parallel cultures—village and intellectuals.

Part Four:  The Late Sixties is the longest section.  Adichie’s characters lead us through the war. Initially, life is difficult but still bearable as Biafra continues to establish a government (and army!) and teach the residents about the expected joy of independence.  However, as Nigeria gains Britain’s support to reunify and other countries fail to recognize Biafra, life becomes increasingly difficult as the number of in-country refugees increases and aid to them severely declines.  Her characters Olanna and Ugwu allow us a very human view of the impact of Nigeria’s use of starvation as a major weapon in their war against Biafra, the toll of losing loved ones, the inequities still present between the government employees and the masses,  and  the horrors of war fought by conscripted young people directed militarily by hired mercenaries.  Richard’s character helps us understand aspects of the role of journalism in the war.  He is asked to write articles to send to the foreign press to gain recognition of Biafra or at least of its dire need for help for its people’s survival.  He serves as guide to some foreign correspondents who seek to “get the story” which isn’t the same as getting a real understanding of the actual situation.  We feel the relentless pressure of the war on every aspect of the characters’ lives and struggle with them as they are stripped of so much but try to retain some threads of themselves.  During my second read, I knew how the story would end, but I still cheered for the characters and hoped things would turn out better than I knew they would.

I listened to an unabridged edition, narrated by Robin Miles and published by Recorded Books in 2011. .  The voice she provided for each character reflected their socio-economic class, education, and country of origin.  Unfortunately I do not find this edition through on-line searches for it.  A new edition published by Books on Tape was apparently released Sept 19, 2017 and now shows on the Recorded Books website.  I hope it provides a similar experience for the listener as it certainly added to my understanding of the characters.

This is “historical fiction” at its best:  multiple superbly and fully developed major characters, a carefully constructed cast of essential supporting characters, engaging personal stories that provide much information about the culture, the socio-economic climate, and the drivers of the historical events–without ever feeling like you’ve been lectured to.  Adichie is an excellent story teller but even more importantly she provides us an exceptionally human look at a piece of history which is likely familiar to few readers in the west.

Black Water by Joyce Carol Oates

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.

Georgia

Georgia:  A Novel of Georgia O’Keefe

by Dawn Tripp

Published 2016

Read Jan 2, 2017

Dawn Tripp became intrigued by Georgia O’Keefe after attending a show of her abstractions held at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2009.  She researched her life extensively and was able to read a large collection of letters between O’Keefe and Stieglitz, initially her mentor, then her lover, then her manager and eventually her husband, while writing this book.  Tripp is clear about what she offers us—a novel inspired by the life of O’Keefe, imagining dialogue between O’Keefe and Stieglitz as well as O’Keefe’s internal dialogue.  I appreciate her honesty about what she’s written and the extensive research she did to prepare.  I did, however, have difficulty with the imagining of dialogue and, especially, the internal thoughts regarding their passion and details of their sexual relationship.

The book did help me substantially expand my understanding of O’Keefe’s life and art and her relationship with Stieglitz, about whom I had no knowledge beyond that he and O’Keefe were lovers and their careers were linked.   Tripp wants us to better understand both the positive and negative impact he had on O’Keefe’s career.

Stieglitz enabled her to leave an unsatisfying teaching career and to fully focus on her art—she didn’t have to worry about working to support herself.  One can say that the money came from sale of her art, which was true eventually but not initially.  His promotion of O’Keefe was essential for the public to know anything of her art.   She completely put her art in his hands from a business standpoint. I found it interesting that the first show he included her work in was done without her even knowing it.  Because he has an understanding of what will sell, she gets some input on what to paint and not—some of which she follows but most of which she does not, although (I think) the art exhibited was chosen by him.   Only once while Stieglitz is alive does she enter a business relationship or exhibition without his support—the commission to paint a permanent mural on the ladies room of the Radio City Music Hall.  He does influence the contract eventually after much discussion between them.  The project fails and she has a mental breakdown and requires hospitalization. It’s not fully clear what led to the breakdown—the failure of the project or his warning not to take the contract. Her apparent distance from the business aspects of her life and work are exemplified by the fact that following his death, 27 years pass before another major NYC show of her work.

The first major show of O’Keefe’s work that Stieglitz produced in 1923 included not only her work but a number of his photographs of her, many being nudes.  This was a rare public showing of his own work; he had focused more on promoting and enabling other artists for some time.  The co-exhibition permanently linked together O’Keefe and Stieglitz as more than a producer/artist.   This show also established O’Keefe as a major woman artist and set up the critical view that followed her throughout her career—focused on her gender.  O’Keefe rejected this interpretation of her work.  She wanted her art to be considered through a genderless perspective and she wanted to be known as the greatest living artist—not the greatest living woman artist.  Her focus remained on creating art and she profoundly limits interactions critics and others.     She actively distances herself from feminism and the feminist leaders of her time, including Gloria Stienem who tried to visit her but was rebuffed.  Such was her desire to not be seen through a gender or feminist perspective.  Even in the reviews of 1946 retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art (which Stieglitz arranged) which he shares with her she only partly appreciates.  From James Thrall Soby:  “She is the greatest of living women painters….Hers is a world of bones and flowers, hills and the city….She created this world; it was not there before and there is nothing like it anywhere.”  Stieglitz hears the aspect of creating a unique world but she is offended by the reference to her as a women painter.  O’Keefe believed she was a great artist period and rejects the “woman artist” reference because it limited the public’s view of her.

Stieglitz make O’Keefe possible—brings her to the public eye and finds financial support for her (eventually from the sale of her work) so that she can fully devote herself to her art.   But Stieglitz also hurts O’Keefe.  Stieglitz clearly loves O’Keefe but also enjoys adoration from young women, O’Keefe being one of these early in their own relationship.  O’Keefe never forgives Stieglitz’s affairs, especially the one with Mrs. Norman who becomes an administrative assistant for Stieglitz and the studio and whom O’Keefe dismisses after Stieglitz’s death.  Stieglitz denies O’Keefe a child, possibly because he understands, although she doesn’t at the time, that O’Keefe does and always would place art first and foremost in her life.   There was space for Stieglitz in that obsession with art at least initially as O’Keefe’s obsession with art and with Stieglitz were blurred together for some time.  They remain married and business partners through Stieglitz’s affairs but they spend less and less time together, especially once O’Keefe discovers the west and her love for it.  She slowly disengages from Stieglitz as she spends increasingly more time in New Mexico.  Tripp notes that O’Keefe can pinpoint a moment that her life became wholly hers “more mine than it ever was before because I will never again let it be anything less”.

According to Tripp, O’Keefe wonders about what her art would have become if she had not met him and the obsession between them had not begun.  In particular she wonders what direction she would have gone with her early abstract forms which she generally chose not to exhibit to avoid their interpretation through a gender view.   In the opening chapter of the book O’Keefe recalls that even while a poor school teacher she was “driven only by a singular, relentless passion for my art”.

Tripp introduces us to O’Keefe and Stieglitz, the results of their mutual obsession, the importance of O’Keefe in art history, the range of her work beyond the well-known flower paintings (only about 10% of her portfolio) and opens the question of what might have been in the absence of the meeting of O’Keefe and Stieglitz and subsequent mutual obsession.   I appreciate that Tripp has enabled me to know more about O’Keefe than I would have otherwise.  To do it, however, required a willingness to accept Tripp’s imaginings of dialog and internal thinking which remains somewhat problematic for this reader.

Family Ties

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.

Reading About Wine –Impact of a Book Club

Summer in a Glass:  The Coming of Age of Winemaking in the Finger Lakes

By Evan Dawson

Published 2011

Read Sept 2017

The beauty of book discussion groups!  A local library’s approach to book discussions is to set a theme and have each participant share a book within that theme.  I wasn’t sure how this would work but now I know:  IT DOES!

The theme of my first foray with this group was “Wine” — about wine or wine in the title.

A book shared at that meeting with a “thumbs up” recommendation:  Summer in a Glass by Evan Dawson.

I now provide a “thumbs up” and recommend you to read as well.

I live in the Finger Lakes in the summer and I listen to Evan Dawson’s daily show on Rochester’s NPR affiliate WXXI so this seemed a natural book for me to try.  I read it in only a very few sittings and was sorry to see it end.   Evan’s articulate and crisp voice comes through as he describes with clear joy and appreciation his encounters with some of the best winemakers/wineries in the area.  He provides some of their personal history in getting to their place in the story of Finger Lakes winemaking.    I was pleased to learn that collaboration and knowledge sharing is rampant in the Finger Lakes.  These wineries want to make world-class wines and they want the world to understand this.  They believe–and walk the talk—that success of any individual winery can raise the profile of the region and engage more people to visit and enjoy them all—now over 100 in number.

I knew pieces of the stories of some of these wineries—which I’ve visited with frequency.  Others I knew less about and now I know why—some of these winery owners are very private.  I’m glad to have learned more about them and will appreciate their wine and facility even more during future visits.

Evan’s writing is brisk, concise, and engaging.  He’s packed 12 stories with index and acknowledgements into 266 pages.  He’s revealed a little, but not too much, about himself as he’s not the focus of the work.  But his desire to understand the region and tell others about it required a dedicated journey so it’s appropriate to learn about specific days and encounters.  He starts and ends with the story of a young winemaker from Germany, his strong desire to stay in the Finger Lakes, and the immigration challenges he has faced.  The reader wants him to stay too as we learn about the great wine he’s made and especially as we learn about his desire and efforts to help make all Finger Lakes wineries great.   By the end of the book word from the Labor Department about his final appeal hadn’t been obtained so it ends with a cliff hanger as well as a toast to this winemaker for the positive impact he’s made on a number of wineries.

The book was published in 2011 so I hoped that I could learn the outcome of Johannes’s wait and that it would be positive.  I was delighted to learn that it was and he and his wife are making wine not too far from where I live.  Yeah!

In summary—a pretty fast and very enjoyable read to learn about the NY Finger Lakes Wine Region and the people who are enabling it to be considered one of the world’s great wine regions.

 

In Cold Blood

In Cold Blood

by Truman Capote

Published 1966

Read Aug 2017

The assigned topic for a book discussion group of which I’m a member was “True Crime”.  That’s not a genre I read, but of course the purpose of the book discussion group is to introduce new reading possibilities so I decided to join in.

I decided on “In Cold Blood” for two reasons:  1)  Capote’s book is one of the largest selling “true crime” books of all times and is a “classic” in this category; 2)  I attribute this book to the reason I locked my parents out of our rural home multiple times in the early 1970’s after reading this book at age 12.  I really wanted to see how I would respond to the book when reading it several decades later.

Bottom line:  the book is so well written I again read it in very few very long sittings. 

In the first section “The Last to See Them Alive” we meet the community of Holcomb and each member of the Cutter family, and learn what family members were doing on November 15, 1959, their last day alive.  His writing allows us to see vividly the landscape of the area, how ordinary the day was for the community, and how each family member was connected to the small community.  We are introduced to the killers’ activities that day.  We experience the shock of Nancy’s friends when they discover the families’ bodies and that of the community as they deal with the initial duties following the crime.

In the second section “Persons Unknown” we meet the crime investigators and feel their commitment to their task and the frustration they feel as the killers’ left little with which to trace them.  We begin more in-depth interactions with the killers as they start their post-crime “travels”.  We begin to see how damaged Perry Smith is and wonder at Dick Hickock’s capacity for compartmentalization of his actions.

The third section “Answer”, the investigators get a break and learn the identities of the killers through a cell-mate of Dick Hickock.  But it takes time to actually apprehend the killers and during this time the community continues to suffer.  We learn more of Perry and Dick’s story of their travels post-crime as well as their pasts. We learn the peculiarities of small-town jails and how the killers are kept separated during their incarceration before and during their eventual trial. Perry Smith’s correspondence is provided us and gives us an increasingly deep view of his past.   We experience with the investigators their surprise that the killers will and do confess to their crimes.   Perry’s confession finally provides us the simple specific details of the crime.

The fourth section, ”The Corner”, details the post-trial period.  Frankly the depth of details about the other death-row inmates felt unnecessary but this is Capote being consistent about providing the whole story of the killers’ background and experiences.  Apparently Capote provided the killers some help during their appeal process although his involvement is not discussed in the book.  Aspects of the appeals and conclusions drawn by various appeal boards are provided.

Capote’s writing enables us to learn much about the killers.  I use the term “killers” throughout this piece because that’s what they were as a result of this event.  They weren’t killers before but somehow they became killers and we never really know why.  Perry’s life was clearly horrendous and he is left a substantially damaged individual as a result.  Dick’s life was much more normal and he entered into criminal acts initially to simply pay his bills.  But something happens that tips the balance.  We don’t ever understand what causes that and likely neither did he.  The senselessness of the killings is remarkable and it’s not surprising that the members of Holcomb lost some of their sense of security.  Some moved from the empty countryside and some never fulfilled their dreams of building a home in that empty countryside.

Capote’s book remains “a classic” not because it’s a “what happened and who did it and keep you on the edge of your seat” kind of book.  It’s a classic because readers of this book will be left with sorrow that something so terrible could happen to such nice people; that individuals can become killers and we and they really don’t know why; that there are such damaged people in our society and that their damage is caused by other deeply damaged people; that there are people that grow up in good families that can take such a horrible path.  That there is nothing obvious we can do to prevent further incidents or prevent becoming victims ourselves.  We’re only left with locking our doors at night even when it seems we shouldn’t need to do that.

Cranford and Everyman’s Library

Cranford

by Mrs. (Elizabeth Cleghorn) Gaskell

Published in serial form Dec 1851-May 1853 in Household Words (edited by Charles Dickens)

Published in book form 1853

Read Aug 2017

Elilzabeth Cleghorn Gaskell (1810-1865) (generally referred to as Mrs. Gaskell) wrote a number of novels and short stories about life in various strata of Victorian society.  She wrote a series of sketches about the inhabitants of Cranford, a small town fashioned after the Cheshire one of her childhood (where she lived with her aunt following her mother’s death).  The series was originally published in Household Words, edited by Charles Dickens between Dec 1851 and May 1853 and was then published  in book form in 1853.  The series was written while she was writing a three-volume novel Ruth which considers the story of a “fallen woman” and the concepts of sin, illegitimacy, and the question of whether the sinful can be reintegrated into society.  It’s quite interesting that she was simultaneously writing this series of sketches which focuses on the society of Cranford’s inhabitants who are primarily mature or aging women, either never married or widowed and managing to continue to conduct their lives “appropriately” despite rather small incomes.

The story is told us by Mary Smith (whose name is not provided us until very late in the book), a former resident of Cranford who now lives in a larger town with her father.  She is a frequent guest of Miss Deborah Jenkyns, who dies early in the novel, and Miss Matty, her loving sister who defers all decisions to Deborah or to “what Deborah would think” after Deborah dies.  Through the collection of sketches we learn about Miss Matty’s brother Peter, who disappeared many years ago, Miss Matty’s former admirer, Thomas Holbrook who never married after her rejection and dies after a trip he takes shortly after entertaining Miss Matty, Mary Smith and Miss Pole, another Cranford “mature” spinster, and about various customs and protocols of importance to this part of society.  We see Cranford deal with the arrival of the Honourable Mrs. Jamieson’s (essentially “top-dog” of Cranford’s society) widowed sister-in-law Lady Glenmire (“shall we use her title or not, etc”) who eventually marries Cranford’s surgeon to the initial dismay of everyone, since he is considered to be in a separate social strata from the ladies’.   Crisis comes to Miss Matty when the bank in which her small fortune is invested fails and her income is essentially eliminated.  Mary Smith helps her find a path forward, which the townfolks’ significant support is not known to her and includes Miss Matty becoming “an agent of the tea company” (she sells tea from her home).  Mary’s attempt to hail Peter back to his sister is eventually successful and Miss Matty’s life takes a turn back towards but not complete “normalcy”.

Cranford was extremely successful when published as a serial and as a book.  It was included as book number 83 in J.M. Dent’s Everyman’s Library in 1906.  It’s been adapted for television by the BBC three times (1951, 1972, 2007).  Judi Dench played Miss Matty in the 2007 version.

A few notes on the Everyman’s Library:  J. M. Dent founded the publishing firm of J.M Dent and Company in 1888 (it became J.M. Dent and Sons in 1909).  He planned, in 1904, publication of 1000 works of literature that would be affordable to all.  Per the book cover of the copy I read of Cranford:  “What Grose wrote in the Sunday Times in 1928 is even more true now that it was then:  ‘A cosmic convulsion might utterly destroy all the other printed works in the world, and still if a complete set of Everyman’s Library floated upon the waters enough would be preserved to carry on the unbroken tradition of literature.’  Raymond  Mortimer in the Sunday Times.”

By 1910 there were 500 books in the Everyman’s Library.  The title of the series was suggested by the initital head editor of the series, Ernest Rhys.  The quotation from a medival play “Everyman” was included in all Everyman Library books.  The character of Knowledge says to Everyman “Everyman, I will go with thee, and by thy guide, In thy most need to go by thy side”.  The 1000th title in the series was added in 1956 and the last title was added to the original series in the early 1970’s when it was suffering substantial competition from the new “paperback book” phenomenon.  It was relaunched in 1991 via Random House and Alfred A Knauf.  Interestingly, a goal of the new series is to provide a high quality hardbound edition of the series contents.

 The Everyman’s Library edition I read was printed in 1969 and included an Introduction by Frank Swinnerton from the 1954 edition as well as the original Forward by J.M. Dent from the 1906 Everyman’s Library edition.  It also includes the Everyman quote noted above. The photo accompanying this piece shows the cover of the edition I read and enjoyed.   Interestingly, Mrs Gaskin is no longer represented in the current Everyman Library catalog.