"Everything about our family was big: there were nine of us and our mother and father and a cousin or two, and Little Grandma when it was her turn to "Everything about our family was big: there were nine of us and our mother and father and a cousin or two, and Little Grandma when it was her turn to stay with us, and Big Grandma when it was hers, and there were three bird dogs and four cats and their kittens and once a small alligator and a pet coon."
So begins Lillian Smith's appealing Memory of a Large Christmas, a collection of vignettes through years of family Christmases in the South in the early 1900's. Not a large volume, but one with a large heart.
“ 'My sister said softly, 'It was a large Christmas.' 'Which one?' 'All of them,' she whispered.”
In the summer of 1977 Hilary Jules is the mother of five children with a sixth on the way. Ella, the fourth child, suffered oxygen deprivation at birtIn the summer of 1977 Hilary Jules is the mother of five children with a sixth on the way. Ella, the fourth child, suffered oxygen deprivation at birth and is sometimes aggressive and has many needs. Stone, Hilary's husband, makes the decision to place Ella in a home.
In the spring of 2009 Beechwood Institute is closing and all the residents need to be placed. Lynetta, Ella's caretaker, is granted guardianship and plans to move Ella to her doublewide near the ocean. And then Hilary throws a monkey wrench in the works. She decides that she wants Ella to come back home and live with her and Stone. The five siblings assemble at the family home to question this decision of their aging parents.
This family drama looks at the secrets the various family members harbor and the effect that sending Ella away has had on each member of the family. Nocher slowly reveals each piece of the jigsaw puzzle until the whole is assembled. She asks me to consider the moral and ethical implications of these situations. I am engaged enough that I want to see how the story and all of its facets resolve. Oh, and did I mention feelings of guilt . . .
On a cerebral level I can see the decisions made by each character and understand the reasoning behind them. I appreciate the questions Nocher is asking. On an emotional level there is a lot here that "should" touch me, yet for most of the read I feel distanced from these characters. Periodically there is a scene where I connect and I hope for more....more
“Girl in Hyacinth Blue'' is the eponymous fictional Vermeer painting Susan Vreeland creates for her second novel. Told as short stories, the novel tra“Girl in Hyacinth Blue'' is the eponymous fictional Vermeer painting Susan Vreeland creates for her second novel. Told as short stories, the novel traces the provenance of the painting in reverse chronological order from the 1990's U.S. to it's painting by Vermeer in the 17th century Netherlands. Each chapter paints a picture for me of the life of the person in whose hands the painting rests and the impact it has on his or her life.
Vreeland deftly and quickly captures her characters and their relationships. Despite their brief appearances I feel like I know them and can relate to them.
A loving middle-aged couple, so tender and caring with each other: “The winsome lilt of Digna humming in the garden. Her knowing, almost teasing look, not quite a smile, when she knew she had the upper hand about something, and his willing acquiescence. Her coaxing in the dark next to him - What was your favorite part of the day? - to which he'd always say, because he always thought it - now, touching you. He'd feel the lump of truth form in his throat, the swell of love in his loins. And afterward, the peace of her rhythmic breathing, steady as a Frisian clock, her simple uncomposed lullaby. Those are things he would, in some final, stretched-out moment, relive. How love builds itself unconsciously, he thought, out of the momentous ordinary.”
The desires of a young girl with her life ahead of her: “Wishes had the power to knock the breath out of her. Some were large and throbbing and persistent, some mere pinpricks of golden light, short-lived as fireflies but keenly felt.”
In this work Vreeland urges me to give more of my life to beauty, to my loved ones, to quiet reflection, and to really noticing and savoring the people and the environment around me--reminders I can always use.
While these stories stand alone, assembled as a whole they convey the timelessness of this painting as a work of art juxtaposed to the finite periods that it is held by its admirers. And I am reminded that life is a journey of discovery....more
What should you know before picking up David Witton's Seven Down? Not much. It's a satirical take on a clandestine operation gone wrong, told through What should you know before picking up David Witton's Seven Down? Not much. It's a satirical take on a clandestine operation gone wrong, told through the debriefings of the 7 people involved. Whitton's writing is clever, and there are plenty of places to smile. The debriefings are all told in a stream of consciousness style. The digressions of the characters let me learn about them as people, so they become more that just their roles in the operation. And I appreciate the ending.
Unfortunately this style of writing is not a good match for me. So while I appreciated the tale, it was like, not love, at first read....more
I love my time with Elizabeth Strout. She sees into the human heart and speaks to me like no other writer does. If 2020 is far enough back in your reaI love my time with Elizabeth Strout. She sees into the human heart and speaks to me like no other writer does. If 2020 is far enough back in your rearview mirror, this exploration of the time is worth a read.
Less structured than the previous Lucy books, Strout's writing reflects Lucy's discombobulation during the first year of the pandemic. William has their daughters leave the city and then takes Lucy away to Maine keep her safe. Unsure of what is happening and in a state of disbelief, Lucy watches the scenes of medical facilities being overwhelmed and bodies being carted away from NYC on the news.
"I still did not get it, the importance of what was happening. It's odd how the mind does not take in anything until it can."
"There was a feeling of mutedness. Like my ears were plugged up as though I was underwater."
"Even as all of this went on, even with the knowledge that my doctor had said it would be a year, I still did not . . . I don't know how to say it, but my mind was having trouble taking things in. It was as though each day was like a huge stretch of ice I had to walk over. And in the ice were small trees stuck there and twigs, this is the only way I can describe it, as though the world had become a different landscape and I had to make it through each day without knowing when it would stop, and it seemed it would not stop, and so I felt a great uneasiness."
One of my good friends reacted the way Lucy did. She couldn't concentrate or focus. She couldn't read. Work was a struggle for her. I reacted more like William. Being a person of action I researched reliable sources of information and followed everything that scientists were learning about the virus and kept up to date with best clinical practices as they evolved. I also needed a physical outlet for this tension and spent many hours working in the yard (my flower beds have never looked so good) and hiking and biking with my husband (alas that 5 pounds I lost has returned.).
Lucy also experiences the grief of losing friends and family to this virus. I lost a good friend that first November. We didn't have vaccines or known anti-virals at that point. And so those of you who have not attended a funeral via Zoom know , let me share that it it sucks!
As Lucy and her ex-husband William settle into their temporary lives in Maine things get bumpy for both of their daughters. There is family drama--sadness and laughter.
I am delighted with the appearance of characters from Strout's previous works.
Strout shows less assurance when she dips briefly into politics-- sweat shop labor, George Floyd, and the divisiveness in our country. These topics are mentioned and then dropped. Of the attack on the Captiol Lucy says:
"I had felt my childhood humiliation so deeply. And what if I had continued to feel that my entire life, what if all the jobs I had taken in my life were not enough to really make a living, what if I felt looked down upon all the time by the wealthier people in this country, who made fun of my religion and my guns. I did not have religion and I did not have guns, but I suddenly felt that I saw what these people were feeling; they were like my sister, Vicky, and I understood them. They had been made to feel poorly about themselves, they were looked at with disdain, and they could no longer stand it.,"
"And then I thought, No those were Nazis and racists at the Capitol. And so my understanding — my imagining of the breaking of the windows — stopped there."
Weeks later when preparing for a short trip into the city Lucy concludes
"I wondered if I had become too frightened to return to New York again. It was funny, but I felt that in my enclosed world I had somehow become worse . . . about my fears. I could not stop feeling that life as I had known it was gone. Because it was."
Like Lucy, I continue to navigate my way through this changed world....more
In her 18th book in the Inspector Gamache series, A World of Curiosities, Louise Penny gives us a look into Armand and Jean-Guy's "origin stories." InIn her 18th book in the Inspector Gamache series, A World of Curiosities, Louise Penny gives us a look into Armand and Jean-Guy's "origin stories." In 1989 a young Armand Gamache was present at the real-life incident of a man killing 14 woman engineering students at Montreal's Ecole Polytechnique, propelling him into a career in homicide. Ten years later Gamache recruits an angry, undisciplined officer, Jean-Guy Beauvior to help solve a murder. Both of these events have reverberations in the current timeline and bearing upon 3 more murders.
In addition to an excellent mystery, Penny explores sexual abuse of children, misogyny, and gun crimes while holding me in the safety and comfort of Three Pines and the familiar cast of characters.
"I was just thinking about Anne Lamarque. . . She was punished for many things, including being happy. So I wanted to capture that. The power of it. Happiness as an act of defiance. A revolutionary act."
I love this idea and want to find a way to bring it into my life.
Anne Lamarque, a woman accused of being a witch in the 1670's, is honored as well as the 14 women slain in 1989 in Ruth's poem:
"I was hanged for living alone, For having a weedy farm in my own name And a surefire cure for warts. O yes, and breasts, and a sweet pear hidden in my body. Whenever there's talk of demons these come in handy. Death sits on my shoulder like a crow . . . Or a judge, muttering about sluts and punishment. And licking his lips. Before I was not a witch. But now I am one."
The underlying theme of this book is forgiveness
“holding on to resentments only binds you to the person you hate. You need to let go of it. For your own sake . . . Not anyone else's. For yourself.”
Fortunately, I have never had anything as horrendous as the actions in this novel to forgive. I have a tendency to hold onto something and gnaw on it for quite a while until I finally am ready to stop and begin moving forward. I find as I am getting older (and hopefully wiser) this time is shortening. Giving forgiveness, including to myself, allows me to grow and continue on my path in a meaningful way instead of stagnating.
While this book is about terror, it is also about goodness, courage, decency, integrity, love, friendship, and community. Penny's optimistic view of humanity shines through and bolsters my own.
In his novel The Last Painting of Sara de Vos, Dominic Smith deftly describes what art is for me--whether it be a painting, a novel, a dance, a piece In his novel The Last Painting of Sara de Vos, Dominic Smith deftly describes what art is for me--whether it be a painting, a novel, a dance, a piece of music, etc.--it is "the possibility . . . of rendering the smoke of human emotion itself."
The conception of the novel began with Smith wanting to highlight the missing painters of the Dutch Golden Age, the women. His fictional character, Sara de Vos is modeled on what he discovered about Judith Leyster (a real life woman painter of the period) and rounded out with research of the time period and his own inventiveness.
Smith interweaves three alternating timelines and locations--1630's Netherlands, 1950's Manhattan, and the year 2000 Sydney. I am engaged and the slow revelations as I smoothly glide in time and place maintain a tension to compel me to keep reading. This format allows Smith to show the history of one painting and the wider story of it's effect on his main characters.
The novel centers around a 17th century Dutch painting called "At the Edge of a Wood" painted by Sara de Vos, the first woman to be admitted to the Guild of St. Luke. It portrays a girl overlooking a frozen river. She's barefoot, and she seems cut off from the reveling skaters down on the frozen river. Sara paints it at a moment of loss in her life; it is a memorial to her 7 year old daughter who dies of the plague. Marty de Groot, a wealthy Manhattan lawyer living in an unhappy, childless marriage, takes a strange kind of comfort in this rather haunting landscape in the 1950's. Ellie Shipley, a student when she first encounters this painting sees the genius and skill of the work; it challenges what she expects to find in a painting by a woman from this time period. And in it, she sees potential for her own career.
The two women protagonists, Sara and Ellie, though separated by centuries both face discrimination in the male dominated art world. In 1630's Holland, men tightly control the Guild of St. Luke, constraining what women are allowed to paint. In the 1950's Ellie leaves Australia and the idea of being an art conservator and heads to the U.S., to begin her career in art history. If not for the sex discrimination she experiences, it is conceivable that Ellie might never have been in the position to forge Sara's painting.
"Something changed in her after that. The anger hardened, came back as a refrain. For years, that moment flickered back whenever she was cleaning or inpainting a canvas--a sense that she had no business engaging in this work. . . . I should have been easy to dismiss--a miserable old man unable to offer a gifted teenage girl a simple compliment. . . She wonders now if the forgery wasn't a form of retribution, a kind of calculated violence--against Jack and Michael Franke, against the old boy network at the Courtauld Institute, against her own indifferent father. But mostly against the girl standing out on the glassed-in veranda who thought her talents were prodigious and therefore enough."
Many of my women friends and I have experienced this type of discrimination. Some of us work harder and move forward. Some stew in bitterness and stagnate. Some plot revenge and damage our psyches. Some give up and stop trying to succeed. And some call the discriminators out and seek fair treatment. This latter strategy is much easier to work with in current times, though it still isn't always effective.
The idea of recognition and authenticity is one of the themes of this book, both of the painting itself and of the characters in this story. Who are we, what do we value, and do we live this way? Smith also looks at barrenness, the inability to have children and the inability to express creatively. How does this affect us?
Smith's characters are real and ring true for their eras and circumstances. His writing is good. A few samples:
“She has no interest in the composition from ten or twenty feet—that will come later. What she wants is topography, the impasto, the furrows where sable hairs were dragged into tiny painted crests to catch the light. Or the stray line of charcoal or chalk, glimpsed beneath a glaze that’s three hundred years old. She’s been known to take a safety pin and test the porosity of the paint and then bring the point to her tongue. Since old-world grounds contain gesso, glue, and something edible—honey, milk, cheese—the Golden Age has a distinctively sweet or curdled taste. She is always careful to avoid the leads and the cobalts."
"Her daughter’s death had loosed something in Sara, a savage kind of grief that burned onto the canvas.”
“The sonic world of the foyer and vestibule comes at him distorted and from a distance, as if someone’s moving furniture underwater.”
I enjoyed my time in the past and with these characters as I uncovered their stories. I learned more about art in the Dutch Golden Era and I learned a bit about forging paintings and how the art world sometimes deals with them. The Last Painting of Sara de Vos is a satisfying read told by a skilled storyteller....more
Teju Cole's work Open City is part philosophical questioning, part history, and part observation of human nature. Open City is a meandering stroll thrTeju Cole's work Open City is part philosophical questioning, part history, and part observation of human nature. Open City is a meandering stroll through New York City, Brussels, and Julias' thoughts and memories. And it is a stroll; there is no plot to speak of. This novel is constructed of vignettes of encounters that Julias has with people he knows, people he meets on his walks, and internally. Some of the topics he gives voice to are how we can live with differences? what does it take for white people to consider the genocide of brown and black skinned people? how do we live with past atrocities? how do we cope with disaster? can we decide the manner and timing of our own deaths?
He presents art as an extended conversation. He asks me to consider viewpoints vastly different from my own.
Cole introduces me to the concept of communitarianism, the idea that human identities are largely shaped by different kinds of constitutive communities and that this conception of human nature should inform our moral and political judgments as well as policies and institutions. He lists some of these communities:
"White is a race, . . . black is a race, but Spanish is a language. Christianity is a religion, Islam is a religion, but Jewishness is an ethnicity. It makes no sense. Sunni is a religion, Shiite is a religion, Kurd is a tribe . . . "
As global borders become more permeable and populations become more heterogeneous is it possible to live harmoniously?
I get glimpses of Cole's protagonist which I try to assemble into a cohesive whole. At the end of the novel I am presented with a revelation about Julius' past and am left to decide for myself if this event is a repressed memory or if it never occurred.
Cole's writing is strong and imaginative. For example: a bus is “like a resting beast” and public chess tables are “oases of order and invitations to a twinned solitude".
If you are looking to curl up with a good story, choose something else. If you want to think and ponder, do give this work a try....more
It has taken me years, and I have finally met E.M. Forster through his classic novel Howards End. Written in the early 1900's when Britain was a colonIt has taken me years, and I have finally met E.M. Forster through his classic novel Howards End. Written in the early 1900's when Britain was a colonial empire, suffragettes were beginning to march, and London's boundaries were encroaching into previously rural areas, this novel explores the themes of class and privilege, capitalism, colonialism and imperialism, and sexism. Forster also asks us to think about what contributions we make to our worlds.
The writing in this story is good; the dialogue sparkles. I think the characterization, though not nuanced is good too; I get a clear picture of each and can recognize all of these types. I find myself applauding the speeches that resonate with me and hissing at the words and actions that I abhor. In other words, I am quite caught up in the story.
A few quotes that provoke some thought for me:
"I don't like those men. They are scientific themselves, and talk of the survival of the fittest, and cut down the salaries of their clerks, and stunt the independence of all who may menace their comfort, but yet they believe that somehow good--it is always that sloppy 'somehow'--will be the outcome, and that in some mystical way the Mr. Basts of the future will benefit because the Mr. Basts of today are in pain."
"Charles had never been in such a position before. It was a woman in revolt who was hobbling away from him, and the sight was too strange to leave any room for anger."
"Now she understood why some women prefer influence to rights. Mrs.Plynlimmon, when condemning suffragettes, had said: 'The woman who can't influence her husband to vote the way she wants ought to be ashamed of herself.' "
"It is only that people are far more different than is pretended. All over the world men and women are worrying because they cannot develop as they are supposed to develop. Here and there they have the matter out, and it comforts them. Don't fret yourself, Helen. Develop what you have; love your child. I do not love children. I am thankful to have none. I can play with their beauty and charm, but that is all--nothing real, not one scrap of what there ought to be. And others--others go farther still, and move outside humanity altogether. A place as well as a person, may catch the glow. Don't you see that all this leads to comfort in the end? It is part of the battle against sameness. Differences--eternal differences, planted by God in a single family, so that there may always be colour; sorrow perhaps, but colour in the daily grey."
There are a few passages in this novel that are opaque to me, and they do not interfere with my enjoyment of the story.
If you fancy a step back into late Edwardian era England, I heartily recommend that you start here.
Back in 2010 I read an article in the Washington Post about a piece of performance art at the MoMA that I found intriguing. It was Marina Abramovic's Back in 2010 I read an article in the Washington Post about a piece of performance art at the MoMA that I found intriguing. It was Marina Abramovic's The Artist Presents. Unable to check it out at the time, I forgot about it until a review of this novel popped on a GR friend's feed. (Thank you, Candi!) Heather Rose's novel The Museum of Modern Love features Marina Abramovic and uses her performance piece to frame this story about art, love, grief, and connection.
I learn about Marina--her family history, her previous work, and her commitment to art. I meet some of the observers: Arky, a composer; Jane, an art teacher; Healayas, an art critic and musician; and Brittika, a graduate student writing her thesis about Marina and her art. What are these characters searching for? What draws them, and hundreds of thousands of others, some of them day after day, to this 75 day performance?
Jane and Arky are both dealing with grief--Jane for the death of her husband and Arky for the death of his marriage as he knew it. Jane has to re-connect with life. Arky has to accept Lydia's illness and their current situation and find a way to connect to her once again.
"Who was he without Lydia? Without her thoughts and clothes and food and friends? Her idea of time and entertainment? who might he be if he was left to his own patterns and rhythms? How long would it take to become something beyond her? Who would that person be? He hadn't wanted to know. But he had no choice. If there was one thing he knew, it was that days kept coming at you, no matter if you were ready for them or not."
How much time does the average person spend truly making eye contact with others, especially the people most significant in their lives? By sitting completely still and staring deeply into the sitter's eyes, Marina makes profound connections and allows the sitters to see deeply into themselves and to feel seen and accepted.
"She wasn't so much stealing hearts, he thought, as awakening them. The light that came into their eyes. Their intelligence, their sadness, all of it tumbled out as people sat."
"Most people . . . didn't want to look inside themselves, let alone magnify that inner life for the world to see or hear or criticize. Perhaps that was the invitation at the heart of The Artist Is Present, 'Come and be yourself.' And the people who sat found out how hard, how confronting, and how strange that was."
I believe that we are all artists, endowed with creativity and a need to express our souls in some manner. I am fascinated by all the different mediums we use. For me it's in the kitchen with food and seasoning and in the treatment room with a blend of touch, verbal fulcrums, moxa, and needles. Can you imagine a world where more of us used our gifts to create? Of course the challenge is to be open and vulnerable and to listen, all qualities which are not encouraged in our culture. And that is what really draws me to this novel.
Epigraph for Part One -"Life beats down and crushes the soul, and art reminds you that you have one." Stella Adler Epigraph for Part Six: "It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are." E. E. Cummings...more
Donatella Di Pietrantonio's novel, A Sister's Story tells the story of adult relationship of the two sisters from her novel A Girl Returned.3.75 Stars
Donatella Di Pietrantonio's novel, A Sister's Story tells the story of adult relationship of the two sisters from her novel A Girl Returned. Once again the older sister narrates the story from further in the future.
First I want to get my complaint out of the way. I had trouble keeping straight where I was in time and place through the first 40 pages; I had to go back and re-read it. Once I got through that patch, the story flowed more smoothly.
Though not as finely fashioned as the previous novel, the writing/translation is still striking--sparse and evocative, and I found this novel the more reflective of the two.
"As children we were inseparable, then we had learned to lose each other."
"With my sister I shared a legacy of words not said, gestures omitted, care denied. And rare, unexpected kindnesses. We were daughters of no mother. We are still, as always, two girls who ran away from home."
"I don't know when I lost her, where our intimacy was stranded. I can't trace it to a precise moment, a decisive episode, a quarrel. We only surrendered to distance, or maybe it was what we were secretly looking for: repose, shaking each other off."
In their childhood Adriana and her sister are so dependent on each other that in their adult lives they go looking for independence, or at least the illusion of it. They choose totally different men and lifestyles. I don't think they are truly disentangled; in some ways the choices they make are in reaction to each other.
I have a complicated, uneasy relationship with my sister who is 13 months older than I am. I seldom see her. I have put up a wall, knowing that distance is essential for my wellbeing. In some ways I envy the ferocity of the attachment of these two sisters; despite their differences they are there for each other when needed.
This book is a very worthwhile read that will be much stronger if you have read A Girl Returned.
My heart has a few new cracks in it. While not at all sentimental, this book touched me deeply.
"I was thirteen, yet I didn't know my other mo4.5 Stars
My heart has a few new cracks in it. While not at all sentimental, this book touched me deeply.
"I was thirteen, yet I didn't know my other mother." So begins Donatella Di Pietrantonio's novel A Girl Returned. Our narrator is looking back from adulthood and telling the story of this tumultuous year in her life. Raised by distant, well-off relatives, she is returned to her impoverished birth family--her parents and 4 siblings-- with no explanation; and thrust into an entirely different world.
In her new world food is scarce, privacy is non-existent, all family members are expected to contribute, and frustrations are vented through physical violence. And yet . . . bonds begin to form. The strongest tie is with her sister Adriana. I think the two sisters save each other in a way. They teach each other about different ways to live which are important for both of them to survive well. And they come to love each other.
That feeling of being moved around--to her adoptive family, to her birth family, to a boarding house during high school-- "like a package" must have been devastating, leaving her to feel insecure and unsure of being loved. She never completely gets over this feeling.
"In time I lost that confused idea of normality, too, and today I really don't know what place a mother is. It's absent from my life the way good health, shelter, certainty can be absent. It's an enduring emptiness, which I know but can't get past. My head whirls if I look inside it. A desolate landscape that keeps you from sleeping at night and constructs nightmares in the little sleep it allows. The only mother I never lost is the one of my fears."
This is one of many striking passages in this novel, in this case drilling down into the essence of the unease in her life.
The narrator is strong and resilient; she finds a way to transcend the abandonment of two mothers and creates a space for herself to belong in her birth family and to move forward with her life.
Anne Goldstein's translation is spare yet evocative, the characters are nuanced and complex, and tension is maintained throughout the work. While the story is heavy, there is a light touch which creates the feel of an easy read. Di Pietrantonio sparingly threads snippets from the future into her story to show how this time period shapes the narrator's life. Despite it's slim size, this compelling read delves into the themes of class and family.
I love this novel and I am now in search of Di Pietrantonio's novel about Adriana, A Sister's Story.
Having recently read a non-fiction work about the dispossession of U.S. native peoples, I wanted to read a little more about the relationships betweenHaving recently read a non-fiction work about the dispossession of U.S. native peoples, I wanted to read a little more about the relationships between European colonizers and native peoples in other countries. I found Tara June Winch's novel The Yield to be an excellent introduction to this topic in Australia.
Winch tells her story in 3 threads. 1 is a dictionary that Albert begins writing when he is diagnosed with cancer. Through his native language he introduces us to the poetry and the deep meanings of these words as he tells his story and the story of the Gondiwindis. His definitions aren't just descriptions of the words, they include anecdotes, traditions, and cultural lore.
"The language was the poem she had looked for, communicating what English failed to say. . . . Her poppy used to say the words were paramount. That they were like icebergs floating, melting; that there were ocean depths to them that they couldn't have talked about."
2 is the story of August, Albert's granddaughter who fled her homeland for England at 20. There are wounds in her family that she runs from; she hasn't really been living all that time, just going through the motions while her longing for home and family were deeply buried. Almost 10 years later she returns for Albert's funeral.
"She thought how for so long she'd been living her life in a box of to-do, like a never-ending winter, her own long hibernation. she had lived her life as if it were full of potholes, tripwire, landmines, too scared to move properly. But she was here, she thought, and she cared about something and for her family for the first time in forever. she reckoned she wouldn't fall into quicksand on the edge of town."
3 is a letter written in 1915 from British/German Reverend Ferdinand Greenleaf to Dr. George Cross, head of The British Society of Ethnography. It is his account of building Prosperous Lutheran Mission for the native inhabitants of the town in 1880. His letter is spread throughout the novel in short sections. He records his intentions, his observations, what he learns about the native peoples and how they are treated by the townspeople and the government.
"Rife here are the darkest deeds ever performed by man upon his fellow man, which makes countless thousands mourn. That vile inhumanity practiced by the white-skinned Christian on his dark-skinned brother in order to obtain land and residence, for 'peaceful acquisition'--that includes capture, chains, long marches, whipping, death on the roadside, or, if surviving all these--the far more terrible fate--being sold like brutes of the field as unpaid labor to the highest bidder."
Winch brings the Gondiwindi family to life. August's Aunt Missy describes those last days with her father Albert:
"Those final stages went on for a couple of days. The soul and the mind are there, but the body can't do anything else to be with the mind--it's like he became split. The natural split. At that moment I didn't want it to end, I just wanted another day, then you want another hour, another minute. It's all precious in the end! It's like there are never enough details left. I wanted everything back. Fingerprints, photos, every story, nights that were longer. A right time to die? To be separated? There isn't, August. It hurts all the time, it hurts to lose someone, doesn't it?"
If you have ever sat with someone you love who is dying, you will recognize these feelings. I have had the privilege of being with 3 of my grandparents, my husband's uncle, and a good friend when they have transitioned. These moments are precious. And if one allows oneself to be fully present, it can be a powerful time.
Defining the word baayanha Albert writes “Yield in English is the reaping, the things that man can take from the land, the thing he’s waited for and gets to claim.” In Wiradjuri, “it’s the things you give to, the movement, the space between things.”
This is a novel full of the spaces in between. Winch's writing is subtle and strong. The brutality of life for the native people is shown in glimpses, so when she makes a forceful statement it has even greater power. Consider Albert's daughter's statement when viewing a museum exhibit of Aboriginal artifacts:
“They should work out how many of us they murdered and have a museum of tanks of blood!"
Winch successfully weaves these 3 threads together to create a story of history, of remembering and recovery; and she reminds me that words and language create a bridge of understanding of a way of life and thinking....more
Deborah Levy was asked to write a response to George Orwell's essay "Why I Write." She uses the four motives he proposed as titles for the four parts Deborah Levy was asked to write a response to George Orwell's essay "Why I Write." She uses the four motives he proposed as titles for the four parts of her essay, Things I Don't Want to Know: On Writing.
"Political Purpose" - In her meandering way Levy explores the role of woman/mother.
"chased by the women we used to be before we had children. We didn't really know what to do with her, this fierce, independent young woman who followed us about, shouting and pointing the finger while we wheeled our buggies in the English rain."
"Motherhood was an institution fathered by masculine consciousness. This male consciousness was male unconsciousness. It needed its female partners who were also mothers to stamp on her own desires and attend to his desires, and then to everyone else's desires. We had a go at cancelling our own desires. and found we had a talent for it."
"When a female writer walks a female character in to the centre of her literary enquiry . . . she will have to find a language that is in part to do with learning how to become a subject rather than a delusion, and in part to do with unknotting the ways in which she has been put together by the societal system in the first place. She will have to be canny how she sets about doing this because she will have many delusions of her own. In fact it would be best if she was uncanny when she sets about doing this. It's exhausting to learn ow to become a subject, it's hard enough learning how to become a writer."
I appreciate the points Levy makes. She does not, however, tie these thoughts together; and I feel dissatisfied as I move on to Part 2
"Historical Impulse" - Having recently read Damon Galgut's The Promise, I especially appreciate these reminiscences of the first 9 years of Levy's life spent in South Africa, especially the 4+ years during the period her father was a political prisoner. Apartheid, racism, and sexism are more of the things that Levy wishes she doesn't know about. And yet these are the meat of many histories with which societies are grappling.
"There was something I was beginning to understand at seven years old. It was to do with not feeling safe with people who were supposed to be safe. The clue was that even though Mr Sinclair [the school principal] was white and a grown-up and had his name written in gold letters on the door of his office, I was definitely less safe with him than I was with the black children I had been spying on in the playground. The second clue was that the white children were secretly scared of the black children. They were scared because they threw stones and did other mean things to the black children. White people were afraid of black people because they had done bad things to them. If you do bad things to people, you do not fee safe. And if you do not feel safe, you do not feel normal. The white people were not normal in South Africa."
"Girls have to speak up cuz no one listens to them anyway."
"I had been told to say my thoughts out loud and not just in my head but I decided to write them down."
"Sheer Egoism" - In this essay I see 15 year-old Deborah Levy in her black straw hat and lime green platform shoes hanging out in a greasy spoon by the bus station trying to imitate the poets and philosophers who inhabited the French cafes in years past. She already had the living in Exile thing down pat as her family moved to the UK a few months after her father's release from prison. And then her parents separated some time after that.
"Writing made me feel wiser than I actually was. Wise and sad. That was what I thought writers should be."
Writing led her to questioning and she questions her homeland.
"I had so many questions to ask the world from my bedroom in West Finchley about the country I was born in. How do people become cruel and depraved? If you torture someone, are you mad or are you normal? If a white man sets his dog on a black child and everyone says that's okay, if the neighbours and police and judges say, 'That's fine by me,’ is life worth living? What about the people who don't think it's okay? Are there enough of them in the world?"
"Aesthetic Enthusiasm" - The final part of Levy's essay is the shortest. Here she sums up her thoughts on why she, this woman, writes.
"We [women] were on the run from the lies concealed in the language of politics, from myths about our character and our purpose in life. We were on the run from our own desires too probably, whatever they were. It was best to laugh it off. The way we laugh. At our own desires. The way we mock ourselves. Before anyone else can. The way we are wired to kill. Ourselves. it doesn't bear thinking about. I did not want to know that I had been shut down. . .
"To become a writer, I had to learn to interrupt, to speak up, to speak a little louder, and then louder, and then to just speak in my own voice which is not loud at all."
"What do we do with knowledge that we cannot bear to live with? What do we do with the things we do not want to know?"
Nina Totenberg's Memoir Dinners With Ruth is subtitled A Memoir on the Power of Friendships. Using her friendship with Ruth Bader Ginsberg as3.5 Stars
Nina Totenberg's Memoir Dinners With Ruth is subtitled A Memoir on the Power of Friendships. Using her friendship with Ruth Bader Ginsberg as a frame, Totenberg writes an ode to friendship rather than a fully realised memoir. Unexpectedly light and frothy, I feel like I am having a conversation with Nina (May I call you Nina?) over a cup of coffee.
"Ruth didn't teach me everything about friendship. I've had other wonderful teachers, expected and unexpected. All of them have taught me that friendship is precious, that it involves showing up, that it involves supporting and helping, that it is not always about the grand gesture, but rather about the small one. It is about extending the invitation, making space at the table, picking up the phone, and also remembering. Friendship is what cushions life's worst blows and what rejoices in life's hoped-for blessing. It can sometimes be as simple as a hug when the hug matters most."
Nina strings together a series of anecdotes in chronological order (thank goodness!) to illustrate the friendships she has had throughout her adult life. These include her relationships with her husbands, her "radio sisters" at NPR, and even her father's violin. She occasionally dips into her career, especially into the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas story, though most of the focus of this work is about her friendships.
These pieces are polished, like stories that have been retold until they shine. What is lacking for me is insight. So enjoyable and entertaining? Yes. Depth, not so much....more
Alice McDermott's novel Child of My Heart is the tale of one summer in 15 year old Theresa's life in the early 1960's.
What I loved about this2.5 Stars
Alice McDermott's novel Child of My Heart is the tale of one summer in 15 year old Theresa's life in the early 1960's.
What I loved about this novel:
I enjoyed being in East Hampton in the summer."The day had grown warm, but it was perfect June warmth, soft as water on our skin . . ."
The relationship between Theresa and her younger cousin Daisy is a special kind of infatuation between older and younger girls that is rarely celebrated in novels.
Theresa is a much beloved local babysitter. "If there was any trick, any knack, to my success as a minder of children, it was, I suppose, the fact that I was as delighted with my charges as they were with me." Her interactions with these youngsters are infused with love and concern. She's old enough to be a responsible caretaker and young enough to still be able to play imaginatively and draw them into these worlds. I can easily relate to these sections of the novel. I, too, was the neighborhood babysitter in great demand. I loved making tents, carrying picnics into the woods, making up stories, having squirt gun battles, and so much more.
McDermott beautifully details these ordinary, industrious days of Theresa bringing Daisy along on her work of walking dogs, feeding cats and caring for toddler Flora. And then slowly under the surface shadows grow. Daisy's bruises don't heal, Flora's mother leaves, Flora's father drinks a lot and stares at Theresa.
McDermott's style is restrained, her prose is lean and elegant.
What didn't work so well for me:
Theresa didn't always ring true as a character for me.
While I spent most of my teen summers babysitting, my parents frequently had to pry the telephone out of my hand when I was home as I connected to my friends. And any spare time I had was spent meeting up with them. Not a single friend of Theresa's appears in the story, not even a mention of one or why there might not be any.
Theresa is full of confidence, there are no moments of angst or self doubt, very unlike any 15 year old I have ever known.
(view spoiler)[And most unsettling, McDermott doesn't convince me that Theresa would have sex, especially for her first time, with a 70 year old whom she views as an old man. (hide spoiler)]
Child of My Heart is a beautifully written story rendered at times with insight and at times with ambiguity.
"I wanted them scribbled over, torn up. Start over again. Draw a world where it simply doesn't happen, a world of only color, no form. Out of my head and more to my liking: a kingdom by the sea, eternal summer, a brush of fairy wings and all dark things banished, age, cruelty, pain, poor dogs, dead cats, harried parents, lonely children, all the coming griefs, all the sentimental, maudlin tales fashioned out of the death of children."
In her book Formidable Elisabeth Griffith writes an engaging, readable, multi-racial, inclusive overview of women's history in the U.S. covering the lIn her book Formidable Elisabeth Griffith writes an engaging, readable, multi-racial, inclusive overview of women's history in the U.S. covering the last 100 years. She includes moments to celebrate and moments we need to reckon with. "It took formidable women against formidable opponents, taking a long time to reach these victories." The power of this work is that it acknowledges that women are a complex group, that each sub-group may have different goals, and that the achievements thus far are the cumulative efforts of thousands of women, many who are named in this chronicle.
Here are just a few tidbits that were new to me and that I found interesting:
Mississippi, the last state to ratify the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote, ratified in 1984.
Until 1960, Asian women in New York City had to register annually at the police department, producing proof of literacy in English.
Pediatricians seceded from the American Medical Association (AMA) and formed the American Academy of Pediatricians in 1921 when the AMA would not endorse legislation to train visiting nurses, license midwives, and establish maternity clinics in rural areas.
During FDR's 12 years as president, Eleanor hosted 348 press conferences inviting only women journalists, forcing news outlets to hire women correspondents.
In 1979 Louisiana became the last state to repeal head and master laws, property laws that permitted a husband to have the final say regarding all household decisions and jointly owned property without his wife's knowledge or consent.
A poll conducted in 2020 by the Fund for Women's Equality found that 80% of Americans think the Equal Rights Amendment was passed.
One takeaway for me is that these successes have come from the deep commitment of many women who have devoted much of their lives to achieving them and that continued progress will require strong and steady efforts.
As Griffith concludes: “Until activist allies can increase their political power, secure racial justice, safeguard reproductive rights, insure equal economic opportunities, provide affordable childcare, and address historic inequities, the work of the women’s movement is not only incomplete, but at risk.”
On the surface Ian McEwan' novel Machines is a novel about what AI might become and how we will consider these beings--as machines? or as bei3.5 Stars
On the surface Ian McEwan' novel Machines is a novel about what AI might become and how we will consider these beings--as machines? or as beings with some type of consciousness? In reality, like most literary novels, it's about the messiness of being human.
As always, McEwan's writing is exquisite. One of my favorite scenes in the book is when Charlie meets Miranda's father. This wonderful passage comes from that scene.
"There are occasions when one notices the motion of an object before one sees the thing itself. Instantly, the mind does a little colouring in, drawing on expectations, or probabilities. Whatever fits best. Something in the grass by a pond looks just like a frog, then resolves itself into a leaf stirred by the wind. In abstract, this was one of those moments. A thought darted past me, or through me, then it was gone, and I couldn’t trust what I thought I’d seen."
McEwan maintains a diffuse mood of disquiet through much of the novel which helps propel the narrative.
Charlie nor Miranda are particularly likeable characters. Adam, the synthetic human that Charlie purchases, is disturbingly human seeming. Their story is one of love, jealousy and deceit. And yet in Miranda's desire to save 4 year old Mark I can feel her regret for the outcome of her past actions despite not wanting to acknowledge that she has done anything wrong.
What doesn't work, at least for me, is the alternate reality of the setting. This story is set in London of 1982 where the Falklands are lost to Argentina, Margaret Thatcher cedes the office of Prime Minister, and John Lennon is still alive. I feel like McEwan wrote two stories and tried to force them together.
The main story turns on the concept that a computer does not fully understand the vast complexity of human interaction and that nothing is more human than moral inconsistency.
I was intrigued by the premise of this novel and enjoyed the irony of these "robots" being called Artificial Friends.
The beginning was entertaining; II was intrigued by the premise of this novel and enjoyed the irony of these "robots" being called Artificial Friends.
The beginning was entertaining; I enjoyed seeing the world through Klara's "fresh eyes."
And from there on I was mostly disappointed. I found this work to be way too simplistic. The characters and the world weren't developed enough for me. I got glimpses of how society was stratified, but there was little exploration of what was happening and the why behind it. And I would have liked Ishiguro to flesh out his question about human impact on the environment. Ishiguro also points to the theme of loneliness, and then doesn't develop it.
I would have appreciated more discussion of the choice to lift or not lift a child, (view spoiler)[especially in Chrissie and Paul's case when they had already lost a child. Can you imagine such a choice in your life? What do you think you would do? I can see how they made the first choice to go ahead with lifting Sal. We all want what's best for our children; we want them to succeed in life. Getting lifted would give a child a leg up. And for many of us it's hard to believe that something bad would happen to us. But to do it again after such disastrous results the first time? I don't think I could have. (hide spoiler)] In its favor, this read did lead me to think about the ethics of genetic engineering--what we are currently capable of and where we're headed with it.
I found this quote to be an intriguing way of thinking about the human heart. “But then suppose you stepped into one of those rooms . . . and discovered another room within it. And inside that room, another room still. Rooms within rooms within rooms. Isn’t that how it might be, trying to learn Josie’s heart? No matter how long you wandered through those rooms, wouldn’t there always be others you’d not yet entered?”
But alas, a few scattered quotes that pulled me in were not enough to make this book more than a barely okay read for me. While this book had great potential, I felt that it was a very superficial work and did not feel complete.
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