I can’t stop reading! Spurred by a client who writes humorous short essays, I keep finding wonderful, funny women to share. And there are lots of other women from Queen Elizabeth II to Josephine Baker, a queen in her own right; so much to learn, so little time.
Life on the Mississippi: An Epic American Adventure by Rinker Buck (Avid Reader Press 2022)
As we watch the mighty Mississippi getting shallower and shallower in the fall of 2022 due to drought, I’m glad I read this book. I now understand that above Cairo, IL, where the Ohio meets the Mississippi, both rivers are bucolic, with more or less natural banks and local docks. Below that, the Corps of Engineers has groomed the Mississippi into a shipping channel. Muddy banks are now unnatural and unwalkable rip-rap of huge concrete blocks. There is no pleasure boating. Amateurs are a danger to themselves and the huge barge conglomerations that are precisely powered up and down the river by professional pilots in huge tug boats. Rinker Buck is an affable tour guide and I enjoyed joining his foolhardy trip in a flatboat.
Agent Josephine: American Beauty, French Hero, British Spy by Damien Lewis (Hachette 2022)
What a woman! And I knew little about her except photos of the topless banana dance from her early Paris career. Tracing Baker’s life from birth in St. Louis, Lewis emphasizes her amazing work from 1940 through 1944 as a spy for the British and the Gaullists. Beloved entrainer in Europe and North Africa, her ability to travel and perform served as the cover for information gathering and communication at the highest secret levels. This is an informative read, but I did not love the writing. Lewis seems compelled to repeat endlessly the dangers faced by Baker and her entourage. Once you get the hang of the repetition, you can skim at will. Unfortunately, many of the sources used by Lewis are long out of print, and never translated from French. It would be interesting to read these original accounts written by her fellow spies.
Three Women by Lisa Taddeo (Avid Reader Press 2019)
In my last set of short reviews, I covered Lisa Taddeo’s new book of short stories Ghost Lover. It was not a favorite, but I wanted to read her previous best-seller non-fiction book Three Women. It’s about a portion of three women’s sex lives. It is billed as non-fiction, but from the beginning, it read as fiction. The three women: Maggie from Fargo ND who is sexually involved with her high-school teacher while in high school, Lisa from Indiana whose husband won’t touch her, and Sloane from Newport RI, who enjoys threesomes with her husband either watching or participating. It’s a quick read, and the subject matter is interesting. My takeaway is that women still come out on the short end of the sexual revolution, feeling guilty about their pleasure and protecting their exploiters. Granted, no men were able to present their points of view in this book.
The Palace Papers by Tina Brown (Crown 2022)
The Queen dies one week to the day after I finished reading The Palace Papers. I was prepared for the funeral. Brown covers the last 20 years of the Royal Family, picking up where her first Royal Family book, The Diana Chronicles, ends. Brown’s writing is engaging; she’s a journalist by trade. She’s British, she’s connected, and she loves a good story. If you are “Royal curious”, as I was, enjoy this book. As for Diana, except that she seems to have been a better mother than most royals, this book turned me off to her entirely.
The End by Salvatore Scibona (Riverhead Book 2008)
Aghhhh, this book was so dense. When it was published, it was shortlisted for the National Book Award and winner of the Young Lions Fiction Award. I picked it up because in my last set of reviews, I read and commented on his second book, The Volunteer. In ’08, the literary folks went wild for Scibona’s style, a combination, they said, of T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein and James Joyce. Now that should have told me not to read this book.
The End is about Italian immigrants at the turn of the 20th century through the mid-50s. Mostly set around Cleveland, the locus is as dim as the city where the sun shines only 166 days a year. The plot, if there is one, is told in flashbacks from the August 15th Feast of the Assumption. But I only figured this out after I completed the book and was compelled to reread the first several chapters, trying to understand the sequence of events. Aghhhh, don’t waste your time unless you are forced to write a term paper on novels that needed better editing.
Would Everybody Please Stop? Reflections on Life and Other Bad Ideas by Jenny Allen (Sarah Crichton Books, 2017)
Continuing my search for funny women authors over 50, I stumbled across Jenny by researching her agent for a client of mine. In her essay called “Canonize Me” she uses her newly discovered spiritual superpowers to right all the wrongs in our lives—like eliminating fat-free half and half, reruns of Two and a Half Men, single-ply toilet tissue, and Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kolb. She made flossing bad for us. You have to love this woman. Enjoy this collection of essays, I did.
I Got Sick and Then I Got Better a play by Jenny Allen
A monologue developed by Allen after her illness with cancer. She was diagnosed with endometrial cancer and underwent a hysterectomy to treat it. Analysis of the tissue from her hysterectomy uncovered stage IIc ovarian cancer. I know from my aunt’s experience with uterine cancer that many “female problems” present to a physician as heartburn, or bloated feeling, or random pains in the stomach. And by the time they are diagnosed, often a year or more has passed with worthless treatment for the wrong ailment. So it was with Jenny Allen. Makes you cry and maybe laugh. Ladies, please use female doctors!
Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo, read by Anne-Maria Nebirge (Blackstone Publishing, 2019)
Crazy, mingled stories of Black women (mostly lesbians, mostly taking place in the UK). At first, I was put-off by the premise all-Black female lesbian theater—the writers, producers, directors, and actors. But by the time I’d had enough of one character, another tangential one is developed and off you go. I listened to the book in 16 hours on a trip to and from Stratford, ON. Nebirge is a good reader. The frequent change of location, and character focus mixed it up just enough, and the resolution was clever. This book won the Booker Prize in 2019.
Where Dogs Bark with Their Tails by Estelle-Sarah Brille (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022) originally published in French in 2018
One line of my ancestors is from Versailles, FR. They owned and managed a sugar cane plantation on the island of Guadeloupe in the West Indies. In 1848, pushed out by the largest and last of the many slave revolts, they left everything, and boarded a ship for New Orleans. Speaking only French, they felt welcome in New Orleans, but there was no future for a farmer. So, like many immigrants from the French West Indies, the deLaureal family made their way slowly up the Mississippi and settled in St. Louis. Papa Dor and Mama Tee purchased land northwest of the city and named their new home Florissant. The original home still stands and the surrounding suburb bears the name Florissant.
Where Dogs Bark with Their Tails is a generational story of families who intermarry, depend upon siblings and cousins, fight in local riots, and eventually emigrate to the Homeland, France. Well-written. I enjoyed learning more of the contemporary history of Guadeloupe. The French aren’t a benevolent colonial power, and today, they pretty much ignore their West Indian possessions. Though I got the impression that citizens from the West Indies are treated better than those from North Africa. Just an impression as the book does not deal with French politics. A good read to broaden your horizons.
About My Mother: True Stories of a Horse-Crazy Daughter and Her Baseball-Obsessed Mother by Peggy Rowe (Forefront Books, 2018)
The first of Peggy’s funny books. I call her Peggy because I know she would be a BBF if we were to meet. Heartwarming, easy to read, and occasionally laugh-out-loud. An excellent gift book for a special mother in your life.
Vacuuming in the Nude and Other Ways to Get Attention by Peggy Rowe (Forefront Books 2022)
She’s so funny! Here Peggy shows us how to make a new book out of her previously published stories. They are tied together with her clever narrative, and I didn’t feel anything but pleasure reading this.