“Big Sky” by Kate Atkinson, published by Little, Brown & Company, 2019

Atkinson is a writer of exceptional detective procedural and historical novels. Big Sky is the latest featuring her slightly muddled protagonist, Jackson Brodie. A retired police Detective Chief Inspector in a major city, he is now a humble private detective who followed a former lover to the seaside of Yorkshire to be with his teen age son, Nathan, and an aging black lab, Dido.

True to this type of plot, Brodie is hired to identify some baddies by the wife of a covert operator in human trafficking. The plot is interesting as Atkinson weaves the relationships among types of friends. According to Vince, one of the friends who recently lost his job and his wife, there are golf friends, work friends, old school friends—then there are friend friends, harder to come by. And, as we have experienced, when you are with a group of golf friends that contains several friend friends, it’s hard not to feel on the outside. But when friends are engaged in human trafficking, it’s good to be a bit on the outside.

This is a story told in the details. So savor the slow build and the rather predictable denouement. Recommended for a fun read of the Brit detective genre. Great fodder for a BBC-like series.

“The Snakes” by Sadie Jones, published by Harper, 2019 – Short Book Review

Like a snake shedding its skin, The Snakes turns from a modern story on the effects of the acquisition and spending of infinite money on families into a murder thriller. Various feelings and suppressed concerns of the characters, Dan and Bea, lower middle-class young marrieds, Alex, brother of Bea and damaged family goods who manages a run-down hotel in France, Griff and Liv, parents escaping the unintended consequences of their lives. Bea shed her skin of privilege by leaving her family, happily working as a certified therapist among the undeserved and marrying Dan, a mixed-race artist scraping together a living as an estate broker.

Bea and Dan shed the humdrum of their lives by taking a three-month holiday touring the Continent. They stop to visit Alex. Clearly the hotel and his life are in shambles. His death/murder brings Griff and Liv to France and the plot takes off—but it’s about half-way through the book.

Enjoyable reading if you don’t mind a bit of gore and a realistic end. Good, facile writing.

“O My America! Six Women and Their Second Acts in a New World” by Sara Wheeler, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013

The premise is fascinating. Six women who traveled to the new United States of America from England in the 19th century—none of them connected save that each wrote a memoir of the experience. They did not stay in the safe confines of New York and New England. They went to the interior via steam and sailboat, railroad, horseback and on foot. Each was or became financially independent, mostly because of their writing, and all eventually returned to England. I was familiar with two of them: Fanny Trollope, mother of Anthony Trollope, my favorite late 19th century British novelist, and Isabella Bird, a traveling Scots woman who “wintered” in Estes Park, Colorado with William Nugent, aka Comanche Bill, a renowned mountain man.

With an Introduction and six chapters, Wheeler tells the stories of these brave women, integrating them with her personal story as she approaches middle age. She follows the trails of her heroines’ journeys, not attempting to recreate the impossible, but gathering the shared images of the mountains, rivers and plains. Wheeler is also British and had an early awakening experience when she resettled in the U.S. and learned firsthand the value of our somewhat classless hospitality.

These are wonderful stories of extreme hardship that each give prismatic insight into our undeveloped country in the 19th century. Most of it is not pretty. But the take-away is that these women came unaided, for the most part worked unaided and turned their lives around. As a reader I found Wheeler’s intersticed thoughts on her own situation intrusive. Perhaps if I was turning 50, they would hold more meaning.

Recommended for readers who seek unique insights into U.S. history.

“The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness” by Sy Montgomery – Published by Atria 2015 – Review

The Soul of an Octopus is a trip to the other side of animals – invertebrates.  Some invertebrates, such as clams don’t even have brains.  So how did the octopus develop consciousness?  Why are they able to carry on separate activities with their eight arms, processing different sensory input from each sucker or all?  How are they able to give and receive affection?

My only previous knowledge of octopuses was eating them—delicious basking in olive oil and grilled with little bits of crust on the skin.  And I will continue to do that.  But, after delving into their hidden world with naturalist Sy Montgomery, they will receive more respect.  We know so little about octopuses because theirs is a life of stealth and mystery.  They live alone, compressed safely into tiny spaces in the briny deep, venturing out only to kill and eat.  Eventually, near the end of the lives (usually five to eight years) they mate and die.  Not likely candidates for a best-selling book. 

Montgomery mostly experiences octopuses (pluralized with “es” not “I” because it is a Greek derivative, not Latin) at major aquariums, like the Cold Marine tank of the New England Aquarium in Boston.  Here they are exposed to the visitors, but mostly to the employees and volunteers who see this wild life through different eyes.  Employees and volunteers have relationships with fish and invertebrates; with tortoises and snakes; with all the aquarium inhabitants.

The Soul of an Octopus touches on all their stories both human and animal.  My most memorable take-away is Montgomery’s statement that Jane Goodall and her researchers did not reveal the most important findings of their work until 20 years after the first publications.  Though they found significant evidence of consciousness among apes and chimps , they did not reveal it for fear of their research being minimized as anthropomorphic.  Montgomery found it the same with the workers at the aquariums.  They rarely mention to outsiders the bonds they develop with their charges—not the bonds of an owner for a pet, but the bonds with other creatures capable of reciprocal feelings. 

Recommended for readers who enjoy quasi-scientific information combined with human interest stories. 

"Staying On" by Paul Scott - A Brief Review, Published by Heinemann, 1977

A beautiful book about the end of things: The Raj in India, a volunteer’s joyful task of preparing the church for services, an old hotel that will be torn down and with it the home of the protagonists, and a life.  Paul Scott is the author of The Raj Quartet, the seminal set of novels about the end of the Raj in India.  In Staying On, he writes about two expats, husband and wife, who chose not to return home in 1947.

As the book opens, Tusker and Lucy Smalley (such Dickensian names) are barely keeping up appearances as the only British in a small Indian hill town in the north.  Though they have friends among the Indians, both middle and servant class, the Smalleys are not willing to completely drop the color bar drawn by the British.  They will never afford to return to England, so they make do, nursing feelings of rage for each other and their circumstances.  In spite of that, the book is charming, often funny. Staying On won the Booker Prize in 1977.

Scott is a masterful story teller and Staying On is the coda for his Raj Quartet.  Available at your library or used book store.

Highly recommended for readers of British/Indian historical fiction.

"Old Man River: The Mississippi River in North American History" by Paul Schneider - Review

Calling all U.S. history buffs—Old Man River is an excellent compendium of the ways in which the basin of the Mississippi River pulled the development of our country. Divided into seven “books”, Schneider scans geography from prehistoric Lake Agassiz to the oil derricks that litter the mouth at the Gulf of Mexico. He covers animals from mastodons to Asian carp. He covers settlement from the Clovis and Folsom people to Corps of Engineers still struggling to control Mother Nature. This book is only 334 pages. It’s purpose is scope, not depth. There are extensive notes and bibliography.

The writing is brisk, combining historical bits with Schneider’s own kayak trip with his son on parts of the river. The basin includes the very beginnings of Mississippi in upstate New York and the Allegheny River, south to the Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee and Yazoo. In the west, all the rivers from the Missouri and Yellowstone down to the Red River in Texas are covered as they merge into the Mississippi and drain into the Gulf of Mexico. Control of these tributaries meant control of commerce and survival for settlers. Our history is parsed into conquests of waterways: French, English and Spanish; Indian tribes, colonies, trading companies, farmers, ranchers, cities, and small towns. Until the development of the automobile in the 20th century and then the interstate highway system, river traffic moved U.S. production and trade.

Not a fan of pre-history, the first book seemed a slow read. But with the introduction of the Native Americans in the second book, the pages flew—a book I did not want to put down, nor to end.

Highly recommended for lovers of U.S. history.

“Cape May” by Chip Cheek, Celadon Books, 2019

The review, by trusted resource Sam Sacks in The Wall Street Journal, was magnetic.

“Suddenly the innocent couple, who still say their prayers before going to bed, are ushered into a world of idle wealth, dissipation and, inescapably, adultery.”

Set in the gin swilling 50’s, this is just what we need for a good summer read.

And a good, quick read it is. Cheek’s writing style is beguiling and undemonstrative. Yes, there are many sex scenes--titillating, but not lewd. Best of all, there is no moralizing, no redemptive ending. Cape May is Cheek’s debut novel. If he heeds the feedback, his future novels will also be concise and entertaining.

Recommended for readers who like to intersperse “serious” books with well-written entertainment.

"Our Man Down in Havana: The Story Behind Graham Greene’s Cold War Spy Novel" by Christopher Hull, Pegasus Books, 2019

Graham Greene is one of the foremost prolific British writers of the 20th century. He did not come from money, but enjoyed the high life, and that drove him to write. Lucky for us.

Our Man Down in Havana details the actual story behind the writing of the novel. Twelve weeks after it was published in January 1959, the Cuban Revolution transformed a capitalist playground into a communist stronghold. And in 1962, when the Cuban missile crisis fixed the world on the island, those familiar with Greene’s novel and subsequent movie were amazed at the prescience of his vacuum cleaner like installations in the Cuban mountains.

What did Greene know that others did not? He spent a fair amount of time in old Cuba, hung out with prominent members of the Batista government and wealthy Cuban nationals. He also courted revolutionaries, sympathetic to their original motives. Did he work for the British Foreign Service as a spy? They did pay for many of his trips to Cuba and other world hot spots. While Hull’s carefully research inquiry forms conclusions, nothing is proven and validated due to the covenants of secrecy.

Recommended for lovers of Graham Greene, the history of the entanglement of the UK, the U.S. and Cuba during the 50s and the 60s, and the philology of Our Man in Havana.

BEFORE WE DIED by Joan Schweigardt Book Review – Turn-of-the-Twentieth Century History Lesson in Novel Form

Read my review on Picture This Post.

"Fight No More: Stories" by Lydia Millet (W.W. Norton & Company, 2019)

Not a short story lover.  But there are some that tell a longer story episodically.  Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout is like this.  The chapters stand alone.

I dove into Fight No More with the advice from a reviewer that this book of short stories (finalist for the Pulitzer Prize) was episodes in a longer story.  It was, sort of.  The writing is excellent.  I could see the characters and their situations.  But they did not engage me.  All the stories are dark, and all the characters have pain and suffering in their past lives: The Holocaust, familial rape, drugs/alcohol, internet porn.  Naturally this leads to pain and suffering in their present lives, though you do hope that Lexie and Jem escape.  Not likely.

If you like the short story genre, this book will be a good read.  For me, it was a good bedtime read because most stories are short.  Plots are not “resolved”, but neither is life.  These are well made YouTube videos: on and off.  Millet is a prolific writer and I’ll try one of her novels for comparison.  
 

“Reconstruction: A Concise History” by Allen C. Guelzo (Oxford University Press, 2018)

“The twelve years that are the conventional designation of the Reconstruction period, from 1865 to 1877, teem with associations and developments that seem regrettable, if not simply baleful.”

Massive tomes have been written about the history of the Reconstruction.  Guelzo pockets it into 130 pages, if you choose to ignore the supplements.  It’s a wonder that the U.S. survived as a nation.  Guelzo’s narrative is concise, but not snappy—it’s a bit of a tough read because so much is crammed onto every page.  

The best predictor of the future is the past.  So, we read history, understanding it is one person’s interpretation of the past.  So much of what we see today flows from those 12 years of chaos.  Andrew Johnson, Lincoln’s Vice President proved to be the antithesis of Lincoln.  He was a Southerner from Tennessee.  His direct actions overrode Congress’s attempts to set up an orderly transition from war to productive peace.  Instead, former Confederate officers stepped into positions of power and eventually drove out the “Carpetbaggers” from the North.  Johnson was impeached in March 1877, but the measure did not pass.  In November, Ulysses S. Grant was elected, a flawed man with no political experience.

The Supreme Court took advantage of weak executive and legislative leadership, carving new powers for itself.  They became the arbiter of efforts to bring North and South together, more often driving them further apart.  In 1883, the overturned Sumner’s Civil Rights Bill, a deed not rectified until Lyndon Johnson’s presidency.

Though southern blacks were almost immediately elected to new legislative bodies in the South, they proved unable to formulate and negotiate favorable legislation.  They were too poorly educated and underfunded.  No charismatic leader arose from among them who could have led a more effective effort.  Slavery proved no training ground for politics.

Guelzo, in the end, endorsed the theory that the U.S. would have fared much better if the rebellious states had been held and managed by the victorious North until arrangements were made for the integration of the former slaves and the infrastructure rebuilt.  Instead, we proved true to our American need to “get it done” and left the South in shambles for both freed people and whites.

I was enlightened by Reconstruction.  It deserves a second read, but not for a while…

"Transit" by Rachel Cusk (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016)

How do you categorize a novel in which the protagonist mostly listens and observes the actions of others, not judgmentally, almost like a psychiatrist who has no control except her ability to stay or leave?

Transit episodically tells the tales of people who surround Faye, the protagonist, a writer.  The book opens with a spam email from an astrologer informing her that an important transit of the planets will save her from the feeling insignificant.

 "What the planets offer, she said, is nothing less than the chance to regain faith in the grandeur of the human: how much more dignity and honour, how much kindness and responsibility and respect, would we bring to our dealings with one another if we believed that each and every one of us had a cosmic importance?"

Faye purchases the chart, then proceeds to act insignificantly throughout the book.  Her encounters with her realtor, who helps her purchase a flat in London, her remodeler, her abusive neighbors below, her former lover, her fellow writers, her children, her cousin—all of whom seem to have some cosmic importance, reveal Faye’s Zelig-like ability to avoid confrontation, much less make an impression.  Her role is to allow them to reveal their stories, one chapter apiece.  

Transit is short and crisply written.  I enjoyed it and recommend it.  

"Haunt", Poems by Ryan Meyer, Amazon 2018

Teraphilia means love of a monster.  Ryan Meyer likely enjoys this condition and writes poems to the monster under his bed that he wished would come out and play.  In Dear Demon, he concludes,

“Crawl out from under my bedframe
Whenever you feel safe enough.
There’s no need to feel afraid:
I won’t bite.”

And in The Boogeyman Lives, Meyer tears down our image of this ogre and ends with,

“Most of all, he isn’t human, he isn’t
A metaphor for your Earthly fears.
He is much, much more than that.
He does in fact wait for you,
Underneath your bed.”

Embracing the macabre, Ryan makes every poem a slice of the dark side, the unknown and unknowable, leaving us closer to the subject but still in the dark.  Because this is where the fun is for those who enjoy the unearthly.  The poems, written in free verse, lend themselves to reading aloud, some even conjure up a group around a campfire, anticipating a good scare.

Meyer’s descriptions conjured memories for me.  The Gusts of a Tempest brought back the pond on the farm.

“This silence grew louder during
Our pause, settling around us like silt
At the bottom of a pond…”

Anyone who ever walked in pond muck never forgets--and to compare silence to the silken terror that envelopes your feet and legs gives it such strength.  In He Looked Like Me, we “shrug off anxieties...like a rain poncho”.  In Sour, a woman “lets her inhibitions slide down the surface of the bar”.  The poems are full of graphic word-images.

I am not a poet, nor a student of poetry, so cannot critique the literary qualities of Haunt.  But I am a reader and enjoyed most every poem, thinking of where they could live again as a Halloween greeting card, or paired with an illustration or as the inspiration for a film.  Some of the poems will haunt me.

"Nora Webster", a novel by Colm Tóibín (Scribner, 2014)

Irish novels tend to be a bit melancholy, with the local environment heavily influencing the characters.  Not so much Dublin, but the small towns are like hives—closely quartered, each knowing the others’ business.

Thus, Nora Webster begins her life as a middle-aged widow, two children grown and two still at home.  The story has no big climax, just the natural ups and downs of growing children, helpful family and friends, and a town that knows everything you do.  Lack of privacy is Nora’s angst.  When her husband was alive, she shadowed her life under his, with perfect contentment.  Now, she is visible, a person of interest.  

Skillfully woven in the background is the beginning of the Irish “troubles”.  Catholics in Northern Ireland are beginning to march, demanding more representation and the cessation of British oppression.  It’s clear that politics plays an important, but underlying role.

Tóibín does nothing to glamorize the lives of his characters.  It’s the late 60’s, and Nora does not even have a telephone, an early reveal about her personality.  But few complain about this, even though they become involved in relaying messages and substituting for phone booths.  The community cares.  And Nora develops a single life on her terms, both private and public.

The book is 375 pages that flew by.  The writing is so solid, the characters so grounded and the plot, though not surprising, pulls you along.  Highly recommended for a gentle summer read.
 

The Road to Little Dribbing: Adventures of an American in Britain by Bill Bryson, (Doubleday, 2015)

Crammed with things you’ll enjoy as he travels from Bognor Regis in the South to Cape Wrath in the North of Scotland.  Bill Bryson is funny.  Not what you would expect from a Des Moines, Iowa native who spent most of his adult life in the U.K., much of it in senior copy and editing positions with the The Times and The Independent.  It must have been galling for the British reporters to take direction from an American.

Bryson returns to his strongest theme in Little Dribbing—the joys of travel among the annoying idiosyncrasies of his adopted country.  Unlike Paul Theroux, who makes you not want to visit the countries about which he entertainingly writes, Bryson revels in the beauty of the UK, the ignorance of British clerks, and the unique history of minor lay-bys that dot his island's highways and byways. 

I’ve read most every book of Bryson’s—he’s that kind of writer.  Not one who produces series thrillers or mysteries, but one from whom you will effortlessly learn in beautifully written prose.  And, if you want to take on a 500-page science education (A must for those of us educated 50 years ago by the RSCJ’s.), A Short History of Nearly Everything is a must read.  Also suggest that you read Bryson’s Notes from a Small Island prior to Little Dribbing. 

Book Reviews - a Winter Collection

Five Skies by Ron Carlson, (Penguin, 2008

The beautiful skies of the high plateau in Southern Idaho are the tableau against which Carlson draws this compact tale of three lonely men who come together to construct a reality TV set.  Each has a difficult background:  Darwin, death of a spouse; Art, death of a brother and Ronnie, petty criminal.  The opportunity of a summer job with good pay brings them to the Idaho plateau where they establish camp and a work rhythm.  The set reveals as it is built, without much focus on the production itself.  The focus is on the development of trust, friendship and grief.  Highly recommended.

Fractured Continent: Europe’s Crises and the Fate of the West by Wlliam Drozdiak (W. W Norton & Company Ltd., 2017)

Taut read that covers a lot of territory—almost all of Europe.  In journalist style, Drozdiak delivers most pertinent 21st Century history about 13 European countries and Washington D.C.  How different it is today that at the close of the 20th Century when a united Europe seemed almost a certainty.  His thesis is that the rise of nationalism within the European countries has weakened the strength of numbers, threatens global trade, and leaves them weak and susceptible to Russian interference, if not takeover.  This is a good read if you follow U.S. and European current events and sometimes cannot figure out “the back story”.

Elizabeth Bishop:  A Miracle for Breakfast by Megan Marshall, (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017)

This is a new biography of Elizabeth Bishop (1911 – 1979), one of the U.S.’s greatest poets.  She was born in Lowell, MA.  Her father died when she was one and her mother was committed to an asylum when she was five.  She was raised by her mother’s family in Nova Scotia, a time she recalls fondly.  Her father’s wealthy family brought her to U.S. for a boarding high school and Smith College.   Early on, she acknowledged she was lesbian and had lots of lady friends throughout school.  Her great love was an architect from Brazil, Lota de Macedo Soares.  Elizabeth lived off and on in Brazil for years, and the country influenced her writing.  Her actual literary output was small, but perfect—100 poems.  She won the National Book Award, Pulitzer Prize and was U.S. Poet Laureate in 1959.

This biography is written by one of Bishop’s students at Harvard, so there are interesting insights into her professional life as well as her difficult, personal life.  If you are into poetry, this is a good read.

The Jaguar Smile: A Nicaraguan Journey by Salman Rushdie (Picador, 1987)

A short book that I listened to in the car, it was Rushdie’s first non-fiction book.  It details his three-week visit to Nicaragua in 1979, while the Sandinistas were in power.  He was invited by an arts organization, and in a style reminiscent of Paul Theroux, does little to paint a pretty picture of what he finds.  On the one hand, life is better, more democratic (if that means better) for the mestizos and indios.  On the other, the Sandinistas were enjoying power and money much the same way that that powerful people do.  Ties were close with Cuba, and the U.S., supporting the Contras, was hated.  

At the end of the book, there is an Epilogue that Rushdie wrote in the 90’s when the book was republished.  That should be read first to really benefit from the content of the book.  It provides the perspective of time.  Eventually the sanctions imposed by the U.S. choked the Nicaraguan economy and the Sandinistas were democratically voted out of power.  A good little book if you like history in the Americas.

Phineas Finn: The Irish Member by Anthony Trollope, originally published as a serial October 1867 to May 1868 in St Paul's Magazine, London, England.  Read by Librovox.org.

Charles Dickens and Anthony Trollope were contemporaries in the U.K. literary world.  So why is Dickens a household name and most readers have not heard of Trollope?  Some say Dickens was a more creative writer, with memorable characters and a unique knack for portraying hardscrabble London and general misery.  Trollope is gentler, easier to read (for me).  Dickens is the fruit cake and Trollope the egg custard—both lovely, but in different ways.  Trollope’s 40 novels usually run in series, and there is enjoyment in tracing the characters who appear, downstage, front and center, then in another book, upstage, a marginal figure.  

Phineas Finn is part of Trollope’s Pallisar Series.  Finn is Irish, a unique hero in any mid-19th century British book.  It deals with both British parliamentary politics of the 1860's, including voting reform (secret ballot and eliminating rotten boroughs and Irish tenant-rights) and Finn's romances with women of fortune, which would secure his financial future.  The education and the romance are never heavy-handed.  These would be excellent books to read to children as my grandmother did for me with Dickens’s novels.  They are also good books for listening.  They are large and heavy to tote as print books; and, if you miss a paragraph or two on the recording, it’s no big thing.  Recommended

"The Wanted" by Robert Crais (G.P. Putnam & Sons, 2018)

I liked this book the minute I looked inside: 307 pages, with large leading between the lines; short chapters and U.S. names – a comfort read.  I’m interviewing Crais, one of the U.S.’s bestselling mystery authors at the Tucson Festival of Books.  He has twenty books in his bibliography and is going strong--The Wanted is his new bestseller.

Crais handles the many elements of his mystery with ease.  He introduces characters that most readers know intimately; his protagonists, Elvis Cole and Joe Pike are featured in 16 of his books.  I've not read any of them, but  Elvis and Joe were immediately familiar to me.  I never felt like the backstory was missing.  His new characters, a devoted single mom, her teenage, spineless son and his wacky girlfriend, become embroiled with major crime due to the teens’ burglary spree.  There is a unique criminal team, who may be lovers, that provides a taste of comic relief—reminded me the radio comedians Bob and Ray (RIP), professional and droll. 

Crais’s writing style flows, carrying the reader in a bubble of good writing and thoughtful character development.  The tag lines that appear at the end of chapters bring characters further into the reader’s confidence. You are reading their minds.  It’s an elegant device and paces the plot. 

I enjoyed The Wanted.  It’s a great plane read (5 to 6 hours).  If Robert Crais is even a bit like Elvis Cole, I’ll be the privileged interviewer.  

Beautiful Pair of Memoirs by Lucette Lagnado, WSJ Feature Writer

The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit: A Jewish Family’s Exodus from Old Cairo to the New World, and The Arrogant Years: One Girl’s Search for Her Lost Youth from Cairo to Brooklyn, by Lucette Lagnado, (Ecco, 2008 and 2011.) - Review

I stumbled across these in a used bookstore.  Lucette Lagnado is familiar as a feature writer for the Wall Street Journal – usually interesting and often obscure articles, covering New York or Middle Eastern topics.  What a powerful treasure of information and family homage is captured within these books.  Sharkskin Suit is the Lagnado family’s life in Cairo, traditional and as secure as any Jews ever feel.  Her father Leon is the focus, his mysterious life as a trader, a bon-vivant, and a dispassionate husband and loving, yet absent, father.  His marriage was between a patriarchal, Sephardi Jew, Leon, and a beautiful, submissive, Syrian Jewish wife, Edith—and between Edith’s mother, abandoned by her husband and family, and Leon’s mother, the autocrat who ruled the house.  For a Gentile, the combination of regionally close, yet traditionally different, Jewish spouses (Syrian and Sephardic) was interesting.  Prayers are different, relationships are different, roles are different.  Naturally, Edith’s were purged. 

After Egypt took control of the Suez Canal, Jews began to leave—taking the opportunity to migrate somewhat thoughtfully.  By the time the Lagnados left Cairo, with 26 suitcases and $200, there were no choices.  They fled to Paris to a pauper’s life assisted by Jewish Relief.  Eventually, they made their way to the U.S., but Leon, crushed by the loss of his life in Cairo, never adapted.  He kept his merchant ways, selling ties out of a cardboard box, and scrupulously repaying the $2,000 loaned to him by Jewish Relief for fare from LeHarve to New York. 

The Arrogant Years is not so much about Lucette as about Edith, who blossomed in New York.  A skilled teacher of French before her marriage, she found work and a new life within the city library system accessioning books.  Stories of the siblings, a rebellious older sister and two older brothers, are told, but not in depth.  Lucette excelled in high school, struggled at Vassar, regrouped, graduated and began work as a reporter.  Throughout both books, her mysterious illness, finally diagnosed as Hodgkin’s disease, interstices her life with pain and despair.  The Arrogant Years, as with most memoirs, does not plow new ground of the immigrant, destitute Jews who thrive in the U.S., but is beautifully written with love and thanksgiving.

Both books are elegantly illustrated with photographs that bring the family to life.  Highly recommended for history lovers and those who appreciate well written memoirs.

“How to be both: A Novel” by Ali Smith (Pantheon Books, 2014) Review

A “tour de force” of inventive writing.  But for me, a struggle to both figure out and keep up with the double plots and the cross references bridging 500 years.  

How to be both is two unique stories:  a teenager, George/Georgia (actual name Georgia, “both” because she has her first stirrings of same-sex attraction), who has tragically lost her mother and seems abandoned by her father who mourns in drink and her brother too young to really understand; and a young woman in 15th century Ferrara, Italy, Francescho del Cossa, who is a masterful painter, posing as man to gain commissions.

The book’s “tie” is a fresco, seen by the mother in a magazine that prompts her to take both children out of school and drive to Ferrara – these frescos are not fictional.  Per Wikipedia, 

Palazzo Schifanoia is a Renaissance palace in Ferrara, Emilia-Romagna (Italy) built for the Este family. The name "Schifanoia" is thought to originate from "schivar la noia" meaning literally to "escape from boredom" which describes accurately the original intention of the palazzo and the other villas in close proximity where the Este court relaxed. The highlights of its decorations are the allegorical frescoes with details in tempera by or after Francesco del Cossa and Cosmè Tura, executed ca 1469–70, a unique survival of their time.

When I researched the palace after reading the book, I immediately recognized the work of Francesco del Cossa, though I have not visited Ferrara.  Having these in mind would enrich the reading.  

To soothe her loss, George/ia ditches school and spends her days at the National Museum in London in a room with a painting by del Cossa, as she imagines her mother did.  George’s time there becomes a study on the insensitive way most museum visitors dash past roomfuls of art, rushing to “complete the tour”.  I warmed to this activity and empathized with George’s precise method of examining all sections of a painting, thinking of each as a solo work.  del Cossa is known for his malicious depictions of stingy benefactors in the face of pigs and devils—totally missed if all you study is the face of the central character.   

To further confound readers, Pantheon issued two version of the book:  one with George/ia’s story first, the other with Francescho’s story first.  Mine began with George/ia, and that was difficult enough because you are thrust into the first scenes with no context.  However, Francescho’s would have been even more difficult as the first section.  

Smith’s writing pushes the envelope on guidance for the reader.  There is no dialogue punctuation – a blessing in a way because the flow is livelier.  There are sections of blank verse with no punctuation at all.  And there is this force that pulls the reader along because you hope that the next page will provide more comfort.

I came to this book after reading several NYT best sellers and recommended books for 2017. To me, they seemed pedestrian, too easy a read.  Ali Smith has two current bestsellers:  Autumn and Winter.  At the recommendation of Sam Sacks, reviewer for The Wall Street Journal, I began with her 2014 book.  Wish I had known what you know now, because then the read would have been enjoyable and challenging.  As it was, I struggled.  However, I highly recommend this book if you want to put your foot into the genre of a successful Scottish contemporary author.  This book summary on Amazon says it all.
 
Passionate, compassionate, vitally inventive and scrupulously playful, Ali Smith’s novels are like nothing else. Borrowing from painting’s fresco technique to make an original literary double-take, How to be both is a novel all about art’s versatility. It’s a fast-moving genre-bending conversation between forms, times, truths and fictions. There’s a Renaissance artist of the 1460s. There’s the child of a child of the 1960s. Two tales of love and injustice twist into a singular yarn where time gets timeless, structural gets playful, knowing gets mysterious, fictional gets real—and all life’s givens get given a second chance.

Amen.
 

"A Darker Sea: Master Commandant Putnam and the War of 1812" by James L. Haley, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2017

A good historical novel is a rare treasure.  Few authors want to take the research time to craft characters into past, engaging and educating the reader simultaneously—and do it accurately.

A Darker Sea is the second of Haley’s new series based on U.S. Naval history.  The first book of the series (though by no means the first book written by this honored Texas author) is The Shores of Tripoli.  See my January 2017 review. 

Like the first book, A Darker Sea is easy to read, with an engaging story, and an excellent description of why we fought the War of 1812, often considered the second U.S. war for independence.  The plot is not laden with nautical detail.  There is family lore, romance, bromance, action, and intrigue.  Highly recommended for U.S. history lovers.

What to look for next year?  In Haley’s own words, here are the eight scenarios he proposed for the series.  “I sent off an outline for eight interlocking novels that followed the adventures of a juvenile midshipman in the Barbary War, through the War of 1812, perhaps chasing pirates in the Caribbean in 1818, with the missionaries in Hawaii in the 1820s, in the Texas Revolution in 1836, and so on to the Civil War, when he would be a white-haired old commodore.”