Once There Were Wolves by Charlotte McConaghy

 

Last year I read Charlotte McConaghy's debut novel Migrations which I absolutely loved. Her new novel Once There Were Wolves deals with similar themes of ecological destruction and a young woman determined to restore the balance of nature. I also found it darker, more suspenseful, delving into the basic questions of human nature. 

The opening sentence is horrific, an introduction into Inti's experience of mirror-touch synesthesia, and throughout the novel this device takes readers into the physical experience of violence, and also love. 

Inti and her twin Aggie grew up with separated parents, their mother a cop in Australia while their father lived a sustainable life in Canada. Their dad taught them how to live in harmony with nature. Their mother taught them that every person is a potential threat. 

Inti has a condition in which she can feel in her body what she 

observes happening to others. When Aggie marries a man who abuses her, and Inti does what she must to protect her sister. Aggie never recovers.

The Scottish ecosystem in crisis, with deer destroying the vegetation, Itni is part of a team reintroducing the deer's natural predator--wolves. It had worked in Yellowstone National Park. If you want to save the planet, you have to start with the predators, Inti explains.

They want to fear the wolves because we don't want to fear each other.~from Once There Were Wolves by Charlotte McConaghy

The Scots hunted out the wolves hundreds of years ago to protect their grazing sheep and out of fear. But Inti knows that humans are the real killers. Even in remote Scotland, Aggie lives in terror. 

Inti and the local cop Duncan begin an affair; both are damaged souls with dark secrets. "Death gets under your skin," Duncan says; "you carry it with you." Like Inti, he has seen the violence men can inflict on women. 

Inti makes enemies as she clashes with the locals over the wolves. When one goes missing, the wolves are suspect. And over time, Inti and the cop Duncan are also implicated. 

The wolves must kill to survive. And sometimes, humans must do the same. 

McConaghy's vivid descriptions bring to life the beauty of nature and the wolves, and the destruction humans inflict on nature and each other.

I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

Once There Were Wolves

by Charlotte McConaghy

Flatiron Books

Pub Date: August 3, 2021

ISBN: 9781250244147

hardcover $27.99 (USD)

from the publisher

From the author of the beloved national bestseller Migrations, a #1 IndieNext pick, a gorgeous and pulse-pounding new novel set in the wild Scottish Highlands.

Inti Flynn arrives in Scotland with her twin sister, Aggie, to lead a team of biologists tasked with reintroducing fourteen gray wolves into the remote Highlands. She hopes to heal not only the dying landscape, but Aggie, too, unmade by the terrible secrets that drove the sisters out of Alaska.

Inti is not the woman she once was, either, changed by the harm she’s witnessed—inflicted by humans on both the wild and each other. Yet as the wolves surprise everyone by thriving, Inti begins to let her guard down, even opening herself up to the possibility of love. But when a farmer is found dead, Inti knows where the town will lay blame. Unable to accept her wolves could be responsible, Inti makes a reckless decision to protect them. But if the wolves didn’t make the kill, then who did? And what will Inti do when the man she is falling for seems to be the prime suspect?

Propulsive and spell-binding, Charlotte McConaghy's Once There Were Wolves is the unforgettable story of a woman desperate to save the creatures she loves—if she isn’t consumed by a wild that was once her refuge. 

Legends of the North Cascades by Jonathan Evison

 

Trauma destroys the lives of those who have lived through devastating events but it also impacts the lives of the people around the trauma victim. 

Legends of the North Cascades tells the story of two beings whose trauma leads them to isolate from society, each with a child they determine to protect. But isolating from society does not bring healing, and their post traumatic disorder worsens.

Dave hoped for a football scholarship but it eluded him; with few choices he enlisted in the Marines. He knew that on the field he was a determined, hard worker, a quick thinker whose insight made up for his slender size. He loved his country and he wanted to travel and to make a difference.

But after three tours in Iraq, Dave had lost his illusions. He returned home psychologically damaged to struggle on his own. His marriage floundered. They thought a child could change things, and during pregnancy they did join in expectation and joy. With Bella's birth, their problems worsened.

When his wife suddenly dies, Dave decides to take Bella to live in the North Cascades. He owed money and was going to lose the house. It was time to give up fitting into 'normal.' He and Bella would live off the land where they would be safe from the human world.

At first, Bella was happy and Dave was well organized and directed. Bella resisted attempts to bring her back into town. But over time, Dave's mental health deteriorated and Bella grapples with estrangement and loneliness.

Thousands of years before Dave and Bella came to the North Cascades, S'tka refused to join her clan when they migrate into the unknown lands beyond the mountains. As a female, she had suffered under male power, allowed to starve while pregnant and raped. She gives birth to N'ka and does everything she could to protect him. But her son grew up and pushed to find others, to expand his world. His mother insisted that others brought pain and put their lives at risk.

Jonathan Evison uses the two timelines to illustrate the universality of human experience, the worst and the best of society, and the damage we inflict on others. 

The children show great bravery and openness to finding the good in the world. 

Evison has written,

I believe in the power of stories to transform. I still think the novel is the greatest empathic window ever devised by humankind, and I think it would be a better world if everybody read at least one novel per week. Way better than if they watched Mad Men. Or played Farmville. I have one theme: reinvention. I believe people can change. I believe most people want to. I believe in forgiveness, forbearance, generosity, and humor in the face adversity. (https://s3.amazonaws.com/algonquin.site.features/revisedfundamentals/about-jonathan-evison.html)

Legends of the North Cascade offers unforgettable characters and a transformative story that will wring your heart and mend it again.

I received an advanced reading copy from the publisher. My review is fair and unbiased.

Legends of the North Cascades
by Jonathan Evison
Algonquin Books
Pub Date  June 8, 2021 
ISBN: 9781643750101
hardcover 26.95 (USD)

from the publisher

Dave Cartwright used to be good at a lot of things: good with his hands, good at solving problems, good at staying calm in a crisis. But on the heels of his third tour in Iraq, the fabric of Dave’s life has begun to unravel. Gripped by PTSD, he finds himself losing his home, his wife, his direction. Most days, his love for his seven-year-old daughter, Bella, is the only thing keeping him going. When tragedy strikes, Dave makes a dramatic decision: the two of them will flee their damaged lives, heading off the grid to live in the wilderness of the Pacific Northwest.

As they carve out a home in a cave in that harsh, breathtaking landscape, echoes of its past begin to reach them. Bella retreats into herself, absorbed by visions of a mother and son who lived in the cave thousands of years earlier, at the end of the last ice age. Back in town, Dave and Bella themselves are rapidly becoming the stuff of legend—to all but those who would force them to return home. 

As winter sweeps toward the North Cascades, past and present intertwine into a timeless odyssey. Poignant and profound, Legends of the North Cascades brings Jonathan Evison’s trademark vibrant, honest voice to bear on an expansive story that is at once a meditation on the perils of isolation and an exploration of the ways that connection can save us.

"A beautifully rendered and cinematic portrait of a place and its evolution through time . . . A story of survival and the love and devotion between parent and child.”—Jill McCorkle, author of Hieroglyphics 

Early Morning Riser, The Chanel Sisters, and News of the World

 

Last week I read two library books from my local library. 

Early Morning Riser by Katherine Heiny had glowing reviews about its humor. The novel is set in the Up North city of Boyne City, Michigan. Our library book club read the author's novel Standard Deviation a few years ago. I thought it would be a welcome bedtime read.

And it was that! I laughed out loud. Heiny knows the Up North culture, and through her character Jane, a young teacher new to the area, provides some very pointed humor. She mentions the iconic Kilwin's ice cream and places Michiganders will know.

It seemed to Jane that people who lived downstate had cabins in Northern Michigan, and people who lived in Northern Michigan had cabins in the Upper Peninsula, but where did people who lived in the Upper Peninsula have cabins? Canada? And where did Canadian people have cabins? At what point did there cease to be an appeal in going north and people gave up and bought time shares in Florida?

I loved the wacky, likable characters that surround Jane. Her love interest Duncan seems to have slept with every woman she meets. Duncan was burned by his first marriage to a beautiful, but controlling, woman. He still mows his exe's yard and fixes things at her house, although she has remarried; her husband is eccentric with endless special needs.

Duncan has taken under his wing Jimmy, a mentally challenged man. A tragic accident changes Jane's life and she assumes care for Jimmy along with Duncan. 

This charming novel has great heart and warmth. 

Available now

from the publisher

A wise, bighearted, boundlessly joyful novel of love, disaster, and unconventional family

Jane falls in love with Duncan easily. He is charming, good-natured, and handsome but unfortunately, he has also slept with nearly every woman in Boyne City, Michigan. Jane sees Duncan’s old girlfriends everywhere–at restaurants, at the grocery store, even three towns away.

While Jane may be able to come to terms with dating the world’s most prolific seducer of women, she wishes she did not have to share him quite so widely. His ex-wife, Aggie, a woman with shiny hair and pale milkmaid skin, still has Duncan mow her lawn. His coworker, Jimmy, comes and goes from Duncan’s apartment at the most inopportune times. Sometimes Jane wonders if a relationship can even work with three people in it–never mind four. Five if you count Aggie’s eccentric husband, Gary. Not to mention all the other residents of Boyne City, who freely share with Jane their opinions of her choices.

But any notion Jane had of love and marriage changes with one terrible car crash. Soon Jane’s life is permanently intertwined with Duncan’s, Aggie’s, and Jimmy’s, and Jane knows she will never have Duncan to herself. But could it be possible that a deeper kind of happiness is right in front of Jane’s eyes? A novel that is alternately bittersweet and laugh-out-loud funny, Katherine Heiny’s Early Morning Riser is her most astonishingly wonderful work to date.

*****

I read and enjoyed Judithe Little's historical novel Wickwhythe Hall, and a number of years back read Coco Chanel and the Pulse of History by Rhonda K. Garelick. I was interested in Little's new novel The Chanel Sisters, the story of Coco's youngest sister, Antoinette. 

The Chanel sisters Julia-Berthe, Adrienne, Gabrielle, and Antoinette lost their mother and were abandoned by their father, growing up at a convent orphanage. 

The Chanel sisters seek a path out of poverty through work or romance. Antoinette is essential to Coco's design career but she dreams of marriage. Little imagines a love interest that predates her historical marriage, and which explains her death in Argentina.

Readers will love these characters determined to rise above the circumstances of their birth, not only challenging social norms but changing them with fashions that freed women from constricting, ornamental clothing. 

Available now

from the publisher

A novel of survival, love, loss, triumph—and the sisters who changed fashion forever

Antoinette and Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel know they’re destined for something better. Abandoned by their family years before, they’ve grown up under the guidance of pious nuns preparing them for simple lives as the wives of tradesmen or shopkeepers. At night, their secret stash of romantic novels and magazine cutouts beneath the floorboards are all they have to keep their dreams of the future alive.

The walls of the convent can’t shield them forever, and when they’re finally of age, the Chanel sisters set out together with a fierce determination to prove themselves worthy to a society that has never accepted them. Their journey propels them out of poverty and to the stylish cafés of Moulins, the dazzling performance halls of Vichy—and to a small hat shop on the rue Cambon in Paris, where a business takes hold and expands to the glamorous French resort towns. But when World War I breaks out, their lives are irrevocably changed, and the sisters must gather the courage to fashion their own places in the world, even if apart from each other.

***** 

News of the World by Paulette Jiles is my library book club choice for May. I had a copy on Kindle, but when my husband tried to read it, he was frustrated by the lack of quotation marks. So, he purchased the audiobook.

We listened to the audiobook over three nights, two hours at a time. We were mesmerized by the characters and gorgeous writing. The narrator, Grover Garland, was terrific.

We both exclaimed at passages of great beauty; one became my #SundaySentence on Twitter.

With the release of the movie based on the book, starring the wonderful Tom Hanks, I expect most people have heard of this story of a Civil War veteran and the girl captured by natives and their fraught travels across Texas.  Capt. Kidd is to return to her extended family members, but becomes attached to her, and he has a deep understanding of the challenges she faces in reassimilation.

My fifth great-uncle Michael Rhodes, whose family were some of the first settlers in the Shenandoah Valley, was captured by Native Americans and taken to Ohio for three years before being returned in an exchange. I thought about him and wondered what his life was like. He saw his parents scalped, his siblings murdered. Characters in News talk about how quickly white settlers became acclimated to native life and have trouble reentering their old life.

I previous read Jiles's Simon the Fiddler, and was happy to meet him again in this novel. And early in my Kindle days, I read Jiles's novel The Color of Lightning. I have her Stormy Weather on Kindle waiting to be read.

from the publisher

In the aftermath of the Civil War, an aging itinerant news reader agrees to transport a young captive of the Kiowa back to her people in this exquisitely rendered, morally complex, multilayered novel of historical fiction from the author of Enemy Women that explores the boundaries of family, responsibility, honor, and trust.

In the wake of the Civil War, Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd travels through northern Texas, giving live readings from newspapers to paying audiences hungry for news of the world. An elderly widower who has lived through three wars and fought in two of them, the captain enjoys his rootless, solitary existence.

In Wichita Falls, he is offered a $50 gold piece to deliver a young orphan to her relatives in San Antonio. Four years earlier, a band of Kiowa raiders killed Johanna’s parents and sister; sparing the little girl, they raised her as one of their own. Recently rescued by the U.S. army, the ten-year-old has once again been torn away from the only home she knows.

Their 400-mile journey south through unsettled territory and unforgiving terrain proves difficult and at times dangerous. Johanna has forgotten the English language, tries to escape at every opportunity, throws away her shoes, and refuses to act “civilized.” Yet as the miles pass, the two lonely survivors tentatively begin to trust each other, forming a bond that marks the difference between life and death in this treacherous land.

Arriving in San Antonio, the reunion is neither happy nor welcome. The captain must hand Johanna over to an aunt and uncle she does not remember—strangers who regard her as an unwanted burden. A respectable man, Captain Kidd is faced with a terrible choice: abandon the girl to her fate or become—in the eyes of the law—a kidnapper himself.

Pew by Catherine Lacey

A town has a feeling, I remembered someone telling me long ago, because certain kinds of thought are contagious.~ from Pew by Catherine Lacey

I grew up in the sprawling suburbs of Detroit and lived in and around Philadelphia as a young adult. My first time in a small city of under 8,000 left me struggling. A woman told me that everyone needed to fit into a box, and no one knew what box to put me in. When I took up quilting, people relaxed. Quilters they knew. I finally fit into a box.

Nothing can be more closed than a faith community. The best are open and affirmative. The worst sort people reject outsiders who challenge their values. Been there, too. Are you with us or against us? And if you don't join them, you become the outsider, an enemy.

Some humans are comfortable with ambiguity, but most want to parse the world into black and white, good and bad, male and female, us and them, liberal and conservative.

Catherine Lacey's Pew introduces us to a character with no past, no name, no identity.

One Sunday morning a worshipping congregation in a small town finds a being sleeping on a pew. Out of Christian charity, a family takes the foundling home. They name the being Pew.

The foundling has no identifying characteristics and is mute in response to people's questions.

Clothing is offered to see if Pew chooses male or female attire. The pastor tries to learn Pew's age; there are rules about how things work based on age. A social worker and a physician are brought in to discover if Pew has suffered physical or mental abuse. Pew does not respond, will not disrobe, will not speak. Pew does not know the answers to the questions being asked.

Christian charity turns to self-protection, discomfort, and even fear.

This community is separate from the world and has their own ritual of forgiveness. Pew has appeared a few days before the festival. It unnerves the community.

There is a Shirley Jackson feel to the novel, The Lottery coming to mind. The small town, the closed society, the ritual of the scapegoat are in this novel.

Pew's voice takes us into some deep territory, showing what it is like to be on the receiving end of social pressure that seeks to categorize people---put them into a box.

Can't we just be and let be? Why do we have to 'fix' the things we don't understand? Must our bodily being determine our place in the human community?

Pew sometimes catches a visual memory, almost can articulate a past. But words fail, they are misunderstood, and eventually forgotten. Some things are incommunicable.

Members of the community project identities onto Pew, seeing what they want to see.

A woman tells Pew about her son’s faith journey. The son determined that to truly follow the teachings of Jesus one had to give up all attachments in the world. The son gradually let go of his identity, becoming one with all creation. Her son's mystical journey of ego death has shattered his mother and she hoped to discover Pew was her lost son. Pew is shuttled from the white community to the black side of town. An old African American woman sees the 'new jesus' in Pew.

People tell Pew their stories, revealing sorrows and horrible acts they would not confess to a community member.

There is a lot going on in this novel, and I can't whittle it down to one idea. Perhaps readers will all see their own story in the tale, project what they want to find. I will be ruminating on this one for a long while.

I was given access to a free ebook by the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

Read an excerpt at
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374230920

Pew
by Catherine Lacey
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Pub Date July 21, 2020
ISBN: 9780374230920
hardcover $26.00 (USD)

from the publisher

A figure with no discernible identity appears in a small, religious town, throwing its inhabitants into a frenzy

In a small, unnamed town in the American South, a church congregation arrives for a service and finds a figure asleep on a pew. The person is genderless and racially ambiguous and refuses to speak. One family takes in the strange visitor and nicknames them Pew.

As the town spends the week preparing for a mysterious Forgiveness Festival, Pew is shuttled from one household to the next. The earnest and seemingly well-meaning townspeople see conflicting identities in Pew, and many confess their fears and secrets to them in one-sided conversations. Pew listens and observes while experiencing brief flashes of past lives or clues about their origin. As days pass, the void around Pew’s presence begins to unnerve the community, whose generosity erodes into menace and suspicion. Yet by the time Pew’s story reaches a shattering and unsettling climax at the Forgiveness Festival, the secret of who they really are—a devil or an angel or something else entirely—is dwarfed by even larger truths.

Pew, Catherine Lacey’s third novel, is a foreboding, provocative, and amorphous fable about the world today: its contradictions, its flimsy morality, and the limits of judging others based on their appearance. With precision and restraint, one of our most beloved and boundary-pushing writers holds up a mirror to her characters’ true selves, revealing something about forgiveness, perception, and the faulty tools society uses to categorize human complexity.

One of Vogue's Books We Can’t Wait to Read in 2020, one of the Wall Street Journal's Nine Best Books to Read This Spring, one of BuzzFeed's Most Anticipated Books of 2020, one of Vulture's Books We Can't Wait to Read in 2020, one of Refinery29's 25 Books You'll Want to Read This Summer, and one of The Millions Most Anticipated Books of the First Half of 2020

Perfume River Nights by Michael P. Maurer

Michael P. Maurer survived the Vietnam War. He needed to give a voice to the men who died. He worked on his novel for a dozen years and when it was published he donated the royalties to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund.

I was afraid of Perfume River Nights, afraid to know the drudgery and fear, the earnest naivety, the dark passions of war. But what better time to read it than for Memorial Day?

***

As a girl, I wrote in my diary that the boys were talking about the Vietnam War and fear of the draft. I felt bad, knowing my safety, and thought it unfair.

I didn't understand that war. I had not studied any war but the Revolutionary War; the teachers never seemed to get have time for the Civil War and certainly not the wars of the 20th c. The war movies I had seen, like The Bridge on the River Kwai, reinforced the wasteful stupidity of war.

Like most of my cohorts, I was anti-war. At sixteen, I wrote anti-war poetry. Such arrogance! What did I know to speak for veterans?

my poem in the school newspaper

A neighbor was drafted. Mom wrote him letters. He came home and told Mom he couldn't understand the way soldiers had treated the women. He had two sisters. In my innocence, I didn't understand then what he meant.

At college, young men were returning from Vietnam to complete their disrupted education. One man, who had been non-infantry, told how he learned never to wake his vet brother because his first instinct was to kill. I listened to his stories but did not suspect the unspoken.

***

Maurer's novel follows Singer, an earnest eighteen-year-old with patriotic dreams of glory. He bonds with the men and is eager to learn from them. When they are deployed he hears crying and wonders, Can it really be that bad?

Yes. It is that bad.

When he sees an unarmed enemy he doesn't shoot. The hate comes after his friends are killed.

Readers understand the physical, mental, and spiritual toil war exacts on Singer. We feel the desperation, the dirt in our face making its way into our nose and throat. We feel the paranoiac fear of the unseen enemy. The anger and hate.

And the profound guilt that accompanies the desire for revenge, the self-questioning when we know we have been inalteringly changed into someone we no longer recognize.

He had been innocent and naive then, younger and less angry. Now he was angry all the time. Angry at the deaths, the stupidity of it all, and at incompetent leaders who saw their men as pawns toward obtaining body counts and their next promotion, Angry at the things he'd done and at the knowledge that he would do more.~from Perfume River Nights by Michael P. Maurer

Singer realizes that the enemy likely felt the same way. Soldiers were all pawns in a game in which nothing seemed to be truly gained.

Singer grieves for the men who died and also for the boy he had been, the loss of his goodness and values. Revenge was just another lie.

He makes a choice, a crazy choice, but one that will save him.

***

My dad was to go to Korea until Mom became pregnant with me. I asked him about it once, and he said he would have gone to war. But I could never imagine it. Dad, who went hunting and never shot a deer. Dad who went fishing and threw the fish back into the lake. Dad who during WWII raised rabbits and then couldn't kill them for food. Dad, the soft touch. There were no war stories from my family, the last soldier having served in the Civil War. I can't imagine Dad killing a human being.

And yet, there is the story he told of first meeting my mother's grandparents when they were dating. My great-grandmother had tasked my grandfather with killing a litter of kittens. He asked my dad to do it. It shook dad. I supposed he did it because he never told a story about setting them free. Is there a killer in all of us, just waiting for instructions?

One man I know did have a war story to tell. Floyd Erickson, from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and a skier, volunteered for the 10th Mountain Division during WWII. (read about them in The Winter Army.) He was on the side of a mountain in Italy when his best friend died. He prayed to God, asking to be spared. In return, he would change his life. Floyd survived, and as his wife often said, he did change his life. His church and his God and his family were the bedrock of his life. Last I knew, he still could fit into his uniform.

When he was a kid our son watched To Hell and Back with Audie Murphy on tv and his obsession shifted from dinosaurs to WWII. He spent years reading everything he could, became an expert on aircraft and tanks, expanding his interest into other 20th c wars. At school a boy teased that he like war. No, our son replied. He hated war. He read about war because it was the scariest thing he knew, just like dinosaurs and big trucks had fascinated him earlier in his life.

And so I read about war, too. Because it is the most awful I can imagine. In the comfort of my home, even in lockdown during a pandemic, I am safe and protected. I want to understand what I have not experienced.

***

Perfume River Nights took me on the transformative journey of one eighteen-year-old soldier. It made me better understand what I don't know. I won't soon forget these characters.

Michael P. Maurer is a Twitter friend through David Abram's Sunday Sentence on Twitter. Learn more about Maurer at
http://www.michaelpmaurer.com/about.html
Read about Maurer and the novel at
https://www.twincities.com/2016/07/01/perfume-river-nights-michael-maurer/

I purchased the book.

Perfume River Nights
by Michael P. Maurer
North Star Press
Published June 2016
Paperback
ISBN: 978-1-68201-022-8

The Overstory by Richard Powers

The Overstory by Richard Powers was on my TBR bookshelf and when I saw it was the November choice for the Now Read This online book club, sponsored by the PBS Newshour and the New York Times Book Review, I decided to participate.

In The Overstory, Powers gives readers nine characters whose stories entwine over the course of the novel. Each has an experience that alters their awareness, motivates them to resist the status quo, and for some, culminating in acts of eco-terrorism.

Trees, forests, ecosystems, nature--these are the stunning stars of the novel, that which gives meaning to our assorted human characters and spurs their community. They are described in gorgeous, vivid language.

It is a testament that this novel made me reconsider my personal choices. I have read nonfiction books about climate change, rising waters, the impact of animal farming, the ways we need to alter how we live. But this novel had me second-guessing my choices.

We are installing new carpeting and porcelain tile to repace vinyl tile and an awful maroon carpet. What environmental damage am I causing because I want a prettier home? 

"We have a Midas problem. There's no endgame, just a stagnant pyramiding scheme. Endless, pointless prosperity," says the creator of an alternate reality online computer game. But he was talking to me and you.

I look at the paper towels and the paper napkins on my countertop and shudder. What about the very book I read, made of paper? Yes! It is recycled paper, saving 657 trees with the first printing! AND 614,962 gallons of water, 206,700pounds of greenhouse gas emissions, 62,925 pounds of solid waste. We CAN DO BETTER!

"The best arguments in the world won't change a person's mind. The only thing that can do that is a good story," one of the characters states.

The Overstory is that kind of story. It can change your mind.

The novel won the Pulitzer Prize.

The Overstory
by Richard Powers
W. W. Norton
$18.95 paperback

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. The publisher, Little, Brown, created a #Readalong leading up the movie release of the novel. I got on the bandwagon, seeing a chance to knock off one more book from my growing TBR shelf.

At first, I kept to the suggested reading schedule. But there came a point when I had to plow on! I was super invested in the character of Theo Decker.

The novel begins with thirteen-year-old Theo and his mother at the New York City art museum to see the 16th c Dutch painting of a Goldfinch. A terrorist bomb explodes leaving Theo alone with a dying man and the vision of the girl who was with him. The man tells him to get the painting and gives him his signet ring before he becomes unconscious.

From this time forward, for Theo "life is catastrophe." He struggles with the change from being a kid who was loved to a kid who is ignored and uncared for. He finds a soul mate friend equally crushed by life and they spiral into the escapism of drugs and alcohol. When he is taken in by a kind mentor who gives him a trade and a job he commits fraud to pay the bills. He is in love with the girl from the museum who knows being together would reinforce their PTSD and sadness. And the guilt of secreting the painting away into hiding, the fear of imprisonment, hangs over Theo.

The very painting image is symbolic in the many ways Theo is shackled.

The book is long. As a deep psychological study, there is a lot of internal stuff going on, right to the ending and the long speeches about Big Things. But I love this stuff. It's like a Russian novel with Dickensian characters set with 21st c. problems.

At one point I stopped, crying burning tears. I had read,

And--maybe it's ridiculous to go on in this vein, although it doesn't matter since no one's going to see this--but does it make any sense at all to know that it ends badly for all of us, even the happiest of us, and that despite all this, as cruelly as the game is stacked, that it's possible to play it with a kind of joy?

I thought of my mother. The Jitterbug Queen of the WWII Sheridan Park housing project, the outgoing girl who tripped Dad to get his attention on the bus. Mom who loved a party. Who sang snippets of songs--"One Meatball!", "Boogy Woogy Bugle Boy," "Mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy." She literally would give you the pin off her sweater--and the sweater if you admired it too.

Mom who felt God has abandoned her, the good girl, when she developed psoriasis at sixteen, was crippled in her neck at twenty-one, whose hands at fifty were like closed claws. Mom who tried every treatment from mercury cream to cortisone to light therapy to Methotrexate to alleviate her symptoms and decrease the skin lesions that covered 90% of her body. Her life was a catastrophe of pain and she was not chagrined to die of cancer at age 58.

And yet--and yet--Mom did play it with a kind of joy. She lost herself for hours in oil painting. She formed a weekly card group. Mom loved to read until the early morning hours, her interests ranging from British kings and queens to thrillers and horror. As a teen, I picked up her paperbacks and read them, diverse books including Avalon by Anya Seton, The Fixer by Bernard Malamud, and Division Street by Studs Terkel.

Theo's friend Boris excitedly exclaims that he has learned that one can do all of the wrong things and yet still life can turn things out right. His mentor Hobie forgives him his sins as he knows he also has sinned. Theo has a conversion, a Damascus moment, and makes restitution to those he has wronged.

Theo knows life sucks but he gets his happy ending, a good enough life. An appreciation for beauty, doing the right thing, accepting we are all flawed and weak and capable of even murder and yet---and yet--there is art and there is joy to be found.

Night of Miracles by Elizabeth Berg

Night of Miracles by Elizabeth Berg revisits characters from The Story of Arthur Truluv. I enjoyed Truluv very much and looked forward to this novel. (Read my review here.)

In Truluv, the elderly Arthur mourns his wife but carries on by investing in others, a truly loving man who rescues a lonely teenager and befriends a cantankerous neighbor lady, Lucille. Arthur dies but leaves his home to the teenager, who rents it to Lucille who, thanks to Arthur's encouragement,  is teaching baking classes.

The family who moves into Lucille's old house is dealing with a health crisis and Lucille helps care for their son. She hires an assistant who has just left an unhappy marriage. And meantime, Tiny and Monica are carrying torches for each other at the local cafe' but are unable to work up the courage to say anything.

As much as I enjoyed Truluv, I was not captivated by Miracle.

Early on, I was confused by too many characters, introduced in their separate stories. There was way too much space spent on the baking of cakes--meanwhile, the would-be lovers worry about weight and food. First I was craving a lush moist cake or snickerdoodles then I was reminded I am on a diet. I was not taken by the miraculous ending. Not my kind of book at all. Way too much sugar. But if you love It's a Wonderful Life, dive right in. This is your book! Too much reality isn't good for us anyway.

I received a free ebook from the publisher in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Night of Miracles
by Elizabeth Berg
Random House
Pub Date 13 Nov 2018
ISBN 9780525509509
PRICE $26.00 (USD)

Read my review of Berg's novel on George Sand, The Dream Lover, here.

Read about seeing Berg speak at a local library here.

A Mixed Bag of Mini-Reviews

Thanks to the local library I was able to read Jesmyn Ward's Sing, Unburied, Sing.

As I read Sing, Unburied, Sing, I kept worrying that something horrendous was going to happen, something I could not bear. The feeling of impending tragedy was ominous. The characters were well drawn, their stories heart-rending. They will live with me for a long while.

#Hockeystrong by Erika Robuck

My family was never into sports. We were given tickets to see several hockey games at Michigan State but that is my sum experience with the sport. But I can appreciate a good social commentary.

This book dissects the crazy things parents will do when their kids enjoy a sport, making a game into a fetish and giving up all control to the machinations of an obsessed coach. I’d have laughed at the extreme things they do...except I was so appalled. Over the top, hilarious, and disturbing—the novel left me grateful we were never #Hockeystrong.

I purchased an ebook.

Book Club Reads

Both my book clubs have recently read Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue much to my pleasure. Overall, everyone enjoyed the book. Here is the review I wrote after reading it in 2016:

I was thrilled to win Behold the Dreamers on Goodreads Giveaways! After reading it, I am grateful to have won it. It is a beautifully written, deep, and thoughtful exploration of the oldest theme in American literature: The American Dream. What makes this treatment stand out is the juxtaposition of the dreamers who hope to achieve the dream against the family who already lives the dream.

Jende and Neni have come to New York City hoping for a better life. Neni is a strong-willed woman who defied her father to marry Jende. She is determined to get an education and a career. Jende was forbidden to marry Neni, and when she became pregnant her father had Jende imprisoned. In 2007, now together and living in Harlem, Neni is in school and Jende has landed a posh job as a chauffeur to a Lehman Brothers executive. They are full of hope for the future. All they need is to become permanent residents.

Jende's boss Clark and his wife Cindy are successful, rich, beautiful people, who have come up from the lower and middle classes. In truth Clark is a workaholic whose moral sense must be suppressed as he conforms to the business ethics of Lehmans, while Cindy obsesses over fitting in, passing as one of the 1% to maintain her status.

As the two couples struggle with their personal demons, watching their dreams unravel, choices are made that will alter their lives forever.

I enjoyed this book on so many levels. Mbue is a wonderful storyteller, her characters are vivid and unforgettable. The treatment of the immigrant experience and American immigration law is relevant and revealing.

I loved how Jende and Neni were hard-working idealists about America. The battle between Clark's Midwest values and the realities of Wall Street destroy him while his wife escapes into the oblivion of drugs and alcohol. Cindy and Clark's son Vince understands the spiritual death of American society, dropping out to find a life worth living. I loved the ending as Jende and Clark meet a final time, no longer boss and servant, but as men recognizing their mutual struggle to do what is best for their families.

It impressed me that Mbue, born in Cameroon and living in America for ten years, has a masterful writing style and a deep and intelligent insight into the psyche of both immigrant and American. This is her first book, and I can't wait to read more from Mbue.

I received a free book from Random House in exchange for a fair and unbiased review. (less)

Another book club selection this month was Barbara Kingsolver's 2001 book Animal Vegetable Miracle: A Year of Food Life.

Had I read this when it came out it would have made a bigger impact on me. Most of my library book club was not inspired and many did not finish the book. Several of us admitted the information was no longer fresh. The inserted essays seemed to put people off from reading it.

I commend the message of the book to eat local, to raise your own food, and to be concerned about the impact of factory farming and processed foods.

The Last Neanderthal Reimagines A Shared Past

In her new novel, The Last Neanderthal, Claire Cameron draws on new scientific information to recreate the world when our human ancestors and Neanderthals coexisted. Of course, DNA sequencing of Neanderthals has proven that they are also part of our ancestral heritage. No longer can we imagine that human superiority overcame an animalistic, inferior group. So what then did cause the extinction of the Neanderthal population?

In this novel, Girl is part of a small family group that just survives, living in isolation on their territory. Big Mama is in her early thirties and her body is failing. An older sibling has already joined her mate's family. Girl has a younger brother, Him. They have allowed a hanger-on, Runt, to join the family. Runt is small, talks too much, and is without the Neanderthal musculature and bone structure. But if he is weaker than Girl he also is brave and resourceful.

During the time of the fish run the local Neanderthal population gathers at the river to feast on spawning salmon, intermingle, and mate with individuals outside of the family group. This year will be Girl's time to mate and leave.

In alternating chapters, the contemporary foil to Girl is the archaeologist Rose who is excavating Girl's skeleton. Rose is independent, strong, and a leader, like Girl. Rose is also pregnant, as was Girl.

The two stories lines offer a contrast and comparison. The one difference is that Rose has a support group around her, for human society evolved through a social contract beyond the family group. Girl, on the other hand, has lost her family and finds no one at the summer river. She is vulnerable and alone--and doomed.

Humans' larger social groups allow them to share innovations and new technology. The Neanderthals' isolation limits their advancement, but they seem to have an instinctual race memory as well as acquired knowledge that is passed through generations. Girl pushes away abstract thinking when it arises as it interferes with the alertness that guarantees her survival.

Readers will compare this novel to Jean Auel's 1980 blockbuster The Clan of the Cave Bear. I have not reread the Auel book since it's debut and will not comment on a comparison. I will be interested to hear how Auel fans will react to Cameron's novel based on new research, but also on how her characterization of Girl and her presentation of Neanderthal and human interaction compare to Auel's book.

I have read some reviews by Goodreads readers who did not like Rose. Another reader pointed out that being a female scientist in a male-dominated field is hard. Rose needs to be dedicated, single-minded, and protective of her work. I liked Rose as a foil to Girl. Both are dominant, capable women. They allow readers to connect the similarities and differences of women's experiences across the millennium.

Overall, I enjoyed reading this novel. I did have questions about Girl's concrete vs. abstract thinking and asked Ms. Cameron if she would clarify. I wrote,

Dear Ms. Cameron,
I have read your new book through NetGalley. I was hoping you would answer a question I have about Girl.  

At times she seems to draw on instinct, focused on the concrete and the 'now'. But at times she also shows an ability to imagine another's motives. For instance, she sees a calf and thinks "From his skitterish eyes, it was clear that he would have crawled back inside her belly if given the chance." This abstract thinking is what I am wondering about. 

Can you clarify your understanding of the Neanderthal mind and if this is an ability unique to Girl or if this is a new understanding of the species as a whole? 

I received a nice reply.

Hi Nancy,
I often get the same questions over and over. I don't mind at all, as I understand that they are fundamental to the experience of reading the book. Occasionally, though, I get a question that shows how thoroughly a reader has engaged with what I was trying to do. Your question feels like this to me. Thank you for asking. 

My idea was that Girl has a stronger connection between her mind and body than we do. For example, she would never get angry at herself for eating at extra cookie. If she could witness me scolding myself for eating a cookie, as many of us do, she would wonder who I was talking to-- there is only one me? I've often wondered why we have this split sense of ourselves, of the mind vs. the body. Girl would just simply eat a cookie.  

But, Girl is also a hunter. I read about animals and the new theories about how their minds work. One book that I particularly love is Frans De Wall, ARE WE SMART ENOUGH TO KNOW HOW SMART ANIMALS ARE? He talks about how we think of intelligence as a cognitive ladder, that the smarter are at the top. But when breaking down the different skills that animals have, this clearly isn't true. One of his frequently cited examples is that squirrels can remember where they cached hundreds of nuts a season, whereas a human could never do this. Does this mean a squirrel is smarter? No, but it does show the difference between their intelligence and ours. 

When you apply this kind of non-hierarchical thinking to hunters, the more they can get into the mind of their prey, the more successful they will be in making a catch. The hunter, be it either a leopard, Wildcat, or Girl, has to anticipate what their prey might do. What does the prey want? What might it do next? Girl was such a good hunter because she was also good at anticipating others needs. 

That is the long answer. The short one is that I was trying to think of Girl has having a different kind of intelligence that wasn't necessarily better or worse than ours. Just different. In reality, we know very little about how Neanderthals thought, so I extrapolated from what we know about the mind to imagine my own answers.

I hope that answers your question. Thank you, again, for it.
Best,
Claire

Cameron discovered she has 2.5% Neanderthal DNA and this novel is not an exploration of 'the other' as much as an imagining of our common ancestry.

I expect this book to interest many readers and be a big hit.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

The Last Neanderthal
Claire Cameron
Little, Brown & Company
ISBN: 9780316314480
$26.00 hardcover

Spoils by Brian Van Reet

Spoils  takes readers into the Iraq war, stripping away the facade of accepted views of the enemy and the justification of war to reveal the complicated reality.

Debut author Brian Van Reet knows his subject. He left university to enlist in the U. S. Army after the September 11 attacks, serving as a tank crewman in Iraq and earning a Bronze Star for valor. After his discharge, Van Reet returned to his studies and to writing.

From the viewpoint of  the American characters, we learn of the hardships and boredom of war, the crazy randomness of violence, and the gap between the reason and the reality of war.

The Iraqi characters shed light on the history of the conflict and the changing nature of jihad under extremists and after America invaded Iraq.

"I always had an idea of what the Americans would be like. But they are different than I thought. They're just people."

"There comes a time for each of us when we realize the truth about the enemy. Which is that he is not an idea, or some faceless demon. He is a man. And every man is much like ourselves."

Cassandra Wigheard is a nineteen-year-old American soldier serving as a tank gunner. She is aware of the gap between the political hype about Operation Iraqi Freedom and the reality that the army's purpose is to kill and destroy. She joined the army to be different, to "escape a hard life for one she hoped would be harder." She is appalled by the rape of another female soldier, and at her fellow soldier's callousness.

Abu Al-Hool is a dedicated mujaheddin who sees radicalized jihadists taking over. He left his privileged life to join something bigger, to shape the world. Now, with the murder of women and children and the rise of Osama, he questions his place in the jihad. Dr. Walid, a leader whose motto was "Jihad and the rifle alone," is taking over power.

Sargent Sleed joined the army to find a 'higher purpose,' but instead makes bad decisions, causing the deaths of Iraqi civilians, which he covers up.

Cassandra is captured by the group led by Dr. Walid and Abu Al-Hool, leading Al-Hool to make a fatal choice.

There is no sensationalizing of war, no graphic details of violence. My reaction was more intellectual than visceral. But that makes me happy--I can't read graphic violence.

The publisher writes,"Depicting a war spinning rapidly out of control, destined to become a modern classic, Spoils is an unsparing and morally complex novel that chronicles the achingly human cost of combat."

That about sums it up for me.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Spoils
Brian Van Reet
Little, Brown & Co.
Publication April 18, 2017
$26 hard cover
ISBN: 9780316316163

2016 Reviewed Books: Fiction and Nonfiction

Many of the books I read or reviewed this year were from major or established writers.

FICTION

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles was my favorite book of the year; its about a man who adjusts to remarkable circumstances and earns the love and respect of even his enemies.


Moonglow by Michael Chabon was inspired by his grandfather's stories about WWII. Funny, tragic, and most wonderful.  

A Doubter's Almanac by Ethan Canin is the harrowing story of how a man pressured to achieve greatness brings his undoing.

The Eastern Shore by Ward Just. A retired journalist remembers the changing role of media in the 20th c.

Everyone Brave is Forgiven by Chris Cleeve is a WWII love story inspired by Cleeve's grandfather's war experience on Malta.

The Summer Before the War by Helen Simonson, A woman who comes to a tach in a English village just before WWI and experiences the social changes war brings.

War and Turpentine by Stefan Hertmans is the author's family story during the Rape of Belgium.

The Last Painting of Sara De Vos by Dominic Smith is inspired by a real life forgotten 16th c Dutch artist. The forging and theft of a painting brings moral complications.

To the Bright Edge of the World by Eowyn Ivey is historical fiction about exploration and life in early Alaska.

The Wonder by Emma Donoghue. A nurse trained in the Crimean War is hired to watch a miracle child who has stopped eating.

Before the Fall by Noah Hawley is a thriller that thoughtfully addresses issues of the media and privacy.

The Last Days of Night by Graham Moore. A lawyer gets mixed up in the AC/DC war betweeen Tesla, Edison, and Westinghouse.

At the Edge of the Orchard by Tracy Chevalier. Historical fiction about settlers in the Black Swamp of Ohio and their war over apples.

I Will Send Rain by Rae Meadows is about a family unraveling during the Dust Bowl.

Dark Matter by Blake Couch is a sci-fi thriller about a man trapped in alternative realities.

Barren Cove by Ariel Winter imagines a world where robots rule humans, a smart retelling of Wuthering Heights.

Zero K by Don DiLillo probes existential questions when a man's estranged father chooses a cryogenic death.

The Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell crosses time to see how humans have destroyed or ca save the planet.

The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi is set in a dystopian future where Americans are at war over water.

The Language of Dying by Sarah Pinsborough tells of a daughter caring for a dying parent while visited by fantastic visions.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman is a lyrical fantasy of childhood peopled by monsters and saviors.

Faithful by Alice Hoffman will break your heart and mend it again as a young woman must rebuild her life after a tragic accident.

The Unseen World by Liz Moore: A daughter searches for her father's mysterious past through computer coded hints.

Leaving Blythe River by Catherine Ryan Hyde is a story of personal growth; a teenager seaches the wilderness for his missing father.

Damaged by Lisa Scottoline has Mary DiNunzio defend a special needs child.

The Female Detective by Andrew Forrester collects the first female detective stories.

*****

NONFICTION

Victoria: The Queen by Julia Baird reveals the surprising woman behind the crown.

For the Glory: Eric Liddel's Journey from Olympic Champion to Modern Martyr releats the story of the runner and missionary and his tragic death in China.

Hero of the Empire by Candice Miller follows Winston Churchill's journey to become a hero in the Boer War.

The Road to Little Dribbing by Bill Bryson revisits the Britain of his earlier book, recounting how it has changed.

When We Are No More: How Digital Memory is Shaping our Future by Abby Smith Rumsey considers the evolving challenges in the storage of information.

Lit Up by David Dency explores the impact of  literature on students in today's classrooms.


The Books That Changed My Life: 100 Remarkable People Write About Books by Bethanne Patrick reveals how books impact lives.

The Fictional 100 by Lucy Pollard-Gott presents the top 100 characters from literature.

You Must Change Your Life: The Friendship of August Rodin and Rainer Maria Rilke by Rachel Corbett looks at how the artist influenced the poet's work and life.

Constance Fenimore Woolston by Anne Boyd Rioux is a biography of a gifted forgotten writer and friend of Henry James.

Mad Enchantment: Claude Monet and the Painting of the Water Lilies reveals the artist's life and work in context of WWI.

Sing for Your Life is Daniel Bergner's book about Ryan Speedo Greene's rise from the ghetto to international opera star.

Angelic Music by Corey Mean discusses the rise and fall in popularity of Benjamin Franklin's harmonium. 

World's Elsewhere by Andrew Dickson explores Shakespeare's influence across the world.=

How William Shakespeare Changed the Way We Talk by Jan Sutcliffe is a beautifully illustrated book for children.

Such Mad Fun is Jane Hall Cutler's story of her grandmother, a 1930s Hollywood screenwriter.

Who Knew? by Robert Cutietta is a collection from his radio show about classical music.

The Illustrated Book of Sayings by Ellis Francis Sanders presents illustrated sayings from around the world that don't sensibly translate into English.

You're Saying It Wrong! by Kathryn and Ross Petras helped me know how to pronounce words I had only before seen in writing.

The Dog Merchants: Inside the Big Business of Breeders, Pet Stores, and Rescues by Kim Kavin is a warning to dog lovers everywhere to think before they buy.

CLASSICS

The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis by Max Schulman are hilarious stories of teen angst.

Love for Lydia by H. E. Bates follows the destruction of hearts and bodies left by a new girl in the 'hood at hundred years ago.

Augustus by John Williams is an exploration of power through the life of the Roman ruler.

The Nutmeg Tree and Cluny Brown by Margery Sharp are wonderful social satires of early 20th c Britain. One of my favorite writers.

The Birthday Boys by Beryl Bainbridge allows the lost men of the tragic Scott Expedition to tell their stories.

On the Black Hill by Bruce Chawton is his first novel about twin brothers who watch the world changing while they remain bound to the past.