Nora: A Love Story of Nora and James Joyce by Nuala O'Connor

"To Jim I am Ireland."~ from Nora by Nuala O'Connor

In her novel Nora, Nuala O'Connor channels Nora Barnacle as she tells the story of her life with James Joyce. Warned against him as a wild and savage madman, Nora affirms that part of him, for she also has a wildness inside.

I was drawn in by Nora's distinct voice and her unorthodox, independent character.

The novel covers Nora's entire life, from the workhouse to meeting Joyce, agreeing to go abroad with him without marriage, their rise from poverty to Jim's financial success, and their marital and family troubles. 

Warning: The novel begins with a sexual encounter and there will be more later in the novel.

The novel begins on Juneteenth 1904 when a young Jim Joyce walked out with twenty-year-old Nora Barnacle. She understands what he wants and they have their first sexual encounter. Jim had found someone adventurous and sensual; no one of 'his class' could be so open and willing. They stayed together until Jim's death. 

Jim worked uninspiring jobs to support them as he wrote his stories and worked on his novel. He drank too much and spent too much. 

Nora was left alone too much and had to scramble to put food on the table and raise their children. Like the wives of so many writers, Nora's fidelity and support required her to take on the greater part of providing for their basic needs. She found allies and friends, including Jim's brother.

The early part of the novel is wonderful. It has a nice continuity and I felt immersed in the story. The later part of their life jumps across time, hitting on important events. The story of their daughter's mental illness could merit a novel all its own.

This is the story of an independent, strong woman who defies social convention for a relationship that evolves and endures over a lifetime. The novel will appeal to readers interested in Joyce but also to the broader readership of women's fiction and even romance.

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

Find a Reading Guide here.

Nora: A Love Story of Nora and James Joyce
by Nuala O'Connor
Harper Perennial and Paperbacks
Pub Date: January 5, 2021   
ISBN: 9780062991720
paperback $16.99 (USD)

from the publisher

Acclaimed Irish novelist Nuala O’Connor’s bold reimagining of the life of James Joyce’s wife, muse, and the model for Molly Bloom in Ulysses is a “lively and loving paean to the indomitable Nora Barnacle” (Edna O’Brien).

Dublin, 1904. Nora Joseph Barnacle is a twenty-year-old from Galway working as a maid at Finn’s Hotel. She enjoys the liveliness of her adopted city and on June 16—Bloomsday—her life is changed when she meets Dubliner James Joyce, a fateful encounter that turns into a lifelong love. Despite his hesitation to marry, Nora follows Joyce in pursuit of a life beyond Ireland, and they surround themselves with a buoyant group of friends that grows to include Samuel Beckett, Peggy Guggenheim, and Sylvia Beach.

But as their life unfolds, Nora finds herself in conflict between their intense desire for each other and the constant anxiety of living in poverty throughout Europe. She desperately wants literary success for Jim, believing in his singular gift and knowing that he thrives on being the toast of the town, and it eventually provides her with a security long lacking in her life and his work. So even when Jim writes, drinks, and gambles his way to literary acclaim, Nora provides unflinching support and inspiration, but at a cost to her own happiness and that of their children.

With gorgeous and emotionally resonant prose, Nora is a heartfelt portrayal of love, ambition, and the quiet power of an ordinary woman who was, in fact, extraordinary.

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

Like millions of others, I watched the 1981 Great Performances television series of Brideshead Revisited--several times--and read the paperback published at that time.

Little, Brown and Company has reissued a 75th anniversary edition of the novel and I used this as an excuse to revisit Waugh's book.

I loved the nostalgia and longing regret for lost places and relationships. But the novel is not just a romance, or the story of a young man's first love and glimpse into another world. 

The story opens during WWII in England. A disillusioned, thirty-nine-year-old Capt. Ryder and his platoon have been moved to a new location, which he recognizes as the home of his college friend. 

I had been here before; I knew all about it, Ryder thinks about Brideshead. The book goes on to tell the events of twenty years ago.

Book I, Et in Arcadia Ego, begins with a flashback to Ryder's first view of Brideshead in the company of his Oxford friend Sebastian Flyte, who became Charles's first love. It is never quite clear the nature of that love. At Oxford, Charles notices Sebastian for his 'arresting' beauty and his eccentricities, including carrying a teddy-bear. "Sebastian takes Charles into his circle of friends, indulging in high-spirited (and drunken) adventures. One friend warns Charles about the Flyte family, including that Sebastian's parents live apart, but his mother's faith does not allow for divorce.

Charles's mother is dead and his father is self-involved and distant. Sebastian takes Charles to Brideshead to meet Nanny Hawkins, who still lives in the nursery, then Charles away before his family arrives, warning, "I am not going to have you get mixed up with my family. They're all so madly charming. All my life they've been taking things away from me."

Their second year at college, they become mutually exclusive in their friendship, but by the end of the year, their relationship comes to a break and they go their separate ways, Charles to art school against his father's wishes, while Sebastian's alcoholism brings a schism between him and his family. 

Charles rejection of the Brideshead's Catholicism also plays a part in the break. He is agnostic with a Protestant background. The Catholic faith is pure superstition to him. Sebastian's mother is devout, but is separated from her agnostic husband who lives abroad with a mistress. The elder Brideshead son wishes for a calling. The youngest daughter has faith, but not daughter Julia. Julia tells Charles that Sebastian has a calling, but flees from it.

Charles becomes an artist specializing in architecture and marries. Years later he and Sebastian's sister Julia fall in love and have an affair. They are waiting for their divorces to come through when the Brideshead patriarch returns to die in the family home. 

The family bickers over whether to bring a priest to their father's death bed; his death-bed conversion leads Julia to give up Charles for God. 

The last scene finds Charles in the Brideshead chapel, the eternal flame of faith burning, saying an ancient prayer.

Waugh wrote that "the whole thing is steeped in theology, but I begin to agree that theologians won't recognize it," and "the book is about God." Waugh even considered changing the title to "A Household of Faith." 

Before he left for Oxford, Charles was given advice, including to avoid Anglo-Catholics, "they're all sodomites." Charles struggles to understand the Flyte's Catholic faith. "Sebastian's faith was an enigma to me at that time," Charles says, adding "I had no religion." Although he had gone to church as a child, and "the masters who taught me Divinity told me that biblical texts were highly untrustworthy. They never suggested I should try to pray." He thinks about his devout mother died as a nurse volunteer during the war and recognizes he did inherit "some such spirit." "I have come to accept claims which then, in 1923, I never troubled to examine, and to accept the supernatural as the real."

He recounts a conversation with Sebastian who affirmed his simple faith and awareness of being "much wickeder." Charles is baffled. "...if you can believe all that and you don't want to be good, where's the difficulty about your religion?" he asks. 

Sebastian also recounts his family's "mixed" attitude toward faith, noting "happiness doesn't seem to have much to do with it, and that's all I want." But his pursuit of happiness makes him miserable. He takes up an unworthy, needy soul to care for, as if in penance, or perhaps longing for love or companionship. In the end, he finds a home with monks who forgive him his alcoholism. 

Julia's sudden change, the awareness that her faith does not recognize her divorce, ends any chance for happiness for Charles or herself. In his misery, somehow faith also comes to Charles.

It is a beautifully written last scene, Charles in the room that was built to be the Brideshead chapel, the lamp still burning above the altar. What the chapel and the flame represented had outlasted the human tragedies of time and history,something eternal that Charles could turn to. He is rejuvenated just by being there and reciting "a prayer, an ancient, newly-learned form of words."

The moving and hopeful ending, Captain Ryder experiencing the sacred, is satisfying and uplifting. 

Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder
by Evelyn Waugh
Little, Brown & Co
paperback 
ISBN0316242101 (ISBN13: 9780316242103)

from the publisher

The gorgeous 75th-anniversary edition of Brideshead Revisited, the novel selected by Modern Library as one of the 100 best of the century.  

The wellsprings of desire and the impediments to love come brilliantly into focus in Evelyn Waugh's masterpiece—a novel that immerses us in the glittering and seductive world of English aristocracy in the waning days of the empire.

Through the story of Charles Ryder's entanglement with the Flytes, a great Catholic family, Evelyn Waugh charts the passing of the privileged world he knew in his own youth and vividly recalls the sensuous pleasures denied him by wartime austerities. At once romantic, sensuous, comic, and somber, Brideshead Revisited transcends Waugh's early satiric explorations and reveals him to be an elegiac, lyrical novelist of the utmost feeling and lucidity. 

Perestroika in Paris by Jane Smiley

Jane Smiley's Perestroika in Paris was an easy reading, charming book, but for many pages I wondered what was the 'point'? Every book that gives animals human thought and language has a point, right? 

Sure, Paras (short for Perestroika) is a wonderful character, a filly too curious for her own good, who leaves the comforts of her home at the stable and the horse racing she loves to see the world--or, at least, Paris under the Eiffel Tower.

Then there is Frida, the German Shorthaired Pointer ticked all over with a brown head and two patches, left on her own when her brilliant and eccentric owner is picked up from the streets by the gendarme. Frida understands human behavior better than we understand each other.

Paras and Frida meet up and help each other, for Paras has brought her groomer's purse filled with winnings from the last race Paras ran. Frida takes the euros to the local shops and returns with dinner for them and their new friends, the bickering mallard ducks, Sid and Nancy, and Raoul, an aged raven.

Paras walks the streets of Paris by night, visiting a Patisserie for a meal. Into her life comes Etienne, an eight-year-old human child living with his blind and deaf great-grandmother in the rundown family mansion. The elderly lady knits, using up her stash of yard, worrying about what will happen to her great-grandson upon her death, wondering if she did right by keeping him from school.

The child secretly takes Paras into his home and his heart, Frida joining the family. They are befriended by the house rats Conrad and his son Kurt. Together they cobble together everything they need.

Just when everything seems to have gone wrong, and Etienne faces his biggest challenge, the story resolves happily.

The story never gets too syrupy and never gets preachy. And yet, I did find a 'point'.

First, it is the story of family, the families we create by helping one another, joining our strengths, even if we seemingly have nothing in common--are 'different species'.

Second, it is about finding our bliss, how curiosity leads us to new discoveries and fulfillment.

Third, Etienne's family has survived horrible tragedy. WWI and WWII, the deaths of Etienne's great-grandfather and his grandfather and his parents. 

"It was their fate as a family, perhaps, or merely lick, merely a part of being French in the twentieth century, when wars came and went like terrifying, unstoppable tempests." ~from Perestroika in Paris by Jane Smiley

Out of great tragedy, we can survive and even thrive.

And last of all, there is the fortitude and persistence these animals show, accepting what they cannot change and changing what they can change.

In the end, I discovered a novel that can be read by any age, in any age, portraying the core values that make a life.

I was sent a free book by the publisher. My review is fair and unbiased.

Perestroika in Paris
by Jane Smiley
Publication December 1, 2020
Knopf
$26.95 hardcover
ISBN 10: 52552035X; ISBN  13: 9780525520351

from the publisher

Paras, short for "Perestroika," is a spirited racehorse at a racetrack west of Paris. One afternoon at dusk, she finds the door of her stall open and--she's a curious filly--wanders all the way to the City of Light. She's dazzled and often mystified by the sights, sounds, and smells around her, but she isn't afraid. Soon she meets an elegant dog, a German shorthaired pointer named Frida, who knows how to get by without attracting the attention of suspicious Parisians. Paras and Frida coexist for a time in the city's lush green spaces, nourished by Frida's strategic trips to the vegetable market. They keep company with two irrepressible ducks and an opinionated raven. But then Paras meets a human boy, Etienne, and discovers a new, otherworldly part of Paris: the ivy-walled house where the boy and his nearly-one-hundred-year-old great-grandmother live in seclusion. As the cold weather and Christmas near, the unlikeliest of friendships bloom. But how long can a runaway horse stay undiscovered in Paris? How long can a boy keep her hidden and all to himself? Jane Smiley's beguiling new novel is itself an adventure that celebrates curiosity, ingenuity, and the desire of all creatures for true love and freedom

Shelter in Place by David Leavitt

In 1986 I read David Leavitt's novel The Lost Language of Cranes and it blew me away. Although I have his novel The Indian Clerk on by TBR shelf, I haven't read more by him and it was time to correct that. Especially, it was time for this novel.

Reading in the age of Coronavirus is not easy. I pick up my Kindle, read for a bit, then find myself on Twitter or checking my email or placing an order for delivered groceries. It isn't the books--they are great books. I just have trouble concentrating.

But, I had no problem with Shelter in Place--it's a comedy of manners under the Trump presidency that kept me entertained. These characters are rich and liberal and, well, flaky.

Eva won't even say the president's name, (think Voldemort) and yet she wouldn't stand in the long lines to vote. After Eva and her friend Min visit Venice, she decides to buy an apartment there, a place to escape to when America is no longer safe. Her obliging husband Bruce plays his role in their marriage: he earns--she spends. A successful wealth manager, he is rich enough to indulge his wife's whims.

And Eva does spend.

Eva is determined the Venice home would be redecorated by her favorite decorator Jake. But hearing he would have to go to Venice, he has been stalling. Likeable, secretive, Jake is the straight man in the novel--well, a gay straight man, a foil to the people who hire him.

When Eva's dogs start peeing on the sofa, she has the maid wrap it in aluminum foil! "Some things matter more than decor," Eva proclaims, and yet she has not considered what will happen to the dogs when she--or she and Bruce--goes to Venice.

Bruce's secretary is battling cancer, her husband abandoning her. He becomes overly involved with her life, his version of charity.

Bruce also has been consorting with the enemy---the Trump supporting neighbor Alec whose kids won't talk to him since the election. Alec can't even say Hillary's name. The election results came as a miracle to him. "One man's miracle is another's nightmare," Bruce says. Walking their dogs at night, they confide to each other.

Shelter in Place targets our idiosyncrasies when our world suddenly changes, on the national and personal level. Sometimes we grow, other times we dig in and hold on tighter.

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

Shelter in Place
by David Leavitt
Bloomsbury USA
Pub Date October 13,  2020 
ISBN: 9781620404874
hardcover $27.00 (USD)

from the publisher

It is the Saturday after the 2016 presidential election, and in a plush weekend house in Connecticut, an intimate group of friends, New Yorkers all, has gathered to recover from what they consider the greatest political catastrophe of their lives. They have just sat down to tea when their hostess, Eva Lindquist, proposes a dare. Who among them would be willing to ask Siri how to assassinate Donald Trump? Liberal and like-minded—editors, writers, a decorator, a theater producer, and one financial guy, Eva’s husband, Bruce—the friends have come to the countryside in the hope of restoring the bubble in which they have grown used to living. Yet with the exception of one brash and obnoxious book editor, none is willing to accept Eva’s challenge.

Shelter in Place is a novel about house and home, furniture and rooms, safety and freedom and the invidious ways in which political upheaval can undermine even the most seemingly impregnable foundations. Eva is the novel’s polestar, a woman who moves through her days accompanied by a roving, carefully curated salon. She’s a generous hostess and more than a bit of a control freak, whose obsession with decorating allows Leavitt to treat us to a slyly comic look at the habitués and fetishes of the so-called shelter industry. Yet when, in her avidity to secure shelter for herself, she persuades Bruce to buy a grand if dilapidated apartment in Venice, she unwittingly sets off the chain of events that will propel him, for the first time, to venture outside the bubble and embark on a wholly unexpected love affair.

A comic portrait of the months immediately following the 2016 election, Shelter in Place is also a meditation on the unreliable appetites—for love, for power, for freedom—by which both our public and private lives are shaped.

Pale Morning Light with Violet Swan by Deborah Reed

If she told her family the truth, death would get on everything.~from Pale Morning Light with Violet Swan by Deborah Reed

Secrets. Children who don't really know their parents. Parents who don't really know their children. Trauma, consciously forgotten or unspoken, eating their souls.

Ninety-one-year-old Violet Swan's secret was not just the cancer killing her; guilt had dogged her life since a girl. A fire had killed her beloved father and sister. Evil men took advantage of the unprotected child. She escaped, a teenage vagabond crossing the country to the West Coast, pursuing a fragile dream of finding her place in the world.

Violet became famous for her abstract paintings. She lived in her art studio tower, her loving husband Richard protecting her solitude and running her business.

Their son Frank (Francisco, named for Francisco Goya) grew up imprisoned in himself, his silence smothering his marriage, his dutiful wife growing increasingly resentful. Their son Daniel had loved his Grand, Violet, but also felt his father's distance and had stayed away from home for years, living in LA as a filmmaker.

An earthquake begins the story, a premonition of the changes that will shake their relationships nearly to the breaking point. Daniel returns home bearing a secret. Violet finally agrees to allow her grandson to make a film interview; she will spill her secrets at last.

Deborah Reed saturates Pale Morning Light with Violet Swan with visual details, seen through an artist's eye. Music and literature enrich Violet's life.

Violet's story is unravelled throughout the novel, lending an urgency to keep reading, like a mystery novel; we want to understand the intricacies of life experiences that have brought this family to crisis.

I will warn that Violet's life includes trigger events. Violet is a survivor, a resilient woman. She finds salvation in the beauty of this world and in her art that endeavors to capture it.

Frank is mired in anger, addicted to television news. "How on earth was a person supposed to live a normal life?" he wonders, in despair.

Into their lives comes a small child and she changes everything and everyone.

An ordinary happiness runs through me...This is everything beautiful, this is love. Are you listening? Do you hear?~from Pale Morning Light with Violet Swan by Deborah Reed

I was very taken by this novel that glows under Reed's capable hands and beautiful writing.

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

from the publisher: 

The story of a famous abstract painter at the end of her life—her family, her art, and the long-buried secrets that won’t stay hidden for much longer.

 Ninety-three-year-old Violet Swan has spent a lifetime translating tragedy and hardship into art, becoming famous for her abstract paintings, which evoke tranquility, innocence, and joy. For nearly a century Violet has lived a peaceful, private life of painting on the coast of Oregon. The “business of Violet” is run by her only child, Francisco, and his wife, Penny. But shortly before Violet's death, an earthquake sets a series of events in motion, and her deeply hidden past begins to resurface. When her beloved grandson returns home with a family secret in tow, Violet is forced to come to terms with the life she left behind so long ago—a life her family knows nothing about.

 A generational saga set against the backdrop of twentieth-century America and into the present day, Pale Morning Light with Violet Swan is the story of a girl who escaped rural Georgia at fourteen during World War II, crossing the country alone and broke. It is the story of how that girl met the man who would become her devoted husband, how she became a celebrated artist, and above all, how her life, inspired by nothing more than the way she imagined it to be, would turn out to be her greatest masterpiece.

 Pale Morning Light with Violet Swan: A Novel of a Life in Art
By Deborah Reed
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Publication October 6,  2020
ISBN: 9780544817364
paperback and audiobook  $15.99 (USD); $9.99 ebook

Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter

It was time for a new book.

The first book I picked up was full of horrors and war. 

The second book was full of fears of horror and war. And the war was shortly coming.

I could feel my blood pressure shoot up. I am trying to control my blood pressure. I scanned through my hundreds of unread ebooks, downloading anything that might be uplifting, fun, or happy. Beautiful Ruins came up. Why not this one? It had that lovely photo, exotic and unfamiliar. I heard heard great things about it. 

I downloaded it and two days later swiped to the last page, completely content with my choice.

From the opening sentence to the end, Walter weaves a beautiful story about love and doing the right thing and fame and finding true happiness. 

Oh, and my blood pressure has been remarkable.

Jess Walter, I thank you. 

from the publisher:

The story begins in 1962. On a rocky patch of the sun-drenched Italian coastline, a young innkeeper, chest-deep in daydreams, looks out over the incandescent waters of the Ligurian Sea and spies an apparition: a tall, thin woman, a vision in white, approaching him on a boat. She is an actress, he soon learns, an American starlet, and she is dying.

And the story begins again today, half a world away, when an elderly Italian man shows up on a movie studio's back lot—searching for the mysterious woman he last saw at his hotel decades earlier.

What unfolds is a dazzling, yet deeply human, roller coaster of a novel, spanning fifty years and nearly as many lives. From the lavish set of Cleopatra to the shabby revelry of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Walter introduces us to the tangled lives of a dozen unforgettable characters: the starstruck Italian innkeeper and his long-lost love; the heroically preserved producer who once brought them together and his idealistic young assistant; the army veteran turned fledgling novelist and the rakish Richard Burton himself, whose appetites set the whole story in motion—along with the husbands and wives, lovers and dreamers, superstars and losers, who populate their world in the decades that follow.

Gloriously inventive, constantly surprising, Beautiful Ruins is a story of flawed yet fascinating people, navigating the rocky shores of their lives while clinging to their improbable dreams.

Jack by Marilynne Robinson

Can these bones live?

I read Marilynne Robinson's novel Gilead when it came out in 2004. A few years later I read it again with a church book club, and four years again I read it a third time for a book club.

It is a gorgeous,profound novel written as a letter by an elderly preacher to his young son. The narrator, John Ames, is conflicted about his best friend's ne'er-do-well son, Jack. Jack has returned to Gilead to visit his ailing father. His presence is a torment to John Ames who fears his young wife will be drawn to Jack. Jack left town after impregnating a girl, his abandonment of the child causing a rift. When Jack finally tells John Ames he has a colored wife and child, he gives Jack the blessing of forgiveness he has long sought.

Robinson has revisited Gilead in Home and Lila, and now in a fourth volume, Jack. I could not resist reading Jack's story.

The novel begins shortly after Jack is released from prison. He has been a bum, a drunk, homeless. There is still an air about him of respectability, learned from being the son of a Presbyterian minister. People call him Professor. They appreciate his playing hymns on the piano.

Jack is in a black suit when he assists a young colored teacher who has dropped her papers in the rain, and she believes him to be a minister and invites him into her home. From this a relationship begins, one that is not only socially unacceptable but against the law.

Jack is profoundly aware of his sinfulness. His birth nearly killed his mother. His boyish antics, unrelenting unbelief, and teenage wildness embarrassed his preacher father. The final straw was impregnating a young woman and not taking responsibility for their child who later dies. His legacy of harming those around him weighs heavily.

"And everything is vulnerable to harm, one way or another Everybody is vulnerable. It's kind of horrible when you think about it. All that breakage, without so much as an intention behind it half the time. All that tantalizing fragility."~from Jack by Marilynne Robinson

This young woman who treats him so respectfully draws him. He has lied to her by not correcting her mistake; already his harm has begun. But Jack can't forget her.

He had seen kindness weary before.
~from Jack by Marilynne Robinson

Jack and Della meet again and talk poetry and more. He is falling in love. The daughter of a minister, Della is a college educated teacher, and has a respectable family who loves her. They can have no future in this world.

...it was taking her a long time to give up on him.
~from Jack by Marilynne Robinson

Jack feels shame and dread and grief. Just by existing he is destroying Della's career and alienating her from her family. Her freedom and even her life is in peril if they are caught.  Jack calls himself the Prince of Darkness. His "battered, atheist soul" has regrets, but he cannot repent. He jokes that he has lived a life of 'prevenient death,' a play on prevenient grace which believes all can grasp the grace already offered.

Jack isn't preying on Della. She has pursued him. Like God, she can look beyond the outer appearance and the social appraisement to the inner man. She sees his soul.

But once in a lifetime, maybe, you look at a stranger and you see a soul, a glorious presence out of place in the world...You've seen the muster--you've seen what life is all about. What it's for.
~from Jack by Marilynne Robinson

Jack has stolen the grandest thing by far--he has stolen Della. Yet a wise man has told him that if God puts some happiness in your way, you should take it. Even the greatest sinner can find a moment of grace.

Jack is one of the great characters in literature, a portrait of a sinner who struggles with his unbelief and the wreckage he has brought. His love story goes to the heart of America's original sin, slavery and segregation that treated people of color as less than human.

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

Jack: A Novel
by Marilynne Robinson
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Pub Date September 29, 2020
ISBN: 9780374279301
hardcover $27.00 (USD)

from the publisher

Marilynne Robinson, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Humanities Medal, returns to the world of Gilead with Jack, the latest novel in one of the great works of contemporary American fiction

Marilynne Robinson’s mythical world of Gilead, Iowa—the setting of her novels Gilead, Home, and Lila, and now Jack—and its beloved characters have illuminated and interrogated the complexities of American history, the power of our emotions, and the wonders of a sacred world.

Jack is Robinson’s fourth novel in this now-classic series. In it, Robinson tells the story of John Ames Boughton, the prodigal son of Gilead’s Presbyterian minister, and his romance with Della Miles, a high school teacher who is also the child of a preacher. Their deeply felt, tormented, star-crossed interracial romance resonates with all the paradoxes of American life, then and now.

Robinson’s Gilead novels, which have won one Pulitzer Prize and two National Book Critics Circle Awards, are a vital contribution to contemporary American literature and a revelation of our national character and humanity.

Homeland Elegies: A Novel by Ayad Akhtar

Homeland Elegies was a revelation, a chance to see American culture and history and politics from the viewpoint of an 'outsider,' even if that outsider was American born.

Ayad Akhtar  has written a novel with a strong narrative voice that reads like memoir. It's compelling storyline and conflicted characters engage the reader. It is also a novel of ideas, a dissection of social and political culture.

How Christian is America? Consider the commercialization of Christian holy days, the Christian based place names of cities, the King James Bible language and words that are woven in our writing and speech, how we do personal hygiene, dogs in every home. 

The accumulation of wealth, buying sprees dependent on credit cards and interest, and the importance of corporate wealth and the power it wields is another theme. It's a Wonderful Life, that beloved Christmas movie, the narrator realizes, was really about money and power.

Central to the novel is the experience of living in a racist culture, especially after 9-11. When the narrator's car breaks down in rural Pennsylvania, the narrator finds himself vulnerable.

The narrator travels to Pakistan to visit family. Is returning to one's family homeland the answer? The anger that fuels people here is also found abroad. 

"America is my home," the narrator affirms. 

Homeland Elegies, this poem that mourns the country of our hopes and dreams, reveals our character like a mirror. It isn't pretty. 

I was given access to a free galley by the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review. I received a final copy of the novel from a giveaway through Bookreporter.com.

Homeland Elegies: A Novel
by Ayad Akhtar
Little, Brown and Company
Pub Date: September 15, 2020   
ISBN: 9780316496438
hardcover $14.99 (USD)

from the publisher

A deeply personal work about identity and belonging in a nation coming apart at the seams, Homeland Elegies blends fact and fiction to tell an epic story of longing and dispossession in the world that 9/11 made. Part family drama, part social essay, part picaresque novel, at its heart it is the story of a father, a son, and the country they both call home.

Ayad Akhtar forges a new narrative voice to capture a country in which debt has ruined countless lives and the gods of finance rule, where immigrants live in fear, and where the nation's unhealed wounds wreak havoc around the world. Akhtar attempts to make sense of it all through the lens of a story about one family, from a heartland town in America to palatial suites in Central Europe to guerrilla lookouts in the mountains of Afghanistan, and spares no one -- least of all himself -- in the process.

Book Club Reads: French Exit by Patrick deWitt and The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

 

Patrick DeWitt's novel French Exit was the Clawson public library book club selection. I listened to the audiobook. The narrator was fantastic, giving the characters distinctive voices. 

Stick to the story--the characters are not very likeable when you first met them. Frances seems to be a vacuous and unfeeling socialite and her son Malcolm a pampered and unemotional slug. When I learned their backstories, I was moved. I realized that in the beginning, we saw them as the world perceived them. Learning how damaged they were by their deceased husband and father, I had sympathy. There is a bit of magic, a heavy dose of comedy of manners, droll humor, and a nice twist of sentimentalism.

My book clubbers were not excited by this novel. It was described as 'fluffy', easy to read, and they did not like the characters. They did not like the ending.

French Exit
Harper Audio
by Patrick deWitt, Lorna Raver (Narrator)
ISBN0062871927 (ISBN 13: 9780062871923)

from the publisher

Brimming with pathos, French Exit is a one-of-a-kind 'tragedy of manners,' a send-up of high society, as well as a moving mother/son caper which only Patrick deWitt could conceive and execute.

 Frances Price – tart widow, possessive mother, and Upper East Side force of nature – is in dire straits, beset by scandal and impending bankruptcy. Her adult son Malcolm is no help, mired in a permanent state of arrested development. And then there’s the Price’s aging cat, Small Frank, who Frances believes houses the spirit of her late husband, an infamously immoral litigator and world-class cad whose gruesome tabloid death rendered Frances and Malcolm social outcasts.

Putting penury and pariahdom behind them, the family decides to cut their losses and head for the exit. One ocean voyage later, the curious trio land in their beloved Paris, the City of Light serving as a backdrop not for love or romance, but self destruction and economical ruin – to riotous effect. A number of singular characters serve to round out the cast: a bashful private investigator, an aimless psychic proposing a seance, and a doctor who makes house calls with his wine merchant in tow, to name a few.

Brimming with pathos, French Exit is a one-of-a-kind 'tragedy of manners,' a send-up of high society, as well as a moving mother/son caper which only Patrick deWitt could conceive and execute.

*****

The book club at the Royal Oak Public library read Madeline Miller's The Song of Achilles this month. I had purchased it on Kindle well before I read Miller's novel Circe, which I loved. I was eager to read Achilles.

Miller chooses to view the story of the Trojan War through the Greek character of Patroclus, bosom friend of the warrior Achilles. We see them as boys growing up together and watch their friendship blossom into romantic love. The emphasis on their deep love made me categorize the novel a love story. 

Achilles is fated to be a great warrior so when he is called to be a leader in the Trojan War he accepts, pacifist Patroclus tagging along. There are some gruesome scenes during the war. This part felt felt more like the original Iliad.

I found myself comparing this to Country by Michael Hughes, which I read earlier in the year. I felt the drive and violence and passion in Hughes novel.

Overall, I did not care for this as much as I did Circe, but the book clubbers who had never read Home or Greek literature found it a revelation. And for that I am very glad! I was the only one who had read Homer and Greek literature and Greek myths. They found it easy to read and enjoyed Miller's updating of the story and found themes that were relevant to today. 

The Song of Achilles

by Madeline Miller

Eco

ISBN-10 : 0062060619
ISBN-13 : 978-0062060617

from the publisher

Greece in the age of Heroes. Patroclus, an awkward young prince, has been exiled to the kingdom of Phthia. Here he is nobody, just another unwanted boy living in the shadow of King Peleus and his golden son, Achilles.

Achilles, “best of all the Greeks,” is everything Patroclus is not—strong, beautiful, the child of a goddess—and by all rights their paths should never cross. Yet one day, Achilles takes the shamed prince under his wing and soon their tentative connection gives way to a steadfast friendship. As they grow into young men skilled in the arts of war and medicine, their bond blossoms into something far deeper—despite the displeasure of Achilles’ mother Thetis, a cruel sea goddess with a hatred of mortals.

Fate is never far from the heels of Achilles. When word comes that Helen of Sparta has been kidnapped, the men of Greece are called upon to lay siege to Troy in her name. Seduced by the promise of a glorious destiny, Achilles joins their cause. Torn between love and fear for his friend, Patroclus follows Achilles into war, little knowing that the years that follow will test everything they have learned, everything they hold dear. And that, before he is ready, he will be forced to surrender his friend to the hands of Fate.

Profoundly moving and breathtakingly original, this rendering of the epic Trojan War is a dazzling feat of the imagination, a devastating love story, and an almighty battle between gods and kings, peace and glory, immortal fame and the human heart.

Lila by Marilynne Robinson

I have been listening to audiobooks to cram in more 'reading', using them when I am working on quilts.

After reading the galley of Marilynne Robinson's new book Jack, I borrowed Lila from Overdrive.

Robinson's Gilead novels began with Gilead, an extended letter by an aging and ailing John Ames to his young son. Home, Lila, and Jack continued the stories from the viewpoints of other characters in Gilead.

It is a beautifully presented audiobook, the text flowing and the narrator Maggie Hoffman giving the characters individual voices.

The story of Lila is heartbreaking. She was a neglected child stolen from her family by a woman who shows her the only love and care she experiences before meeting John Ames, the narrator of Robinson's novel Gilead. Lila grew up a migrant, outside of society and untutored in religion. But her native intelligence brings her to struggle with the Big Questions of life.

Lila is a survivor who relies only on herself after losing her surrogate mother, Doll. On her own, she works in a St. Louis brothel, becoming the maid when the men don't want her.

She goes on the road again, stopping in Gilead, a town she despises. She wanders into church one day to escape the rain. The minister notes her and pursues her, showing her consideration and Christian love, with patience and acceptance she has never experienced before.

The 'beautiful old man,' the Rev. John Ames, wants to help her. She asks Ames to marry her.

Ames had lost his wife and child as a young man, and assumed his golden years would be as lonely and cold as they had been ever since. He loves Lila, but understands she may flit away back into her accustomed life on the road where she does not have to rely on anyone else. She struggles to trust even Ames.

Lila's struggle to understand baptism, the Bible and the mystery of life, takes up a great deal of the book.

Lila's life as a migrant worker, the utter poverty, was relieved by a spunky friend and Doll's love. Lila worries about what happened to them, and puzzles over the fate of their unbaptized souls.

When Lila becomes pregnant, Ames feels blessed at this second chance. Even in the womb, Lila talks to her child, vowing to protect it and care for it. She thinks about stealing off with her baby, still uncertain about human love's immutability.

This is a novel that offers a great deal to contemplate. I do not feel adequate to delve into its deeper meanings after only one reading.

I prefer reading books to listening, but have found audiobooks useful for getting in more reading. I am a quick reader, so spending eight hours listening to a book I could read in four means the story felt dragged out, the introspection endless. Also, I can't note places I want to return to or quote!

I was surprised to hear John Ames voice as quivering. It was not how I have heard it in my head over my three readings of Gilead.

This may not have been the best book for me to listen to. But I am glad to have finally encountered Lila.

Read a fantastic review in the New Yorker Magazine here.

Last to read, I have Home on by TBR shelf.

Moss by Klaus Modick

Order, control, separation from nature. That is what his father had taught. Upon arriving at their woodland cabin, as a child his duty had been to scrub the moss from the stone pathway. The child objected, "But the moss is so lovely."

Now, he is old and endeavoring to form a lifetime of insight into his final paper critiquing nomenclature. He questions his father's teaching and the science of his academic career as a biologist. 

Why do we divide ourselves from nature? What can we learn from moss? Shouldn't our goal be wonder and joy of beauty, not arcane facts and artificial categories?

Returning to that family cabin, surrounded by the forest, he embraces death as part of life, the natural cycle.

Science gives way to connection.

When his manuscript is found after his death, it was not what people expected. He renamed it "Moss."

Oh, I thought, another novel about age and death! I am already too aware of the passing years, how I have outlived so many family members! And with a pandemic, every one of us is faced with our mortality and aware of the uncertainty of life.

I feel the depth of this story eludes me, calling me to reread and grapple with all that lies beneath it's misleading simplicity and the beauty of its poetry. 

I received a free book from the publisher through LibraryThing. My review is fair and unbiased.

Moss 

by Klaus Modick

Bellevue Literary Press

Publication Date August 25, 2020

Trade Paper US $16.99

ISBN: 9781942658726

Ebook ISBN: 9781942658733

An aging botanist withdraws to the seclusion of his family’s vacation home in the German countryside. In his final days, he realizes that his life’s work of scientific classification has led him astray from the hidden secrets of the natural world. As his body slows and his mind expands, he recalls his family’s escape from budding fascism in Germany, his father’s need to prune and control, and his tender moments with first loves. But as his disintegration into moss begins, his fascination with botany culminates in a profound understanding of life’s meaning and his own mortality.

Visionary and poetic, Moss explores our fundamental human desires for both transcendence and connection and serves as a testament to our tenuous and intimate relationship with nature.

Bronte's Mistress by Finola Austin

The Bronte family history is filled with so much drama it would make a bingeable television mini-series. Charlotte, Emily and Anne are well known. Their only brother Branwell is not.

Branwell felt the loss of his mother and two older sisters keenly.  Branwell and his younger sisters created an alternate reality, detailed in books and drawings. His father homeschooled him with a Classical education while his sisters went away to school.

Branwell was a product of the Romantic Era, and inspired by poets and painters, he hoped to make his mark as a poet or artist. 

As too often happens to precocious geniuses, Branwell never  achieved his best at anything. In fact, he failed in everything. His last years were spent in ill health, alcohol and drug addiction complicating his tuberculosis, despairing over unrequited love while his sisters cared for him. Charlotte Brontë wrote in a letter, 'the faculty of self-government is, I fear almost destroyed in him.'

Famously, Branwell painted a group portrait of his sisters and himself, then later painted out his image. That portrait inspired my Bronte Sisters quilt.

Branwell's last position was as a tutor for the family where his sister Anne was governess. Over those 30 months, Branwell and his charge's mother, Lydia Robinson, had a love affair. Her husband was sickly and she was a charming woman of 43. Branwell, like his famous sisters, was small, fair with red hair, a prominent nose on which sat spectacles--nothing like the typical romantic hero. 

In her biography of Charlotte Bronte, Elizabeth Gaskill paints Mrs. Robinson as a wicked women. After her husband's death, she did not run to Branwell's arms. She married a wealthy man of 75. Whatever she may have felt for Branwell, money and a safe social status was more important. Branwell died heartbroken.

In Bronte's Mistress , Finola Austin imagines Mrs. Robinson telling the story of her love affair with Branwell.

In the novel, Lydia Robinson sought the attention and affection of the man she married and gloried in their early passionate affection. Throughout the novel, she still seeks his attention. Lydia struggles with aging, and worried about the loss of her beauty, she craves affirmation of her continued attractiveness.

To complicate her life, Lydia has contentious relationships with her teenage daughters and her overbearing mother-in-law.

Lydia can be cold and imperious toward her daughters. She married for love but does not countenance her daughters doing the same; she knows how unreliable love is, while money lasts.

Mr. Robinson treats governess Anne Bronte with dignity, but Lydia does not care for her. The feeling is mutual. Anne thinks her mistress is vain and shallow and ill-tempered.

When Mr. Robinson hires Anne's brother Branwell to tutor their son, Lydia notes his spirit, his intelligence, and his good looks. Attraction grows between them, and Branwell being a true Romantic, throws himself into the fire of love. Lydia revels in the attention, teaching her young lover how to please her.

Austin's portrait of Lydia Robinson is interesting and complex. Austin uses the character of Lydia Robinson to explore the constraints the Victorian Age placed on women, particularly their sexuality. In seeking their own destiny, the daughters show they share their mother's spirit if not her values.

Austin's portrayal of Branwell portrays his charms and his demons, and his inexperienced naivety. She incorporates his poetry into the novel. Lydia comes to realize that Branwell is weak, unreliable, and not as great a talent as he made out.

I wish that Mr. Robinson's motives were clarified. Why has he rejected Lydia's advances? Was it the death of their youngest child? Did he want to avoid another pregnancy, knowing he was ill? Did his illness affect his ability to fulfill his wife's needs? Clarification would turn him from cold villain to frail human.

Austin shows Anne incorporating her experiences into her novels, and imagines Lydia Robinson's second marriage as inspiration for Charlotte Bronte.

Austin's deeply flawed characters are desperate for love. In his time, Branwell's addictions would have been considered character flaws, weakness. And Lydia's sexual desire an aberration.

As someone who loves 19th c fiction and the Bronte's novels, I enjoyed Bronte's Mistress. I look forward to reading more by the author.

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

from the publisher

Yorkshire, 1843: Lydia Robinson—mistress of Thorp Green Hall—has lost her precious young daughter and her mother within the same year. She returns to her bleak home, grief-stricken and unmoored. With her teenage daughters rebelling, her testy mother-in-law scrutinizing her every move, and her marriage grown cold, Lydia is restless and yearning for something more.

All of that changes with the arrival of her son’s tutor, Branwell Brontë, brother of her daughters’ governess, Miss Anne Brontë and those other writerly sisters, Charlotte and Emily. Branwell has his own demons to contend with—including living up to the ideals of his intelligent family—but his presence is a breath of fresh air for Lydia. Handsome, passionate, and uninhibited by social conventions, he’s also twenty-five to her forty-three. A love of poetry, music, and theatre bring mistress and tutor together, and Branwell’s colorful tales of his sisters’ elaborate play-acting and made-up worlds form the backdrop for seduction.

But Lydia’s new taste of passion comes with consequences. As Branwell’s inner turmoil rises to the surface, his behavior grows erratic and dangerous, and whispers of their passionate relationship spout from her servants’ lips, reaching all three protective Brontë sisters. Soon, it falls on Lydia to save not just her reputation, but her way of life, before those clever girls reveal all her secrets in their novels. Unfortunately, she might be too late.

Meticulously researched and deliciously told, Brontë’s Mistress is a captivating reimagining of the scandalous affair that has divided Brontë enthusiasts for generations and an illuminating portrait of a courageous, sharp-witted woman who fights to emerge with her dignity intact.

Bronte's Mistress
by Finola Austin
Atria Books
Pub Date September 2, 2020 
ISBN: 9781982137236
hardcover  $27 US, $12.99 ebook

The Brother Years by Shannon Burke

...it was at that great moment in adolescence where you throw off what you think you ought to be and start imposing your true personality on the world, a moment of grace and strength and beauty and danger. ~ from The Brother Years by Shannon Burke

My 50th high school class reunion was to take place next month but was cancelled because of COVID-19. One of my friends suggested the class post their photos from senior year on the class Facebook page.

I was the first to share, a panorama photo of the senior class trip to Washington D.C. Classmates shared pics from the trip, Senior prom, and the school musical.

Something happened along the way. One classmate talked about her memories of the Vietnam war and civil rights movement, the Detroit riots, the protest sit-ins.

People talked about how they were not in the popular group, were outsiders looking in. They talked about their life after high school. And then, a girl talked about the anxiety that crippled her most of her life, how she hid it in school. We had thought she was popular, pretty, a golden girl.

Suddenly the barriers were falling down. Social class, academic standing, beauty, achievement, popularity were revealed to be false delinations that separated us.

So, here I am in life looking backward to adolescence, those horrible, difficult, eventful years, and I pick up The Brother Years by Shannon Burke as if the stars had aligned to ensure I read this book at this time.

Burke writes about "the weird, poor family in the rich neighborhood' and how their childhood was a crucible that molds and toughens them. Central are brothers Coyle and Willie Shannon and the competition that makes Willie's life hell.

The boys' father strives for success, working multiple jobs and studying for a teaching degree. He works the sons as hard as he works himself, employing The Methods to toughen them for the world. The stress gives him a short temper and violent outbursts. Their mother is a housewife with a college degree who ineffectually tries to keep the peace.

Coyle's academic and sports achievements were a testament to his father's Methods. But there was always the awareness of being the poorest family in the rich 'hood.

...there was that familiar feeling of knowing there was something wrong with us--with our clothes or haircuts of the way we talked. ~from The Brother Years by Shannon Burke

Coyle's antithesis is the wealthy Robert. Willie aligns with Robert in his bid to get on the tennis team. Coyle accuses his brother of being a suck-up. Robert and Willie use each other for their own purposes. If that pisses Coyle off, so much the better.

Memories of a friendship with a rich friend came back. Dad was a blue collar worker and mom a housewife. We had what we needed, but my clothes were from KMart and our special eating out treat was buying 15 cent burgers from a local chain. At fourteen, I wore mom's hand-me-down swing coat and dated bathing suit with boy pants and a bra.

When I was a freshman, a girl took me up as a project, much like Emma took up Harriet in Jane Austen's novel. My friend was wealthy, had been to Europe, and lived in a posh house  that her father had designed. Her parents had college degrees. She encouraged me to lose weight, flirt with boys, and become 'cool.' At least, cooler. In the summer I went to her house to swim in her built-in pool. Mom bought me a new swimsuit to wear.

One day this friend told me her mother thought I was not the right sort for her because of our economic status. I don't know if her mom really said that or if it was the start of my friend pushing me away because she soon took up another 'project.'

The energy it takes to rise above one's born class! It takes the Brennan dad years to get that degree. The boys had to be the best in everything to get into a top-notch college and to get the needed scholarships to afford it. Their childhood was brutal, the competition violent.

I was immersed in the story and the characters. The Brennan family is unforgettable.

Burke has given us a powerful coming-of-age novel, a story of class divide and what it takes to achieve the proverbial pulling oneself up by one's bootstraps.

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

Read an excerpt here.

from the publisher

"In our family, there was none of this crap about everyone being a winner," says Willie, the narrator, who looks back on his teen years--and his nearly mortal combat with his domineering older brother, Coyle. In the Brennan house four kids sleep in a single room, and are indoctrinated into "The Methods," a system of achievement and relentless striving, laced with a potent, sometimes violent version of sibling rivalry. The family is overseen by a raging bull of a father, a South Side tough guy who knocks them sideways when they don't perform well or follow his dictates. Rivals, enemies, and allies, the siblings contend with one another and their wealthy self-satisfied peers at New Trier, the famous upscale high school where the family has struggled to send them. Evoking their crucible of class struggle and peer pressures, Burke balances comedy, tragedy, and a fascinating cast of characters, delivering a book that reads like an instant classic--an unforgettable story of the intertwining of love and family violence, and of triumphant teen survival that echoes down through the years.

The Brother Years
by Shannon Burke
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group/Pantheon
Pub Date August 4, 2020
ISBN: 9781524748647
hardcover $25.95 (USD)

Hieroglyphics by Jill McCorkle

And I guess that's why we hold on to our bits and pieces in the first place, because we aren't immortal, and though denial fills our days and years, especially those that have slipped away, that kernel of truth is always lodged within. We are all haunted by something-- ~from Hieroglyphics by Jill McCorkle

Through a dozen moves and the purges each involved, there were boxes that followed me. They remained sealed and taped in each successive basement, but I knew they were there for when I would need them.

The boxes held my diaries dating back to 1963 when I was ten, poems and unfinished novels I had written, scrapbooks and mementos.

There were other boxes, too. Boxes of photographs and slides, books owned by my grandfather or mother or father, my grandfather's papers and newspaper articles, directories and yearbooks, dad's memoirs, mom's medical history.

They were the 'bits and pieces' of my life and my parent's life and my grandfather's life.

I have always been a keeper of things. I see the trait in my family, especially keeping memories and telling stories of long ago.

In Jill McCorkle's new novel Hieroglyphics, Lil is eighty-five and worried about forgetting, but her childhood memories remain vivid and clear. "I can close my eyes and know every square inch," she says of her childhood home.

Oh, me, too! I dream of the 19th c farmhouse I grew up in. I know the view from every window by heart, the turning of the stairs, the weight of layers of blankets in the unheated bedroom.

"I am homesick and I am timesick...I miss all that no longer is," Lil says.

Lil is married to Frank, who is also haunted by the past, filled with "sadness and an awareness of the shadows." When he was ten years old his father died in a train wreck, extinguishing his mother's happiness. Frank is fixated on returning to his childhood home, hoping to find what he left behind.

Frank's childhood home is now occupied by single mom Shelley and her child Harvey. Harvey is fearful, misses his father, sees ghosts, and losses himself in an alter-ego superhero with a mustache that covers the scar from his cleft palate surgery. Shelley is a court reporter who is overinvolved with the trial, in trouble for writing her thoughts into the transcript.

Each character is struggling with the scars of their past. They have kept things secret, they seek to understand the mystery of their parents.

This is a dense book, emotionally charged, with a story that opens like a night blooming flower. There is darkness, with some flashes of humor and light. It tugged at my heart. And it chilled me with recognition and the knowledge that in the blink of an eye I will be Lil, leaving behind those boxes of diaries.

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

Hieroglyphics
by Jill McCorkle
Algonquin Books
Publication Date July, 28, 2020 
ISBN 9781616209728
PRICE $26.95 (USD)

from the publisher

Lil and Frank married young, launched into courtship when they bonded over how they both—suddenly, tragically—lost a parent when they were children. Over time, their marriage grew and strengthened, with each still wishing for so much more understanding of the parents they’d lost prematurely.

Now, after many years in Boston, they have retired in North Carolina. There, Lil, determined to leave a history for their children, sifts through letters and notes and diary entries—perhaps revealing more secrets than Frank wants their children to know. Meanwhile, Frank has become obsessed with what might have been left behind at the house he lived in as a boy on the outskirts of town, where a young single mother, Shelley, is just trying to raise her son with some sense of normalcy. Frank’s repeated visits to Shelley’s house begin to trigger memories of her own family, memories that she’d rather forget. Because, after all, not all parents are ones you wish to remember.

Hieroglyphics reveals the difficulty of ever really knowing the intentions and dreams and secrets of the people who raised you. In her deeply layered and masterful novel, Jill McCorkle deconstructs and reconstructs what it means to be a father or a mother, and what it means to be a child piecing together the world all around us, a child learning to make sense of the hieroglyphics of history and memory.

The Lives of Edie Pritchard by Larry Watson

I had twin uncles. They were identical in appearance. One joined the navy. The other worked in an auto factory and built a cabin. When one died, his twin divorced his wife and married his brother's widow.

It was more complicated than that, of course. But the gist of their story was that, in the end, they both loved the same woman.

In The Lives of Edie Pritchard by Larry Watson, Edie is loved by twin brothers. Her story is revealed through three road trips across Montana.

She leaves home to become her own person; then returns home to confront her past and escape her present; and last of all, she goes on a quest to save her granddaughter.

Dean Linderman was unsure that Edie had meant to marry him and not his twin brother Roy. Roy was the hunk, the chick magnet. Dean was quiet, introspective. Why would the most beautiful girl in town choose to marry him when she could have had his brother?

Dean was jealous but passive, even knowing that Roy still carried a torch for his wife. Edie pleaded to move away, hoping to separate the brothers to save her marriage. They needed a fresh start.

Dean assumes that Edie wants to move so she won't fall into bed with Roy. No, Edie replies, "What I'm afraid of is that you'll end up with him."

Edie Pritchard did not ask for the attention of men. She resented their unwanted attentions. Her first marriage ends because Dean's repressed jealousy came between their love. Her second marriage ended because Gary didn't truly love her; he only wanted to possess her.

She's done with complications. She's done with men, including the nice guy who stalks her at work, and especially the younger men who come on to her. It seems that no sees or care about who she is, just their projections they create based on her beauty. No one ever asked Edie what she wanted.

Edie knows she failed as a mom to her and Gary's daughter, Jennifer. Jennifer's teenage daughter Lauren shows up with her boyfriend Billy and his best friend Troy, escaping her unhappy home. Troy is deeply insinuated into Lauren's relationship with Billy. No one understands better than Edie that when a couple is a threesome, there is trouble ahead. And Troy is trouble. One more complication has entered Edie's life.

Lauren moves on with the men, later sending a cry for help. Roy shows up to help Edie rescue Lauren, still insisting it was always and only her that he loved.

In a climatic scene, Edie makes a dramatic stand, hoping to save her granddaughter from the men who would use her.

Watson's book explores the boxes men put women into, the compromises women make, and what it takes for a woman to live authentically. Easy to read, with detailed descriptions of the past and the landscape and great characterizations, I loved this story of Edie Pritchard and her individuation quest for self-realization.

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

from the publisher:

Everyone in Gladstone, Montana recognizes Edie as the smart, self‑assured, beautiful wife to her high school sweetheart Dean. But they only see what they want to see. They don’t see the relentless pursuit of Edie by Dean’s twin brother, Roy. Or Dean’s crippling insecurity in the face of Roy’s calm, easy charm. Edie’s relationship with the Linderman brothers reverberates through the years: from her conventional start as a young bride; to her second marriage to an explosively jealous man with a daughter caught in the middle; to her attempts to protect a granddaughter who is pursued by two lecherous boys. But despite it all, Edie remains strong and independent, no matter how many times her past attempts to claw its way back into her life.

“A few years ago, my wife and I were at a banquet where the guests began to trade stories,” says Larry Watson, whose writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the Chicago Sun-Times, and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, among others. “An older gentlemen told of being a high school exchange student in Japan, where he fell in love with a young woman. She was a twin however, and he could never be sure which sister was the one he was in love with. I didn't quite believe his story—surely love would enable one to discern the difference—but the situation was so intriguing, I kept playing with its possibilities. 

I began to work on a novel whose working title was Edie and the Linderman Twins, which featured twin brothers who were in love with the same woman. But something happened in the writing that I hadn’t expected. 

It was not the twins, but Edie who came to dominate the story, a woman who often found that others, men usually but not exclusively, projected on her an identity that suited their needs rather than hers. Perhaps it was this that drew me to Edie’s character most of all: through her many lives, despite others’ attempts to define her, she was sure of who she was. I hope you recognize her.” 

The first film adaptation of Watson’s work, based on his novel Let Him Go, will be released by Focus Films in 2020, starring Kevin Costner and Diane Lane.

Read an excerpt at
https://www.workman.com/products/the-lives-of-edie-pritchard
Read an essay by Watson about the book at
https://d17lzgq6gc2tox.cloudfront.net/downloadable/asset/original/9781616209025_ae.pdf?1588876608

The Lives of Edie Pritchard
by Larry Watson
Algonquin Books
Publication Date July 21, 2020
ISBN: 9781616209025
hardcover $27.95 (USD)

The All-Night Sun by Diane Zinna

I loved The All-Night Sun by Diane Zinna, mesmerized by the writing and propelled by the story line. It was the perfect read for my scattered and distracted brain, transporting me into another's story.

A family of three is like a bet.~ from The All-Night Sun by Diane Zinna

Only child Lauren lost her parents in a tragic accident when she was eighteen, leaving her alone in a baffling world. Her parents couldn't afford to send her to college but after their deaths she guiltily sold everything to raise the funds for her education. She learned how to survive in isolation, accustomed to lying about being orphaned.

At twenty-eight, she has her dream job teaching a writing class to international students at a small Catholic college, a popular teacher who loves her work. She understands her foreign student's experiences as outsiders, their homesickness, and admired their courage.

Art student Siri comes into her classroom and insinuates herself into Lauren's life, and for the first time Lauren felt understood, that she had a true friend. Siri was outgoing and sincere, but also a risk taker who charms her teacher out of her safety zone. Lauren is used to secrets, and knows she must keep their relationship under wraps from the other teachers and administration.

Siri asks Lauren to come to her home in Sweden for Midsommer and she impulsively accepts.

I gasp at early memories of our trip now, and they are otherworldly, other-sensory. ~from The All-Night Sun by Diane Zinna

The gorgeous descriptive writing weaves visions of an enchanted land and time, maidens frolicing in meadows and woods, flowers woven in their hair, bathing in the cold water. Lauren allows Siri to transform her, and she feels what it is to be young--that fleeting time that passed her by with her parent's demise.

Siri has a complicated relationship with her siblings. The early deaths of their parents spurred older sister Birgit to take on the role of mother. Siri hates her artist brother Magnus, both blaming each other for their mother's death, and she warns Lauren to stay away from him. For Siri's sake, Lauren wants to resist the attraction between them.

The headiness of the all-night sun, being a part of a circle of teenage girls, comes to a crisis at a Midsommer party. Lauren retreats home determined to put Sweden and Siri and her family behind her. But there is no escape.

As her life spirals out of control, Lauren loses herself and her life, but in the end she discovers forgiveness and acceptance.

The All-Night Sun reads like a psychological thriller written by accomplished literary hands that spin a denouement of  uplifting satisfaction.

I was given a free ebook by the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Read an excerpt at
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/602443/the-all-night-sun-by-diane-zinna/

The All-Night Sun
by Diane Zinna
Random House Publishing Group - Random House
Pub Date  July 14, 2020
ISBN: 9781984854162
hard cover $27.00 (USD)

from the publisher

Lauren Cress teaches writing at a small college outside of Washington, DC. In the classroom, she is poised, smart, and kind, well liked by her students and colleagues. But in her personal life, Lauren is troubled and isolated, still grappling with the sudden death of her parents ten years earlier. She seems to exist at a remove from everyone around her until a new student joins her class: charming, magnetic Siri, who appears to be everything Lauren wishes she could be. They fall headlong into an all-consuming friendship that makes Lauren feel as though she is reclaiming her lost adolescence.

When Siri invites her on a trip home to Sweden for the summer, Lauren impulsively accepts, intrigued by how Siri describes it: green, fresh, and new, everything just thawing out. But once there, Lauren finds herself drawn to Siri’s enigmatic, brooding brother, Magnus. Siri is resentful, and Lauren starts to see a new side of her friend: selfish, reckless, self-destructive, even cruel. On their last night together, Lauren accompanies Siri and her friends on a seaside camping trip to celebrate Midsommar’s Eve, a night when no one sleeps, boundaries blur, and under the light of the unsetting sun, things take a dark turn. 

Ultimately, Lauren must acknowledge the truth of what happened with Siri and come to terms with her own tragic past in this gorgeously written, deeply felt debut about the transformative relationships that often come to us when things feel darkest.