We all have one story...the only story

"Don't expect too much of me."from The Only Story

My mother warned me. She was thirty-eight and I was nineteen when she warned that it happens to all lovers. My aunt once pondered, "What happened to us?" while reflecting on her first love and failed marriage.

We see it all the time, famous couples in the news, the couple next door. We expect everything, throw ourselves into young love trusting that the connection shared is timeless and everlasting.

It is our 'only story' of love, that first love when we are young and hopeful. We think we are different from the others.

"Somehow eternity seems possible as you embrace." *

I was excited to finally read Julian Barnes after hearing so much about his books. I was not disappointed. I do love a quiet, introspective novel with beautiful writing and a deep understanding of the human condition. The main character, Paul, tells us his 'only story' from the vantage of fifty years, recalling his first love in all its happiness, and later pain.

Paul is nineteen when he meets Susan, almost thirty years his senior. They play tennis at the local club during his first summer home from university. In a fluid, organic way, without pathos or introspection, their relationship becomes intimate.
Paul becomes a fixture in Susan's life, even coming into the home she shares with her alienated husband. When Paul turned twenty-one he took her away.

After recalling his early innocent and idealized love, we learn that Susan was a victim of spousal abuse. Paul recalls Susan's slipping from him into alcoholism, and lastly considers all the implications of cause and effect, culpability, and his inability to move past Susan.

The novel left me heartsore. For days.

I have a cousin who in her fifties slipped into early dementia from alcohol abuse. Her husband, her first love when they were teenagers, installed her in her own home, unwilling to watch her destroy herself. Of course, I thought of her.

Our only story, the one great love of our life, may end when one beloved partner dies first, or it may end in disaster, heartbreak, a crippling of the emotions. We may be left to relive happy memories or to wonder how it all went wrong. Paul agonizes: did he let go of Susan, let her fall, or did she pull him down with him?

Regardless, Paul is left damaged by his only story. And as a reader, I mourned with him.

I received a free ebook from First to Read in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

*from Second Elegy, Duino Elegies by Ranier Maria Rilke, trans. David Young

The Only Story
by Julian Barnes
Knopf
Publication: April 17, 2018
ISBN-10: 0525521216
ISBN-13: 978-0525521211

J. D. Salinger and the Nazis by Eberhard Alsen

While researching for the 2013 film Salinger and the accompanying oral biography, Eberhard Alsen became interested in why, unlike other Jewish American writers of his generation, Salinger avoided Jewish themes and writing about the Holocaust, even though he had personally seen the horrors of a concentration camp shortly after the end of World War II. This aspect of Salinger was not addressed in the movie.

Eberhard Alsen's book J. D. Salinger and the Nazis is drawn from detailed and exhaustive research and challenges myths about Salinger's experience in the service and the German woman he married.

Through an analysis of sixteen of Salinger's short stories about soldiers, The Catcher in the Rye, and unpublished wartime letters and documents, Alsen offers a correct history of Salinger's wartime experience, showing how major catastrophic events and flawed leadership shaped Salinger's attitude toward the American army.

Interestingly, Salinger was part of the Counter Intelligence Corps who job was to track down and arrest Nazis and Alsen's own father was a Nazi arrested by Salinger's Twelfth Infantry Regiment at the end of the war.

Getting Personal

I first read Salinger at age fourteen in a Ninth Grade English class; we needed parental permission to read The Catcher in the Rye which was banned until a classmate's librarian mother challenged it.

I had been reading the classics--Edgar Allan Poe, Jane Eyre, even Lord Jim. Holden's voice was something new for me and I was obsessed. That summer, I read all of Salinger in print and anything I could about the author. In 1967, there was no Internet or Wikipedia or Google so what I found was limited.

Years later I bought the bootlegged short stories when they came out. And although it has been some years since I read Salinger's stories, they were vivid enough in my mind to recall them as Alsen discussed them. What surprises me now is how little I thought about Salinger as being a war writer when I first read him! My favorite Salinger short story has always been To Esme, With Love and Squalor.

Because I was so familiar with Salinger's work, Alsen's book was 'easy' reading. Also, he has a good writing style that is not academic and dry.

Salinger's short stories were very autobiographical. Alsen believes Salinger's nervous breakdown, understood today as PTSD, fell somewhere between that of Sergeant X in "For Esme" and Seymour Glass in "A Perfect Day for Bananafish."

One aspect of Alsen's understanding of Salinger could be the basis for another study all together: his relationship to women. Alsen suggests Salinger suffered from borderline personality disorder, "a pattern of unstable and intense personal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation." This, along with avoidant personality disorder, and PTSD, had to impact his personal relationships in a negative way.

I found this study to be fascinating.

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

J. D. Salinger and the Nazis
by Eberhard Alsen
April 17, 2018
ISBN 9780299315702, 0299315703
Hardcover |  168 pages
$24.95 USD,

Eberhard Alsen is a professor emeritus of English at Cortland College, State University of New York. He is the author of several books, including A Reader's Guide to J.D. Salinger and Salinger's Glass Stories as a Composite Novel.

Young John Quincy Adams, Spy

John Quincy Adams [JQA] was a remarkable man who dedicated his life to public service. His training started early under his patriot parents John and Abigail Adams.

I have read multiple biographies of the family and somehow was not surprised to win The Adventures of Young John Quincy Adams: Sea Chase on Goodreads, even though it is written for young readers.

The author John Braddock was a case officer with the CIA and is a strategy consultant. His previous book is A Spy's Guide to Thinking.

The history behind the story in Sea Chase concerns the eventful journey across the Atlantic in 1778, when an eleven-year-old JQA accompanied his father to France to ask for French support of the American Revolution.

Reading Sea Chase, I had to keep in mind two things: my understanding of JQA and my memories of the historical fiction read in childhood that encouraged a lifelong interest in the American Revolution and history. When a teacher read Ben and Me by Robert Lawson to the class, I loved it and read it several times.  Of course, a mouse living in Benjamin Franklin's hat did not give him all his ideas. It was a device to catch a child's attention and interest. It worked.

In Sea Chase, the brilliant mind of JQA has yet to show itself. Instead, at least one person thinks he must have been adopted because he is so naive and clueless. The story is of the Education of John Quincy Adams (not to be confused with the autobiography of his grandson the Education of Henry Adams) in which JQA not only learns French from Dr. Noel, but the art of spycraft as well, involving critical thinking skills and discernment.

While his old man seems busy with papers and oblivious to what is going on around him, another unlikely characterization, JQA makes friends with other young travelers on the ship, including a cabin boy with a secret, suffers seasickness, and learns--literally--to climb the ropes. One night he overhears sailors talking, for there are British spies on board, and his inquisitive mind leads him into troubled waters. There is adventure ahead for the children.

As the good Doctor mentors JQA, he also is lectured about political philosophy and the superiority of Democratic and Christian values.

As a child, I loved adventure stories and stories on the high seas. I believe I would have liked this novel.

As an adult, I cringe at the characterization of JQA, for it is hard to believe he would have been such a dunce. And yet...what about that mouse who gave Ben Franklin his best ideas? I remind myself. It is fiction. For kids. And if that means that twenty years later they pick up a solid biography of the man who dedicated his life to his country, and who after a lackluster presidency returned to the House and argued for an end to slavery, I'm in.

Learn More About JQA:

Read about the quilt I made for John Quncy Adams at
https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2014/08/john-quincy-adams-champion-of-human.html

President's Quilt for John Quincy Adams made by Nancy A. Bekofske
for traveling exhibition by Sue Reich and appears in her book
Quilts Political and Presidential

John Quincy Adams and the Politics of Slavery
https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2016/12/in-his-own-words-john-quincy-adams-on.html

The Remarkable Life of Young John Quincy Adams
https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2014/09/portrait-of-president-as-young-man.html

Mr Adam's Last Crusade
https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2014/08/mr-adams-last-crusade-by-joseph-wheelan.html

And a book I have been reading, John Quincy Adams Militant Spirit
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/10/books/review/john-quincy-adams-militant-spirit-by-james-traub.html

Lisa See and The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane

The Troy Public Library in Troy, Michigan, hosted author Lisa See this week. I quickly bought her latest book, The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane, and read it in two days.

The author series has brought some great writers to the local public, including Elizabeth Berg, David Maraniss, and Emily St. John Mandel. 250 people signed up for See's presentation, the largest crowd yet!

A few years ago I read Lisa's earlier books Shanghai Girls and Dreams of Joy. This latest book focuses on a minority ethnic group, the Akha, who live in a biodiverse area comprised of parts of China and Laos. The book opens in 1988 when the Akha were still cut off from the modern world.

The Tea Girl is about mothers and daughters, a culture in transition, the "grateful but sad" experience of Chinese children adopted in the United States, and the history of Pu'er tea. We meet Li-yan and follow her story of sorrow and loss, self-reliance and renewal. 

See believes fiction should address what it means to be human, allowing readers to occupy another world and experience other realities. Her writing has certainly provided that experience for thousands worldwide.

With Lisa See and her new book at the
Troy Community Center, Troy, Michigan

I found the novel to be very interesting and engaging. I particularly responded to the section where the adopted girls discuss their experiences. Our son was friends with a boy adopted from China and he often related to us his concern for this boy's sadness and his feeling of alienation as the only Chinese boy in school.

I am a tea drinker and enjoyed learning about tea production and how it has changed. I was fascinated by the Akha culture and how the commercialization of Pu'er tea offered the advantages of electricity and sanitation while impacting their traditions.

"No coincidence, no story," the novel begins, quoting the main character's mother. The novel is filled with coincidences but so was the birth and development of the novel, See told the audience.

See knew she had to write about Chinese girls adopted into foreign families; being of American-Chinese heritage, she understood their question of identity. See found her story through several serendipitous experiences, from the sight of a girl's swinging ponytail as she walked with her parents to a fortuitous connection with a purveyor of Pu-er tea offering a chance to see the Akha people and experience the harvesting and processing of the tea.

When asked if she enjoys research or writing best, See admitted she loves the research aspect and talked about how the research impels her writing.

A comment was made on the nonjudgemental quality of her books, and See talked about "living in their clothes for a while" (a favorite quote from Wallace Stenger in his novel Angle of Repose) as her motivation for writing.

Another in the audience asked why See did not use her writing to make social statements. For instance, one novel she wrote about foot binding and in The Tea Girl the Akha view of twins as "human rejects" involving infanticide. See stated that telling the story is all that is needed, for no one is going read her book and think killing twins is a good idea! I agree. Great writing engages the reader's mind and heart; the story should be all that is needed.

See avoids reading fiction while writing to protect her voice. While on tour these past months she has enjoyed reading many genres, including South American writers and currently is reading House of Broken Angels by Luis Alberto Urrea, which I have been reading.

See has written a book on her family, On Gold Mountain, and a mystery series. Her next book is set on a small island off Korea in a dying society where woman free divers are the 'breadwinners'.

Read about See's favorite novels at Off the Shelf here. She includes several of my favorites, including Howard's End by E. M. Forster and, of course, Wallace Stenger's Angle of Repose.

The Sewing Machine by Natalie Fergie

The Sewing Machine by Natalie Fergie has the description: One Sewing Machine. Two Families. Three secrets. Four generations.

The author was a career nurse turned fabric dyer and textile enthusiast. She was inspired to write this novel by a Singer 99K found near the Singer sewing factory where it was made, which she purchased for 20 pounds.

The Sewing Machine was crowd funded by subscription and published through Unbound. Readers can pledge for a book at unbound.com.

I thought it would be interesting to read a book that was published this way, and of course the focus on home sewing was a perk.

The story, set in Scotland, begins in 1911 and jumps across the century to 2016.

The world of each time setting is described, from the fortnightly shampoo and set to the refillable compact for woman’s facial powder, the rise of unions and WWI. As character Connie thinks, "the constant push to re-do and change was overwhelming sometimes." Characters must adapt as the century brings huge changes. Nurses leave off starched hats and cuffs and pinned aprons for zipped uniforms and paper hats. I never considered the huge learning curve required when the hand cranked sewing machine was replaced by electric.

As an American, I was Goggling a variety of things to find their American equivalent. I got that a broadside was a newspaper and understood the concept of a boot sale. (That is not about low prices on winter books, but a flea market out of car trunks!) I had no idea of what a kirby grip is: it is a bobby pin.

In 1911 the Singer sewing machine factory workers in Clydebank, Scotland, organized for a strike. Factory worker Jean’s boyfriend Donald is a union organizer. Scientific Management was the new business model with its emphasis on efficiency and profit. The result was decreasing the number of workers thus increasing the work load.  Jean’s father is anti-union and he turns her out of the house. When the strike fails, Jean and Donald leave town. But first she hides a secret note, wrapped tightly around a bobbin that is inserted into a new sewing machine. During WWI Donald "takes the king's shilling" and joins the service.

In 1954 Connie, a nurse, is living with Kathleen, who has always sewn on an old Singer sewing machine which her first husband purchased for her. It outlasts the 1963 electric model bought by her second husband Alf. Connie decides to seek employment in the sewing department for the local "co-operative" hospital.

In 1980 Ruth is a nurse at the hospital. Unmarried and pregnant, she has been rejected by her parents. Jean has an accident and ends up in the hospital. She has a letter to be mailed and Ruth agrees to handle it. Meantime, a woman from the sewing department helps alter Ruth's nursing uniform to hide the pregnancy.

In 2016 Fred has inherited his Granda Alf’s tenement apartment, complete with a cat and an old Singer sewing machine. Three generations have lived in the flat. Fred is unemployed and when he considers keeping the flat his girl dumps him. He learns to use the old Singer to remake Granda’s clothes and shoe bags for the neighbor kids.

The multiple time and story lines are a bit confusing at times, but this kind of plot structure is not unusual today. The scenes are full of period detail, told with a loving nostalgia about the old ways. Mysteries and relationships are revealed in the end, all tied to the Singer sewing machine.

Readers who are sewers will particularly enjoy this book, but also those who enjoy historical fiction, woman's fiction, and character-driven plot lines.

I revived a free book from the publisher through Net Galley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

from the publisher:

It is 1911, and Jean is about to join the mass strike at the Singer factory. For her, nothing will be the same again. Decades later, in Edinburgh, Connie sews coded moments of her life into a notebook, as her mother did before her. More than 100 years after his grandmother's sewing machine was made, Fred discovers a treasure trove of documents. His family history is laid out before him in a patchwork of unfamiliar handwriting and colourful seams. He starts to unpick the secrets of four generations, one stitch at a time.

Sewing Machine
by Natalie Fergie
Unbound Digital
Pub Date 17 Apr 2017 

Janesville: An American Story

"History. Vision. Grit."  Janesville City Hall Mural

Janesville: An American Story by Amy Goldstein has won many accolades, including 100 Notable Books in 2017 from the New York Times Book Review and the McKinsey Business Book of the Year. 

Goldstein presents the story of a town and its people coping with the closing of the GM factory and how the town and families worked to reinvent themselves. 

Janesville, WI was a tight-knit community with a successful history of factories beginning with cotton mills in the late 19th c, including Parker Pens and the GM auto assembly plant and the factories that supplied it.

The book covers five years, beginning in 2008 with Paul Ryan, a Janesville native, receiving the phone call from GM informing him of their decision to close the Janesville plant. Goldstein portrays the impact on employees and their families: the cascading job losses, the ineffectual retraining programs, the engulfing poverty, the men who take employment at plants in other states and see their families a few hours a week, teenagers working to help keep food on the table while preparing for college.  

This is one of those non-fiction books that is engrossing while being informative, bringing readers into the struggles, successes, and failures of individual families. If you want to know about the people who have lost the American Dream, the impact of business and political decisions, and what programs 'work' and which have not delivered, then Janesville is for you.

Janesville: An American Story by Amy Goldstein
Simon & Schuster
$16 paperback
ISBN 9781501102264

Getting Personal

I married into a GM family. My father-in-law had a white-collar job at Fisher Body in Flint and ordered supplies to be sent to Janesville, WI. My husband worked as a welder on the line several summers while in college.

My father-in-law's Fisher Body pins

In 1931, my thirteen-year-old father-in-law lost his father to TB. His mother soon remarried and a year later was divorced. She had a Fourth Grade education and was sixteen when married. She had two sons to support. That is when she went to work for GM in Flint.

I noted her family all called her Girl. I learned the nickname dated to when she was the only woman on the floor and when the men wanted her help, they would call, "Girl!"

Girl was part of the Woman's Emergency Brigade and delivered food during the 1936-7 sit-down strike and was a proud Union member.

Girl's oldest boy, like his dad, had TB. Her youngest son worked for the CCC, took classes at Baker College, and got a job as a clerk at the auto factory where his mother was a machine operator. Together, in 1940, their income was $2,228.

When my husband and I would visit his folks sometimes they would take us on a drive to see the old factories. And over the years we were very aware of how, briefly, the auto industry offered our families great opportunities. My father-in-law sent three boys to college and had a comfortable early retirement. My own father had relocated to Metro Detroit for a job in the auto industry, and we had a good working-class life and important benefits as my mother suffered from chronic health issues. 

from the publisher's website:

* Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year * 800-CEO-READ Business Book of the Year * A New York Times Notable Book * A Washington Post Notable Book * An NPR Best Book of 2017 * A Wall Street Journal Best Book of 2017 * An Economist Best Book of 2017 * A Business Insider Best Book of 2017 *

“A gripping story of psychological defeat and resilience” (Bob Woodward, The Washington Post)—an intimate account of the fallout from the closing of a General Motors assembly plant in Janesville, Wisconsin, and a larger story of the hollowing of the American middle class.

This is the story of what happens to an industrial town in the American heartland when its main factory shuts down—but it’s not the familiar tale. Most observers record the immediate shock of vanished jobs, but few stay around long enough to notice what happens next when a community with a can-do spirit tries to pick itself up.

Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter Amy Goldstein spent years immersed in Janesville, Wisconsin, where the nation’s oldest operating General Motors assembly plant shut down in the midst of the Great Recession. Now, with intelligence, sympathy, and insight into what connects and divides people in an era of economic upheaval, Goldstein shows the consequences of one of America’s biggest political issues. Her reporting takes the reader deep into the lives of autoworkers, educators, bankers, politicians, and job re-trainers to show why it’s so hard in the twenty-first century to recreate a healthy, prosperous working class.

Gateway To The Moon: Rediscovering A Family's History

In 1478 the Spanish Inquisition was established. The year that Columbus went on his first voyage of discovery, 1492, was also the year that all Jews and Muslims were expelled from Spain. Unless they converted to Christianity--or preferred to be burned at the stake.

The Christian Jews outwardly lived like Christians, attending mass, but secretly clung to their way of life, lighting candles on Friday, avoiding pork, and circumcising their sons.

So, the Conversos were targeted, massacred, imprisoned, tortured, and burned. The Jews fled to the New World, but the Inquisition followed to Mexico and the Jews moved into New Mexico.

Gateway to the Moon by Mary Morris imagines the story of one Jewish/Converso family whose ancestor, Luis de Torres, came to the New World with Columbus, following the Torres family through the 15th and 16th centuries and into the 20th century.

Living in Entada de la Luna, the Torres are good Catholics who traditionally light candles on Friday night, disdain to eat pork, and circumcise their sons. The cemetery holds generations of their ancestors. The townsfolk know that their ancestors came from Spain but no longer remember what brought them there.

The story is told in two timelines, telling the contemporary story of Miguel Torres, a teenager with a passion for astronomy, and that of his ancestors beginning with Luis de Torres, a secret Jew born Leni Halvri before the Alhambra Decree.

The horrific history of the Inquisition is revealed through the lives of the Torres family, providing drama and intrigue to the slower, more introspective story of Miguel. Miguel's world has also has its violence and sorrow.

Morris's beautiful writing is a pleasure to read. Miguel is a wonderful, memorable character. And it was interesting to learn about this part of history. I very much enjoyed this novel, a combination of historical fiction, contemporary fiction, and family history.

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

Find a reading group guide at http://knopfdoubleday.com/guide/9780385542906/_/?ref=PRHC04BC8369A03&linkid=PRHC04BC8369A03&cdi=169C16BF8CF47BCCE0534FD66B0A6668&template_id=8912&aid=randohouseinc23295-20

Gateway to the Moon
Mary Morris
Doubleday Books
Publication Date: April 10, 2018
$27.95 hardcover
ISBN: 9780385542906