A Collar for Cerberus by Matt Stanley

Matt Stanley's novel A Collar for Cerberus entertains while presenting deep conversations about life lessons.  I found it immensely enjoyable and chose it to begin my day's reading.

It is a love song to Greece. The descriptions of Greece are vivid, with beautiful descriptions of the landscape and its literary and historical associations offered through the dialogue and action. And the food! My mouth was watering!

The characters are wonderful. There is a young man who must decide what kind of life he wants to lead, and his literary hero, a cantankerous and manipulative Nobel Prize winner whose colorful life is legend.

Mosiac, 3rd century, of the labors of Hercules

The older man who lived life to the fullest teaches the unformed youth through a series of experiences that mirror the 12 labors of Hercules from Greek mythology. Hercules last task was to face and subdue Cerberus, a monster who guarded the gates of the Underworld. Literary and Greek mythological references are part of the travelers' mutual language.

Can the young man throw off the conventions of his background, take risks and rise to the challenges presented to him? Can he learn to be fully alive? Most of all, can he trust Irakles Bastounis? Or is he merely a willing tool? Is this author he has admired his friend?

Stanley has taken his experiences and presented them in an engaging novel. His story and love for his subjects is authentic. The plot may deal with death and big choices, but the distillation of the novel is joy.

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

A Collar for Cerberus
Matt Stanley
Thistle Publications
Publication July 26, 2018
ISBN 9781786080622
PRICE $14.99 (USD)


from the publisher:

Never meet your heroes...

A naïve English graduate arrives in Greece seeking experience and perhaps an encounter with his literary hero: Nobel laureate and irascible old hell-raiser Irakles Bastounis. Agreeing to act as driver for Bastounis, the young man finds himself on a hectic, adventurous and always challenging tour of Greece’s wonders – an apprentice in how to live life to the fullest.

As the road trip progresses, the questions arise. Is Bastounis still an addict? Who is following him and why? Is he researching his final, much-anticipated novel? Who are the people he’s meeting along the way? And how far will one young man ultimately go in the name of experience?

A Collar for Cerberus is a story about time, life, pleasure and the decisions we make.

Suspenseful Reads: In the Garden of Blue Roses; Truly Madly Guilty; The Marsh King's Daughter

Summer is a good time for genre fiction, novels that are plot-driven and compulsive reading. If they have great characters, that's all the better. 

I needed something completely different to read and so picked up my Goodreads friend's novel The Garden of Blue Roses. I found it to be a stylish, creepy story with an unreliable narrator who may be insane. Thankfully, the atmosphere of horror and mayhem is mostly in the narrator's imagination, but for a final bloody deed. The story moves at a good clip, nicely suspenseful.

The novel opens just after the narrator Milo and his sister lose their parents in a freak car accident. Their father was a well-known horror writer. Both children are damaged by their childhood with a distant mother and father who used them in various nefarious ways.

Klara decides to create a garden. Milo does not support her idea, and worse, he distrusts the gardener she has hired who seems to use his charms to manipulate women clients. Milo is convinced that Henri is mimicking one of his father's murderous creations.

With many twists and turns, the plot resolves without just deserts, the wily villain mastering all.

Michael Barsa grew up in a German-speaking household in New Jersey and spoke no English until he went to school. He's worked as an award-winning grant writer, an English teacher, and an environmental lawyer. He now teaches environmental and natural resources law. His scholarly articles have appeared in several major law reviews, and his writing on environmental policy has appeared in The Chicago Tribune and The Chicago Sun-Times. His short fiction has appeared in Sequoia. The Garden of Blue Roses is his first novel.

*****

Truly Madly Guilty by Liane Moriarty was a book club read, suggested by my hubby who had enjoyed the book.

Our club members mostly said the same thing: the book was easy to read, the author knew how to keep us flipping pages, but the book was pure entertainment without a message to take away. One lady wanted to edit 100 pages out of the book. Another loved, loved, loved it and said it was her favorite we had read in a while.

Then we discussed the novel for another 45 minutes. Which is interesting, since it had been decided the book had nothing really to say!

It turned out that we had a lot of strong feelings about the characters and their actions. And we talked about good and bad parenting and who was truly guilty. And how the author had perfected a style that pulled the reader along.

My hubby loved the book because it was a close study of three couples and he loves books about interpersonal relationships. I also enjoyed the book as a character study.

In the end, everyone agreed it was a nice summer read.

*****

After I read The Marsh King's Daughter on First Look Book Club, and did not win a copy of the book, I requested the galley but did not get one. It has garnered rave reviews. It is set in the Upper Penninsula of Michigan and mentions places I have seen on vacation: Tahquamenon Falls, Seney, and Newberry. Karen Dionne is a Metro Detroit author.

Last spring, I put my name on the waiting list to borrow the ebook from the library through Libby. It finally came to me this week!

I read it in two evenings, staying up late to finish it.

Helena has kept her past a secret from her husband. She needed to escape the public eye so she changed her name and created another past. Her carefully constructed world come toppling down when the police come to her door because her father has escaped from prison. Helena's husband learns she is the daughter of the infamous Marsh King who had kidnapped her teenaged mother. and held her, and their child, hostage for years.

Helena grew up in the marshes, admiring her father who taught her to hunt and survive on the land. He had a brutal side and dealt out harsh punishments.  She did not know anything else until she saw a happy family at Tahquamenon Falls--the first outsiders she had ever seen. When Helena was fourteen her mother tells her the truth, and Helena orchestrates their escape.

Helena knows she is the only person who can find her father. While she tracks her father through the territory she explored at his side we learn of her childhood and understand her turmoil. Helena knows too well her father is a narcissistic psychopath, but she also recalls how she loved him and the wilderness survival skills he taught her.

The novel is informed by Hans Christian Anderson's fairy tale The Marsh King's Daughter.

Michigan is beautifully portrayed in Dionne's descriptions. The wildness, the flora and fauna, the tourist traps, and the brutal deforestation are all encountered.

The Marsh King’s Daughter is in development as a feature film.

Book Club Kit can be found at https://randomhouse.app.box.com/s/4wcjrvzj3f869qucg8gi6wxaee2rihs9

Tin Man

A wife and mother brings home a copy of Van Gogh's sunflowers, which becomes her moment of respite from her everyday world. Her son Ellis dreams of becoming an artist, and his friend Michael also finds the painting very special.

Ellis's mother wanted him to finish school, but after her death, his father insists he leaves school to work at the town factory. Ellis becomes a 'tin man,' fixing dents to perfection. The painting disappears.

Michael and Ellis form a special friendship, which leaves Michael love-struck while Ellis closes off. When Ellis falls for Annie, the friendship between these three brings joy to Ellis and Annie, but Michael has to move on. Except he never does.

With beautiful language and poignancy, Tin Man by Sara Winman is the story of a love triangle of the late 20th c, a time when working-class men didn't talk about sexual orientation, and when AIDS was claiming the lives of beautiful young men barely in their twenties.

I received a free ebook through First To Read in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Give People Money: Everything You Wanted To Know About Universal Basic Income

'UBI' is not a social disease but refers to a concept that has been around for a very long time--the idea that by giving everyone a basic income--enough to live on--society can end poverty and economic injustice. Would you believe that President Nixon supported the idea in the 1960s? Or that Thomas Paine wrote about it? Across the world communities and countries have been trying a Universal Basic Income on a small scale.

41 million Americans are living in poverty. What if they received $1,000 a month, no strings attached, to do with as they need. The Federal government could shut down a whole slew of social programs such as food stamps.

Annie Lowrey became obsessed with the idea of UBI and asked was it "a magic bullet, or a policy hammer in search of a nail?" Her book considers what UBI is and the cultural prejudices that surround it, how its implementations have succeeded and failed, the impact it would have on poverty, and how a UBI would cut through all social and racial classes.

I loved how she began the book at the Cobo Center North American International Auto Show in Detroit. The birthplace of the auto industry was abandoned very early when auto companies moved their plants outside of the city. But the showcase of the cool new vehicles takes place there. Lowrey talks about the technological changes being shown, the 'cars of the future' that drive themselves.
Imagine taxis without drivers.

Next thing we know, semi-trucks will be self-driving. Drones will deliver small packages. The Obama administration set the numbers between 2.2 and 3.1 million jobs lost to self-driving vehicles.

This is nothing new. Technology has been depriving humans of jobs since the industrial revolution.

Yes, robots will take over the world. We humans can spend our time painting and climbing K2 and volunteering and making quilts...Only if the huge profits (made when business and industry replaces all the workers) is shared. We are already seeing a few people holding all the money. It's not going to get better. And the programs we have now are meant to be gap measures, for short-term needs. When unemployment becomes permanent--what then?

Sure there are some jobs that are unfilled. Fruit and vegetable pickers, for instance. Michigan is in sore need of them. Take asparagus picking in West Michigan. All you need to do is lay on a board attached to a tractor, hovering over the field, picking asparagus all day in the hot sun. Here in Metro Detroit, our town needs summer help with yard waste pickup. They can't get people to apply for the jobs. Of course, neither pay a living wage.

Unions were strong when my dad was supporting us kids. He made a good living with overtime pay working at Chrysler. Today union membership has dropped from one in three to one in twenty. Woman's salaries still lag behind men's. Companies no longer offer pensions or health care. They hire more contract workers and part-time workers. The companies get tax breaks and subsidies while their employees get tax-funded food stamps and assistance. It's a win-win for business and a lose-lose for citizens. One study found that $130 million dollars a year are spent on WORKING families whose wages can't cover their basic need.

What we have is a crisis situation that won't be getting better.

We can't just GIVE PEOPLE MONEY! I hear you thinking it. Why not? It's the AMERICAN way, you reply. People pull themselves up by their own bootstraps,
they work hard and rise, God helps those who help themselves. And a lot of other old chestnuts come out of the closet. And besides, you think, 'those people' will just use the money for cigarettes or drugs or alcohol or a fancy car or a fur coat or to take a cruise. Because we can't trust 'those people' to have the values we approve of.

Balderdash.

When my husband pastored in the inner city it was a big concern that handing over cash meant people going directly to the corner bar, or later the corner crack house. So the church had local grocers and gas stations in partnership to give commodities instead.

Sure, there are a few bad apples. But giving things you think people need is not very useful either. Lowrey talks about a village overrun with Tom's shoes. But give people cash and they can get what they really need. Most people will buy another cow, make sure the kids are eating right, make sure the kids can afford to go to school instead of going to work to help support the family.

Lowrey went to Kenya to see a UBI project called GiveDirectly and to India to see how the country's Public Distribution System was working. "Done right, cash works" she writes. Ontario, Canada has tried a pilot program and so has Stockton, CA.

I was appalled to learn that America's "safety net" design flaws trap people in poverty--and have a racist bias. European countries whose safety nets eliminate poverty are those whose population consists of native-born citizens. The 'us vs. them' factor does not come into play.

Like Finland. My exchange student daughter lost her job in the recession and she married a man who also lost his job. They came to America to study at their denomination's school and visited us. I wondered how they could afford an apartment and food and such. In America, they would have long lost unemployment and health care and housing and would not have been able to marry. Finland has national health care, too. It did in 1969 when I had a Finnish exchange student sister. Two years later I was married and we had no health insurance for three years.

Discrimination abounds in the safety net. Especially on the state level. The 1935 Social Security act excluded farm and domestic workers--who were mostly African American. The Federal Housing Administration funds fewer houses in black neighborhoods. The GI bill helped more white than black men since fewer schools accepted black students. The Clinton administration made benefits contingent on work, which affected single mothers. The Supreme Court allowed states to opt out of the Obama Medicaid expansion to over nondisabled, childless adults. 

A UBI for everyone would be color and gender blind, disabled and able treated the same. Stay at home mothers would be compensated, and what work is more important than raising families and providing a stable home life? America is the only country with no support to new mothers and we don't have enough quality daycare especially in rural areas. A UBI would help new mothers stay home. I had to take leave of absence from a job to care for my dying father. I lost income. A UBI would have made that more comfortable.

How would a UBI be distributed? Could it be targeted by fiscal hawks? How would we pay for it? There are questions to be answered.

I felt Lowrey's book was a good balance to Utopia for Realists by Rutger Bregman, which I read last year. I especially appreciated the section that showed the challenges in rural India for distribution of cash. She raised issues and questions I had not even imagined.

Read an excerpt of the book at
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/551618/give-people-money-by-annie-lowrey/9781524758769/

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

Give People Money
by Annie Lowrey
Crown Publishing
Publication July 10, 2018

WIP Update: Quilts and Books

Summer has been very busy, what with watering the new garden and everything extra I have to do while my husband recovers from knee replacement surgery.

BUT I am working on some quilts, although slowly. I have the Peter Pan Story Book quilt ready to layer for hand quilting. I got back two tops from my long-arm quilter friend Barb Lusk. I had too many tops piled up to hand quilt them all myself!

MODA Bee-autiful quilt blocks. Hand embroidery by Nancy A. Bekofske
Machine quilting by Barb Lusk

I loved working on the MODA Bee-autiful block of the month quilt last year.

I used different fabrics than most because I wanted more bright clear pastels. I  found the inner border and outer border fabrics from Hawthorne Threads.

I made this Big Block Quilt with fabrics I had on hand. My son wants it! I found a great quilting pattern that looked very MCM to me which matches his style. I will bind this baby off this weekend.

My Bronte sisters quilt is progressing, too. There is a lot of machine work left to do.

As usual, I am deluged with books to read. My own fault, mostly, but Meet Me At the Museum was a surprise arrival from the publisher. I am enjoying reading this epistolary novel while sitting on my new paver patio (now that the over 90-degree heat wave is over!)

The book is shown with my Postcard Quilt of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

I am reading Frank and Al by Terry Galway about FDR and Al Smith from NetGalley, and Rush by Stephen Fried from First to Read about Dr. Benjamin Rush, a Philadelphia founding father, both fascinating books.

I have barely begun Ohio by Stephen Markley, a book which has won much attention and acclaim.

And have on my Netgalley Shelf some books by authors I have read before,
The Rain Watcher by Tatiana de Rosnay (Author of Sarah's Key and the Daphne de Maurier biography Manderley Forever)
The Library by Susan Orlean (Author of Rin Tin Tin)
The Unhold Land by Lavie Tildhar (Author of Central Station)
Lessons From Lucy by Dave Barry

And books by authors I have not read before.

The White Darkness by David Grann whose Killers of the Flower Moon I would love to read! I saw the movie based on his The Lost City of Z.
Wanamaker's Temple by Nicole C. Kirk intrigued me--I loved shopping in Philadelphia's Wanamaker's store.

I am waiting for several books to arrive: There There by Tommy Orange, which I won from the First Look Book Club, plus Ahab's Return by Jeffry Ford and Welcome to Lagos by Chibundu Onuzo both won on LibraryThing and Virgil Wander by Leif Enger from Bookish First.

Call Me American by Abdi Nor Iftin

"My future was a mystery, but at least I was leaving hell forever." from Call Me American by Abdi Nor Iftin

Abdi's Somalian parents were nomadic herders of camel and goats. His mother bore battle scars from the large cats she fought while protecting her herd. In 1977, drought left his parents with no option but to go to the city of Mogadishu. His father found work as a manual laborer before he became a successful basketball star. When Abdi was born in 1985, his family was living a comfortable life.

Also in 1977 Somalia and Ethiopia went to war marking the beginning of decades-long military and political instability. Clan warfare arose with warlords ruling Mogadishu.

By the time Abdi was six years old, the city had become a war zone and his family had lost everything had fled the city. Existence became a search for safety, with starvation and the threat of death their constant companions.

Call Me American is Abdi's story of how he survived.

Abdi tells of years of horror and fear yet there is no anger or self-pity in his telling. He and his brother Hassam used their wiles to provide their mother with the necessities of water and a little maize and milk for meals.

When Abdi discovered American movies and music and culture he fell in love with America, and by imitating the culture in the movies became Abdi American. He envisioned a life of personal freedom. He taught himself English and then educated others. He was discovered by NPR's This American Life and he sent them secret dispatches about his life.

After radical Islamists took power, anything Western was outlawed. Abdi was punished if he grew his hair too long and had to hide his boom box and music that once provided entertainment at weddings. His girlfriend had to wear a burka and they could no longer walk the sandy beach hand-in-hand.

Knowing he faced the choice of death or joining the radical Islamic militia, Abdi pursued every option to come to America. The process is complicated and few are accepted. He fled Somalia to join his brother at a Kenyan refugee camp where his brother had gone years before.

Abdi had his NPR contacts and even letters from seven US Senators (including Senator Stabenow and Senator Peters from my home state of Michigan) but was turned down. Miraculously, Abdi was a diversity immigrant lottery winner. The required papers were a struggle to obtain when they existed at all. He had to bribe police, and transport to get to the airport. He was 'adopted' by an American family but had to learn the culture and find employment. After several years Abdi found work as a Somali-English translator and is now in law school.

I read this during the Fourth of July week. I don't think anything else could have impressed on me the privileged and protected life I have enjoyed. America has its problems, and when Abdi wins the green card lottery and completes the complicated process necessary to come to America he sees them first hand.

I am thankful for the personal freedoms I have enjoyed. I have never had to sleep in a dirt hole in the ground for protection or worried that by flushing the toilet soldiers would discover me and force me into the militia. No teacher ever strung me up by the wrists and whipped me. I never dodged bullets to get a bucket of water.

I could go on.

Somalia is one of the countries that Trump included in the immigration ban. Had Abdi not escaped when he did, he would not have been allowed to come to America.

I am here to make America great. I did not come here to take anything. I came here to contribute, and to offer and to give. Abdi Nor Iftin in NPR interview

I won a book from the publisher in a giveaway.

Read an excerpt from the book at
https://www.boston.com/culture/books/2018/06/20/abdi-iftin-call-me-american-book-excerpt

Hear Abdi's report on NPR's This American Life
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/560/abdi-and-the-golden-ticket

The Family Tabor: Atonement and the Search for Meaning

Harry Tabor is an emperor in his world. He has everything he could have ever imagined. The novel begins the day before Harry Tabor's recognition dinner as Man of the Year. In earlier times Harry would have been "running for his life" from pogroms, as did his grandparents, instead of living in Palm Springs with a lovely family gathering to see him honored. He thinks, "I have been a very lucky man," but as the authorial voice warns, "luck is a rescindable gift."

Harry hears a voice that resurrects memories buried so deep that he had lost sight of them completely. At seventy years old, Harry realizes he is unworthy of high honors and must face the truth and atone for his sins.

Harry's children also each struggle with secrets they can't reveal, a search for love or meaningful work, a need for spiritual or emotional rebirth, the need for mystery or the magic of ritual.

There came a time when I could not put this novel aside and found myself furiously reading and watching the battery life on my iPad counting down...20%...11%... I finished it just before the battery gave out, my husband very grateful that I was finally going to make him dinner. (Yes, he can cook, but has a bum knee right now.)

The happy family gathering is revealed to be a gathering of troubled souls, and by the grace of God, are bound together, each healed and made stronger. The novel's focus on the spiritual life of the characters may not appeal to some readers, but I loved it.

I loved Cherise Wolas's first novel The Resurrection of Joan Ashby, although I felt the ending dragged. For me, The Family Tabor began slow and gathered strength about halfway.

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

The Family Tabor: A Novel
by Cherise Wolas
Flatiron Books
Pub Date 17 Jul 2018
ISBN 9781250081452
PRICE $27.99 (USD)