The Editor by Steven Rowley

To write an autobiographical novel entails a great deal of risk. Because people know you are writing about your own life--fictionalized--inevitably bringing emotional turmoil into the lives of those people. And perhaps that is why James Smale can't bring his novel to a satisfying end--he is reluctant to go the distance because of the high costs.

Smale's editor believes in him, in his novel, and in the story he has yet to tell. He can't tell it yet, because he hasn't lived it. And his editor presses him to do the work.

Oh, Smale's editor at Doubleday is Jaqueline Kennedy Onassis. It makes things very complicated. Does he call her Mrs. Onassis? Jackie? Are they friends or coworkers or is she his boss or does she work for him? Everyone wants a part of her, all his friends are more interested in the minutia of her life than they are in his book.

As Smale agonizes over his manuscript and his relationship with his mother and the father who left her "because of" him, his relationship with his beloved Daniel comes under strain. Do they have a love for all time?

Everything Smale believed he knew comes crashing down at a family Thanksgiving gathering when his mother shares a secret.

The beginning of The Editor revolves around Smale's coming to grips with his discovery and the shock of being discovered by one of the most famous women in the world. As a mother, she is deeply interested in his book. As an editor, she pushes him into uncomfortable territory. And the novel takes a turn from the comic into the universal theme of a child trying to process their childhood and relationships with parents. The search for the mother, in Smale's case, becomes a discovery of the father.

Rowley's novel has already been signed to be a movie!

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

“Rowley deliberately mines the sentiment of the mother/son bond, but skillfully saves it from sentimentality; this is a winning dissection of family, forgiveness, and fame.”— PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY (STARRED REVIEW)

The Editor
by Steven Rowley
G.P. Putnam's Sons
Pub Date 02 Apr 2019 
ISBN: 9780525537960
PRICE: $27.00 (USD)

Girl Waits With Gun by Amy Stewart

The Wednesday Afternoon Book Club at our local library read Amy Stewart's historical fiction novel Girls Waits With Gun this month. We won a "Kopp in a Box" book club kit with swag and a copy of the novel--and a Skype visit from Amy Stewart!

I had seen the rave reviews and was glad to finally read Girl Waits With Gun. Our group enjoyed the novel--one member even read the second book in the soon-to-be five-volume series! She especially recommends the audiobook.

The Kopp sisters are unforgettable characters. Their story begins in 1914 when an automobile hits their wagon on their way into town. The debilitated driver won't admit fault and reimburse them for the damage to their wagon. Constance pursues Mr. Kaufmann with a bill for $50. He responds by harassment and threats, including threatening the kidnapping of Fleurette for sale into White Slavery.

Constance visits the Kauffman Silk Mills and observes his treatment of the workers, learning of his sexual predation that results in pregnancies. When Constance discovers that one of his discarded lover's baby has disappeared she is moved to help find the child.

Constance is a spinster who towers over men and at 180 pounds can stand up to them as well.

Her sister Norma is sturdy and no-nonsense, a hard worker who enjoys raising pigeons.

The third "sister" Fleurette is a pampered and sheltered teenager who has a flair for dramatic fashions. Passed as a late in life child, she is unaware of the secret of her birth.

Stewart happened upon a newspaper story that caught her interest and she researched everything she could about the incident and the people involved, even interviewing living members of the Kopp family. The titles of the Kopp books are taken from actual newspaper article headlines.

Newspaper headline

Stewart was lively and well-spoken in the Skype visit and our group very much enjoyed talking with her. I highly recommend making use of her author visit.

Appearing in the novel is The Black Hand, an Italian criminal group that sends a paper with a black hand on it as a warning. One of our members told the story of her grandfather's ignoring The Black Hand warning and he later ended up dead.

We talked about the historically accurate aspects of the novel--anti-Semitism, the misogynistic treatment of women, how the Kopp sisters were bucking the norm by insisting on being self-supporting and living alone on a farm.

I have the next two books in the series waiting to be read...

Published in 2018 was Miss Kopp Just Won't Quit and Kopp Sisters on the March is coming out this year.

I look forward to reading more of the Kopp stories.

Helen Korngold Diary: March 24-30, 1919

This year I am sharing the 1919 diary of Helen Korngold of St. Louis, MO.

Helen Korngold, Dec. 1919, New York City

March
Monday 24
Taught Wellston all day. Good.

Tuesday 25
School. Dr McCourt lectured in the evening. Summer brought a nice kid up with him, a graduate of Boston U.

Wednesday 26
School. Sophia Stampfer’s house with Dan in the afternoon. All had a nice time.

Thursday 27
School. Unexciting. Downtown – rode with Mildred Cohn – oh, such gossip. J. Koloditsky sent me a large photo of himself – he’s nice looking.

Friday 28
School – dancing- Jo Marks loaned me Mrs. Schweig’s masque costume. It’s stunning, “Cleopatra,” lavender & yellow, beaded with black & white & wicked!

Saturday 29
School – Went downtown & bought some slippers. Went to Union Mask with Summer. Oh, such fun. Hixon Kinsella and all the other high steppers were simply infatuated with me & my costume. After removing masks they were just as nice. This is the best time I’ve had so far. Auto ride!!!!

Sunday 30
All tired out from mask ball. Summer leaves for Arkansas tonight. I hate to see him go, because he was such a dear fellow. Karol & I took him down to station. B’nai Birth dance in evening.


Notes:

March 26

Sophie Irene Stampfer (born June 1900 and died 1969) appears on the 1920 St. Louis census as the daughter of Joseph, who was an insurance broker, and Jane Ruth Meyers. Sophia was a teacher living at home. She married Jessie Bernstein.

March 27

Mildred Edith Cohn appears in the 1917 Hatchet Freshman Class. Her father was Max, who on the 1920 Census was a secretary in the clothing industry. Her mother was Edith. She is in the Ukulele Club in the 1917 Hatchet.

March 29

John Hixon Kinsella was in the 1920 Senior class at Washington University. He was Assistant Editor of the Washington University News. His WWI Draft Registration shows he was tall and slender with gray eyes and light brown hair. The 1920 St. Louis Census shows he lived with his parents Thomas and Marie on Olive St. His father was a real estate agent. The 1917 Hatchet includes a poem he co-wrote for the Freshman Class.

March 30

B’nai Birth was founded in 1843 and is the oldest Jewish service organization in the world.

Unmarriageable: Pride and Prejudice in Pakistan

Soniah Kamal's retelling of Jane Austen's novel Pride and Prejudice (P and P) was an entertaining read. Pakistan and Austen's world share many of the same constraints on women--especially an emphasis on marrying well over for love and a total unacceptance of premarital sex.

In Unmarriageable, Elizabeth and Jane become Alys and Jena Binat, schoolteachers who have intelligence and beauty yet are spinsters in their early thirties. Jena is shy and sweet; Alys is an ardent feminist who pushes her students to think for themselves.

The younger sisters include the Muslim fundamentalist Mari, the precocious boy-crazy and fashion-obsessed Lady, and the unhappily overweight Qitty. The family is not of the best kind, for Mr. Binat was bilked out of his inheritance which brought downsizing in house and budget, and Mrs. Binat's grandmother is rumored to have been a prostitute.

Aly's friend Sherry is forty-one but still has hopes of 'grabbing' a husband and finally experiencing a sexual encounter with a man. Every evening Alys and Sherry meet in the local cemetery, and under the pretense of feeding the birds, enjoy a cigarette and a heart-to-heart talk.

Alys and Jena meet the well-to-do Bungles and Darsee at a wedding celebration. Bungles is obviously taken by Jena. But she won't make 'you-you' eyes at him for fear of being considered a slut. Alys and Darsee, of course, stumble through a series of misunderstandings and dislike.

Just reading about Pakistani wedding traditions is interesting. And the fashions! The food! Oh, how my mouth watered over eggplant in tomatoes, ginger chicken, seekh kabobs, naan, korma, and rose-flavored cake with a cup of chai.

The novel is not a rewriting of Austen's classic but does follow the plot line. We know what is going to happen. But I completely enjoyed this novel for on its own merits.

Kamal channels some of Austen's irony.

When Jena twists her ankle, Bungles carries her to the car and rushes to the clinic. Kamal writes, "The clinic was an excellent facility, as all facilities that carer to excellent people tend to be, because excellent people demand excellence, unlike those who are grateful for what they receive."

There is a lot of talk about literature. Book titles are dropped throughout many conversations. The characters often speak about Austen in an ironic twist.

Annie Benna dey Bagh comments that she found P and P "helpful in an unexpected way...I decided that, no matter how ill I got, I'd never turn or be turned into Anne de Bourgh."

"Thankfully, we don't live in a novel," Alys comments. And yet Sherry channels Charlotte Lucas in marrying for financial security although she does have the choice to be self-supporting.

Darsee and Alys agree on many points in these conversations about literature and Pakistan's colonial heritage.

"I believe, Alys said to Darsee, "A book and an author can belong to more than one country or culture. English came with the colonizers, but its literature is part of our heritage took as in pre-partition writing."

When Wickaam comes on the scene, English Literature teacher Alys is appalled by his preference that films are better than books. He is drop-dead gorgeous and spins his lies to cover his unsavory history.

Kamal includes loads of nods to Austen. Minor characters are named Thomas Fowle and Harris Bigg-Wither, real people in Jane's life.

Alys often parodies the famous opening line of P and P, such as "it was a truth universally acknowledged that people enter our lives in order to recommend reads."

Thankfully, a Goodreads win brought this book into my life!

The Parade by Dave Eggers

Four just wanted to do his job. He operated a state-of-the-art paver and he had a schedule to meet. He was to pave a road that would connect two halves of a country, the rebels at one end and the modern city and army at the other end. He was to keep to himself, not get involved, just do his duty and go home.

Nine had other ideas. He was to ride ahead and remove anything that might hinder Four's advancement. But Nine was a free spirit. He chatted up the locals, ate at their fires and went to bed with their women. He made connections.

Four couldn't control Nine. If he reported Nine's misadventures it would make Four look bad. Nine's behavior brought a crisis when he came down deathly ill, forcing Four to accept the help of locals to save his life.

This short novel is an extended parable. What interests me is that the title is not 'The Road' or a reference to Four and Nine's divergent attitudes towards the people they met who have endured war but still offer hospitality. No, it is called The Parade.

Four's time schedule must be met because there is a parade scheduled by the general in the city at the other end of the road. The road's completion is to be celebrated. Four completely believes in the road's peaceable purpose of bringing progress to the rural bush folk. He has bought the story of the celebration.

The twisted, dark ending was almost expected.

In some ways, Four's faith in his supposed peaceful purpose recalled to mind another novel I recently read, The Cassandra by Sharma Shields, in which a young woman finds work at a government facility working on something that will end WWII. She completely buys into her work and purpose until she discovers what it is that will end the war--the Atom Bomb.

I have always wondered how people can participate in industries that manufacture products of destruction. How do they justify their work? Do they willingly believe some fantasy? Do they push the purpose out of their minds?

How hard it must be to discover too late what you have done. It is easier to believe in a fantasy parade.

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

Read a Q&A with Eggers about The Parade here.

from the publisher:
An unnamed country is leaving the darkness of a decade at war, and to commemorate the armistice the government commissions a new road connecting two halves of the state. Two men, foreign contractors from the same company, are sent to finish the highway. While one is flighty and adventurous, wanting to experience the nightlife and people, the other wants only to do the work and go home. But both men must eventually face the absurdities of their positions, and the dire consequences of their presence. With echoes of J. M. Coetzee and Graham Greene, this timeless novel questions whether we can ever understand another nation's war, and what role we have in forging anyone's peace.

The Parade
by Dave Eggers
Knopf/Random House
Publication March 19, 2019

Chronicles of a Radical Hag (With Recipes)

Lorna Landvik has created a character beloved and influential who we only know through the reactions of the people whose lives she touches. Chronicles of a Radical Hag (With Recipes) tells Haze's story through the columns she wrote for a Minnesota small town newspaper, her readers' responses, through the memories people hold of her, and most interesting, how her columns reach out and speak to a generation of teenagers.

Haze was unabashedly herself in her columns. She wrote in a speaking voice, musing on her life and the people she meets and on national and world news. She garnered letters from people who enjoyed her work and from people who called her a "radical hag." Haze embraced it all, happy to just get people thinking. And when a reader suggested she would better use the column to share recipes, she began to throw in a recipe now and then.

When Haze is felled by a stroke the newspaper publisher, Susan, begins to republish her early columns dating back to 1964. For some readers, they are a nostalgic trip into the past. Susan's teenage son Sam has been assigned the job of reading the columns and summarizing them, with suggestions on which to rerun.

It is Sam and his generation who are surprisingly touched by Haze. She becomes real to Sam. He learns from her musings on life, love, social change, and political crisis. He sees the elderly around him in a different light. And when he discovers Haze's hidden papers he learns a secret that will alter perceptions about Haze, the past, and the present.

Subplots follow women who struggle with broken marriages, heartbroken widows, acceptance and inclusion, disappointment and redemption.

Landvik's book is a pleasure to read, alternately funny and poignant. And, the recipes will propel you to the kitchen!

I received a free book from the publisher through Bookish First.

Chronicles of a Radical Hag (With Recipes)
University of Minnesota Press
Publication Date: March 26, 2019
ISBN: 9781517905996
$25.95 hardcover

Professor Chandra Follows His Bliss by Rajeev Balasubramanyam

Professor Chandra, soon to be seventy, has once again not won the Pulitzer Prize in Economics. His career was built on theories now unpopular--as unpopular as the Professor himself!

His kids won't talk with him, his ex married a male bimbo, his coworkers are sick of him. He has some nagging doubts about his whole life. Has he valued the wrong things?

Professor Chandra Follows His Bliss had me laughing out loud through the first half.  Chandra's struggles with the world and his family are presented with humor.

Chandra takes up the challenge of spending time "seeking his bliss" at Esalen. He takes in stride new experiences like meditation and nude hot tub conversations. He uses what he learns and tries to reconnect with his alienated children. All Chandra's problems don't disappear like magic, but what he learns and absorbs does bring him to a place where healing can begin to happen.

I enjoyed the novel and felt invested in Chandra and his family. But...Halfway through the book, I felt like there was a secret agenda. Like the author was proselytizing! Was the novel just one big sales pitch for a certain experience and lifestyle? The author, I discovered, practices Zen meditation.

Can we solve our issues with better self-talk, claiming responsibility for myself, opening up about my repressed feelings? Would spending time at a Zen monastery change our life? Do self-help gurus really help? Maybe. I mean, this is all very good advice. Maybe we all need a spiritual journey now and then. Reevaluate our goals and values.

So decide for yourself. If you are seeking a role model for change, Chandra might be your guy.

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

Professor Chandra Follows His Bliss
by Rajeev Balasubramanyam
The Dial Press
Pub Date 26 Mar 2019 
ISBN 9780525511380
PRICE $27.00 (USD)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rajeev Balasubramanyam was born in Lancashire and studied at Oxford, Cambridge, and Lancaster universities. He is the prize-winning author of In Beautiful Disguises. He has lived in London, Manchester, Suffolk, Kathmandu, and Hong Kong, where he was a Research Scholar in the Society of Scholars at Hong Kong University. He was a fellow of the Hemera Foundation, for writers with a meditation practice, and has been writer-in-residence at Crestone Zen Mountain Center and the Zen Center of New York City. His journalism and short fiction have appeared in The Washington Post, The Economist, New Statesman, London Review of Books, The Paris Review, McSweeney’s, and many others. He currently lives and works in Berlin.