Vesper Flights by Helen Macdonald

I heard so much about Helen Macdonald's book H is for Hawk that I picked it up but had not had time to read it because of all my egalley reviewing. When I saw her book Vesper Flights  I requested it--I would finally have to read Macdonald!

The essays in Vesper Flights include a broad range of subjects including climate change, species extinction, migraine headaches, bird migration, and solar eclipses. The wonder of the natural world is beautifully experienced through Macdonald's words.

When Macdonald talks about viewing the migration of birds from the top of the Empire State Building, I remembered one of the most extraordinary sights of my life. My husband and I were at Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania when we saw the sky darkened with migrating birds, an endless stream that filled the sky! To this day, forty years later, I remember the dark silhouettes winging against a sky filled with streaks of dark clouds backlit by an autumn sun.

A chapter that caught my attention describes her trek with Nathalie Cabrol, an explorer, astrobiologist and planetary geologist specializing in Mars. They went to the high altitudes of Antofagasta, Chile, to an environment that may be like that of Mars. "They higher we climbed, the further we'd go back in time--not on Earth, but on Mars," Macdonald writes.

I love armchair travel that takes me to such extraordinary places. Cabrol takes the author to the desert salt flats and gypsum sands, a brutal environment with its dangerously high UV radiation, thin atmosphere, and volcanic activity.

"Above me, the Southern Hemisphere stars are all dust and terror and distance and slow fire in the night, and I stare up, frozen, and frozen in wonderment," MacDonald recalls.

Cabrol says the Earth will survive us after we have destroyed what has made our existence possible. It offers little comfort to humans. But we ourselves have created this legacy.

I have savored the book a little at a time, delving in when I need a break from the sad news of the world. 

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

Vesper Flights
by Helen Macdonald
Grove Atlantic
Pub Date August 15,  2020
ISBN: 9780802128812
hardcover $27.00 (USD)

from the publisher

Animals don’t exist in order to teach us things, but that is what they have always done, and most of what they teach us is what we think we know about ourselves.

In Vesper Flights Helen Macdonald brings together a collection of her best loved essays, along with new pieces on topics ranging from nostalgia for a vanishing countryside to the tribulations of farming ostriches to her own private vespers while trying to fall asleep.

Meditating on notions of captivity and freedom, immigration and flight, Helen invites us into her most intimate experiences: observing the massive migration of songbirds from the top of the Empire State Building, watching tens of thousands of cranes in Hungary, seeking the last golden orioles in Suffolk’s poplar forests. She writes with heart-tugging clarity about wild boar, swifts, mushroom hunting, migraines, the strangeness of birds’ nests, and the unexpected guidance and comfort we find when watching wildlife.

By one of this century’s most important and insightful nature writers, Vesper Flights is a captivating and foundational book about observation, fascination, time, memory, love and loss and how we make sense of the world around us.

Inheritors by Asako Serizawa

Why do I keep choosing to read such hard books, books that wring my heart, cause my eyes to burn, and challenge my comfort with things I wish I did not know?

In this case, my husband heard of the book on the radio and recommended I look into it. It was publication day, but I was granted my request for the galley.

I really had little idea of the Japanese people's WWII experiences other than America's internment camps and the effect of the Atom bomb. The war divided families, soldiers endured horrors and then were pariahs, women sold their bodies to put food on the table, doctors were forced to perform horrible experiments for the war effort. 

Extraordinary and profound, Inheritors encapsulates a family's history over generations. You won't be the same after reading it.

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

Inheritors

by Asako Serizawa

Doubleday Books

Pub Date  July 14, 2020  

ISBN: 9780385545372

hardcover $26.95 (USD)

from the publisher

Spanning more than 150 years, and set in multiple locations in colonial and postcolonial Asia and the United States, Inheritors paints a kaleidoscopic portrait of its characters as they grapple with the legacies of loss, imperialism, and war.

Written from myriad perspectives and in a wide range of styles, each of these interconnected stories is designed to speak to the others, contesting assumptions and illuminating the complicated ways we experience, interpret, and pass on our personal and shared histories. A retired doctor, for example, is forced to confront the horrific moral consequences of his wartime actions. An elderly woman subjects herself to an interview, gradually revealing a fifty-year old murder and its shattering aftermath. And in the last days of a doomed war, a prodigal son who enlisted against his parents' wishes survives the American invasion of his island outpost, only to be asked for a sacrifice more daunting than any he imagined.

Serizawa's characters walk the line between the devastating realities of war and the banal needs of everyday life as they struggle to reconcile their experiences with the changing world. A breathtaking meditation on suppressed histories and the relationship between history, memory, and storytelling, Inheritors stands in the company of Lisa Ko, Viet Thanh Nguyen, and Min Jin Lee.

COVID-19 Life: TBR, WIP, And Sunny, Too

Our little 2-Mile town has seen rising cases of Covid-19, 22 in the last month. Much of the county is seeing rising cases again. I worry about the vibrant downtown surviving. DPTV, Detroit Public Television, aired a story about our city, found here. 

On my walks around town, I have seen parties and even tents and tables set up for bigger events. The school sports teams have been practising in the stadium. 

We continue to have our groceries delivered from Imperfect Produce and have been going to a local grocery chain that for $4.95 shops for you and brings it to the trunk of your car for pick up. We get a delivered restaurant meal every week. This week I will fill the gas tank for only the third time since February. 

The Clawson Quilting Sisters meet in the pack, socially distanced 6" apart, for show and tell and lunch every week. 

Show and Tell in the Park
The Great Gatsby Quilt

And the library book club is Zooming next week to discuss Elizabeth Berg's WWII homefront novel Dream When You're Feeling Blue. Sadly, the library had to close for a deep cleaning and testing of staff after someone was exposed or tested positive to Covid.

Apart from a walk and gardening (mostly watering!), life is centered around reading, writing book reviews, and working on quilts.

This week I machine quilted a top made of Row By Row patterns from years ago.

I am working with the Hazel quilt center block (from Esther Alui). I had trouble with Esther's patterns so I am make up my own design I finished hand appliqueing four of the center blocks of the Water Lily quilt.

New books on my NetGalley shelf include:

• Black Bottom Saints by Alice Randall, recalling Detroit's vibrant African American neighborhood

• My Bed by Rebecca Bond and Sally Mavor, a children's book about how children around the world sleep. The art is amazing!

• Rita Blitt: Around and Around, the artist's work donated to the Mulvane Art Museum's collection

I have read 104 books this year!

Our grandpuppy goes to doggy day care three times a week. Her people both work from home and Sunny has to burn off all that energy! This week she was Dog of the Week! Her fur sister Ellie enjoys being the only dog for those hours.

Sunny

When I don't feel like working on the applique, I color in the birthday Jane Austen quotation coloring books.

My brother and his girlfriend are still uploading photographs from their trip to the Keweenaw Peninsula. I loved Martha's photo of an old wagon wheel.

Chasing Chopin: A Musical Journey Across Three Centuries, Four Countries, and a Half-Dozen Revolutions

Hooray for Annik LaFarge for giving us Chasing Chopin! I was transported into another time and place, immersed in gorgeous piano music, and enthralled by the unlikely romance story.

LaFarge uses Frédéric Chopin's music to reveal the history of his beloved home country of Poland, a country only in spirit during his lifetime.

Plagued by tuberculosis, Chopin preferred to play in small venues and publish his music. At a time when Berlioz's bellicose works for large orchestras and opera were esteemed as the highest musical art forms, Chopin remained true to writing for the piano, an instrument still in development.

On first sight, Chopin thought George Sand unattractive. Their next meeting they fell in love. Their relationship traversed from lovers to estrangement.

Frédéric Chopin par Luigi Calamatta 1838, collection particulière.

After every chapter I turned to the companion site WhyChopin  where I listened to the music discussed in that chapter. LaFarge offers a variety of artists on instruments contemporary and from Chopin's time. I personally loved hearing the music on Chopin's preferred  Pleyel pianos.

I loved this book for so many reasons: because I love piano music; for learning more about author George Sand; for the insight into the history of Poland; and the portrait of the Romantic Era.

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

Chasing Chopin: A Musical Journey Across Three Centuries, Four Countries, and a Half-Dozen Revolutions
by Annik LaFarge
Simon & Schuster
Pub Date: August 11,  2020 
ISBN: 9781501188718
hard cover $27.00 (USD)

from the publisher

The Frédéric Chopin Annik LaFarge presents here is not the melancholy, sickly, romantic figure so often portrayed. The artist she discovered is, instead, a purely independent spirit: an innovator who created a new musical language, an autodidact who became a spiritually generous, trailblazing teacher, a stalwart patriot during a time of revolution and exile.

In Chasing Chopin she follows in his footsteps during the three years, 1837–1840, when he composed his iconic “Funeral March”—dum dum da dum—using its composition story to illuminate the key themes of his life: a deep attachment to his Polish homeland; his complex relationship with writer George Sand; their harrowing but consequential sojourn on Majorca; the rapidly developing technology of the piano, which enabled his unique tone and voice; social and political revolution in 1830s Paris; friendship with other artists, from the famous Eugène Delacroix to the lesser known, yet notorious in his time, Marquis de Custine. Each of these threads—musical, political, social, personal—is woven through the “Funeral March” in Chopin’s Opus 35 sonata, a melody so famous it’s known around the world even to people who know nothing about classical music. But it is not, as LaFarge discovered, the piece of music we think we know.

As part of her research into Chopin’s world, then and now, LaFarge visited piano makers, monuments, churches, and archives; she talked to scholars, jazz musicians, video game makers, software developers, music teachers, theater directors, and of course dozens of pianists.

The result is extraordinary: an engrossing, page-turning work of musical discovery and an artful portrayal of a man whose work and life continue to inspire artists and cultural innovators in astonishing ways.

A companion website, WhyChopin, presents links to each piece of music mentioned in the book, organized by chapter in the order in which it appears, along with photos, resources, videos, and more.

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

With Or Without You by Caroline Leavitt

Forty-nine years into my relationship with my husband, I can attest that people change and grow and couples must learn to adapt to the changes. 

Typically, personal growth evolves over time. But imagine waking up to find your partner in a coma, and they recover they a totally different person. Imagine that your connection is broken, your shared loves lost, that you are strangers that quickly.

With or Without You by Caroline Leavitt is the story of Simon, a one-hit-wonder still lusting after fame, and Stella, a practical nurse. They have been in love for decades even though their dreams don't mesh. Early in their relationship Stella gave up following Simon on tour and took up a career. Now in her early forties, she wants permanence and a family.

A new star in music recognizes Simon's band as his inspiration they are invited to open for him in Las Vegas. On the eve of Simon's leaving to reboot his career, Stella isn't sure she wants to give up her life to go on the road again.

Bad decisions leave Stella in a coma. Simon stays at her side while the band replaces him and moves on. Stella's work friend and doctor, Libby, had never liked Simon before, but in their mutual care for Stella, they become friends.

Stella comes out of the coma and recuperates. Foods she loved she now hates. She volunteers at the hospital and no longer enjoys being there. What does engross and calm her is drawing, demonstrating an amazing talent. For her drawings do not only show the outside of a person, they capture their inner being.

Simon, Stella, and Libby work out their ever more complex relationships, all on a journey into healing, personal growth, and an opportunity for full and productive lives.

Each character's childhood has impacted their self-image, and once confronted, they are able to become happy and healthy. This aspect of the story has universal appeal, affirming the possibility for wholeness and self-realization.

I loved the exploration of the quest for artistic success and the lure of fame against the pure love of doing art leading to success.

A thoughtful, deep novel with fully formed characters and a happy ending which I read in 24 hours.

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

See Leavitt's Virtual Book Tour here

With or Without You
by Caroline Leavitt
Algonquin Books
Pub Date  August 4, 2020 
ISBN: 9781616207793
Hardcover $26.95 (USD)

from the publisher

New York Times bestselling author Caroline Leavitt writes novels that expertly explore the struggles and conflicts that people face in their search for happiness. For the characters in With or Without You, it seems at first that such happiness can come only at someone else’s expense. Stella is a nurse who has long suppressed her own needs and desires to nurture the dreams of her partner, Simon, the bass player for a rock band that has started to lose its edge. But when Stella gets unexpectedly ill and falls into a coma just as Simon is preparing to fly with his band to Los Angeles for a gig that could revive his career, Simon must learn the meaning of sacrifice, while Stella’s best friend, Libby, a doctor who treats Stella, must also make a difficult choice as the coma wears on.

When Stella at last awakes from her two-month sleep, she emerges into a striking new reality where Simon and Libby have formed an intense bond, and where she discovers that she has acquired a startling artistic talent of her own: the ability to draw portraits of people in which she captures their innermost feelings and desires. Stella’s whole identity, but also her role in her relationships, has been scrambled, and she has the chance to form a new life, one she hadn’t even realized she wanted.

A story of love, loyalty, loss, and resilience, With or Without You is a page-turner that asks the question, What do we owe the other people in our lives, and when does the cost become too great?

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)