Perestroika in Paris by Jane Smiley

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

from the publisher

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

The Cold Millions by Jess Walter

Spokane felt like the intersection of Frontier and Civilized, the final gasp of a thing before it turned into something else--the Last Rush Town, Gig called it, for the silver rushes in the foothills, but also the rush of railroad and bank, school and merchant, brick, stone, and steel, old-growth timber turned to pillared houses, hammer popping nonstop against the wild, a mad rush to log and pave the whole world.~ from The Cold Millions by Jess Walter

In 1909, the cold millions,"living and scraping and fighting and dying," with no chance in this world, are countered by the cold millionaires in their palatial, golden homes who dole out thousands to secure their privilege. 

Migrant workers sheltered in open fields as they drifted between cities, looking for work. The police cleared out the vagrants. The working men were lured by union organizers of the Industrial Workers of the World, promising to give workers a fair deal and a voice by taking power out of the hands of capitalist bosses.

The rise of unions was met with hostility, their leaders vilified as anarchists and revolutionaries who recruited discouraged workers into an expendable army. 

The rich didn't want to level the playing field. They sold the dream of opportunity, the chance to rise into wealth like they had.

Pull yourself up by your bootstraps originally meant to do the impossible. We hear about the few who started with nothing and built empires. And of the 1% who now control the bulk of money, many unconcerned about the cold millions who exist outside of the mythic American Dream.

Jess Walter's novel tells the story of Gig and Rye, sons of Irish immigrants who have died, the boys become migrant workers. Pawns in the system, they had to pay money for information on who is hiring; after a while they were fired and once again had to pay money for information on who is hiring...

Gig is a Wobblie. When Rye sees him arrested at a peaceful demonstration of unionists, he is moved to join the protest. East Coast union organizer Elizabeth Gurley Flynn arrives to raise money to hire Charles Darrow to defend Gig and the five hundred workers wrongfully imprisoned and inhumanly treated. Rye becomes a symbol--the sixteen-year-old orphan abused by the police.

Rye is also courted by the richest man in town, Lemuel Brand, to spy on Gurley. Brand hires Dalveaux to stop the next union meeting, rolling out a speech about the "dangers of socialism--East Coast agitators--immigrant filth--concerned mine owners and business leaders--real Americans--jail full of vermin--mayor's hands tied--in support of police--moral responsibility--commercial interests--future in balance--last stand of decency--". Rye and Gurley are to be stopped. 

One man to a boat. We all go over alone. The lesson comes early in the novel. Cops and killers, detectives and anarchists, wealthy men deciding everything in a back room, and Gurley--Rye knew them all. Each tried to be in charge of his own life. Rye outlasted them all, partly because of Gig's sacrifice, and partly because he found work and a family that took him in. Rye wasn't alone in the boat, after all. He was lucky. He won a few battles, and Gurley said that was all one could hope for in this life.

The Cold Millions is about the rise of the unions; it is historical fiction that makes past places and people come alive; it is a family drama that will tug at your heartstrings. The writing is fantastic. And best of all, it is a mirror flashing light on timeless social and personal conflicts.

I purchased a book.

I previously read and reviewed the author's novel Beautiful Ruins.

The Cold Millions
by Jess Walter
Harper, Collins
Published October, 2020

from the publisher

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Ruins comes another “literary miracle” (NPR)—a propulsive, richly entertaining novel about two brothers swept up in the turbulent class warfare of the early twentieth century.

An intimate story of brotherhood, love, sacrifice,  and betrayal set against the panoramic backdrop of an early twentieth-century America that eerily echoes our own time, The Cold Millions offers a  kaleidoscopic portrait of a nation grappling with the chasm between rich and poor, between harsh realities and simple dreams.

The Dolans live by their wits, jumping freight trains and lining up for day work at crooked job agencies. While sixteen-year-old Rye yearns for a steady job and a home, his older brother, Gig, dreams of a better world, fighting alongside other union men for fair pay and decent treatment. Enter Ursula the Great, a vaudeville singer who performs with a live cougar and introduces the brothers to a far more dangerous creature: a mining magnate determined to keep his wealth and his hold on Ursula.

Dubious of Gig’s idealism, Rye finds himself drawn to a fearless nineteen-year-old activist and feminist named Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. But a storm is coming, threatening to overwhelm them all, and Rye will be forced to decide where he stands. Is it enough to win the occasional battle, even if you cannot win the war?

Featuring an unforgettable cast of cops and tramps, suffragists and socialists, madams and murderers, The Cold Millions is a tour de force from a “writer who has planted himself firmly in the first rank of American authors” (Boston Globe).

Covid-19 Life: Quilts, Books, FurGrankids, and Christmas

With Covid-19 cases at record highs, we remain in social isolation. We miss seeing our family, but we keep busy. As Jane Austen stated in Emma, "Ah! There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort."

Jane Austen Witty & Wise coloring book from Dover Press

I discovered that DMC has free patterns on its website! I found these mushroom embroidery patterns that I knew would go great with the 1970's vintage fabric I had in my stash that has mushrooms on it. Another quilt top for the pile to be quilted.

I started this Row by Row quilt in 2014 but when it came to machine quilting it on my previous sewing machine, I was not pleased. I  finally finished it with my new Bernina 540 QE .

The blocks are from Michigan quilt shops near Houghton Lake and West Branch.

I am finally hand quilting the Hospital Sketches quilt from the Barbara Brackman quilt-along.

And I am machine quilting the Gingiber Thicket animals quilt.

From BookishFirst, Land of Big Numbers by Te-Ping Chen arrived yesterday and I have already read three of the stories. The writing is wonderful and the stories so revealing about daily life in China.

To come is Better Luck Next Time by Julia Clairborn Johnson, a LibraryThing Early Readers giveaway. I won The Education of Delhomme: Chopin, Sand, & La France from Words & Peace blog. 

We miss Ellie, Sunny, and Gus but the kids keep us posted on Facebook. Kitten Gus, all of 7 pounds now, loves Sunny and sleeps in her crate. Ellie got jealous and tried to take over Sunny's bed but was not amused when Sunny tried to fit in with her!

Ellie returned to her own crate, Gus joined Sunny, and all was well in the house.

The kids sent us an early Christmas present--a huge selection of Simpson & Vail teas, orange marmalade, and tea cookies! We were nearly out, so this was a real hit. Most of our favorites are included, including Literary Teas Jane Austen, William Shakespeare, Edgar Allen Poe, and Beatrix Potter. Also, the new National Park teas.

I brewed a cup of the Shenandoah National Park tea and had drunk half of it before I noticed it was a bright blueberry color! It has blue pea flowers (and lemon and ginger) which I learned is an ancient tea with many health benefits.

We have our tree up and some Christmas quilts on the wall. 

Our ornaments have stories, hand crafted by family members, or ourselves, and gifts from parishioners or coworkers over the years, or representing our interests. 

Even Sunny is getting into the spirit, sporting a velvet and fur and bell trimmed collar! I hope you are able to get into the holiday spirit. 

A Singular Beauty by Jerome Charyn

It was from my mother that I learned how memory could kill.~~from A Singular Beauty by Jerome Charyn

As she walked down the street, people were stopped in their tracks by her Hollywood beauty. Faigele attracted men in power, but it was her strength that allowed her to manipulate them.

A Singular Beauty recalls Jerome Charyn's mother and his childhood in the Bronx.

Faigele and and her brother Mordecai were from Grodno, Belarus. In 1927, Faigele's brother sent her to America, promising to join her later. She never heard from him again. Her deep depression left preschooler 'Baby' Charyn as her caretaker. Only when it was arranged for her to receive a fake letter from her brother did she rejoin the world.

The Bronx kindergarten was closed, so Faigele and 'Baby' Charyn taught themselves to read with Bambi. When Faigele became a poker dealer, Baby came with her into a world of criminals and politicians and his mother's lover.

An evocative and unsettling portrait of an era, a neighborhood, and a family, Baby somehow rising above the dysfunctional and complex family and social impediments, this brief memoir makes a lasting impression. Charyn's memories are embellished with a writer's flare so that his story becomes more than memories shared, taking on a cinematic vividness . 

I received a free ebook from the author. My review is fair and unbiased.

from the publisher

In A Singular Beauty, Jerome Charyn magically transports the reader back to his childhood in 1940s Bronx, filled with the tensions of World War II, the rationing of food and fuel, and corrupt public officials who feast on immigrant poverty and hardship. This is the story of his mother, "Faigele," the queen of poker dealers in the West Bronx. Her legendary beauty hypnotizes us as her days and nights are consumed by politicians and crooks; always at her side is young Jerome, whom everyone calls "Baby." The poker hall becomes his kindergarten. Is he her accomplice, her companion, or her cover? Charyn's memoir captures the essence of a child thrust into the role of an adult as he navigates a movie-set world tempered by the harsh realities of the neighborhood and the times.

"He doubtless knows that he has captured an era to perfection . . . This is a terrific little book," -- John Irving, Bestselling author, National Book Award and Oscar winner, from his New York Times Book Review of this memoir.

Jerome Charyn is an award-winning American author. With more than 50 published works, Charyn has earned a long-standing reputation as an inventive and prolific chronicler of real and imagined American life

A Singular Beauty
by Jerome Charyn
Stay Thirsty Press, An Imprint of Stay Thirsty Publishing, A Division of Stay Thirsty Media, Inc. (November 8, 2020)
ASIN : B08MZC6HFP
97 pages
$4.99

Mini-Reviews: Disturbing Reads

It is amazing what Kearse knew from family stories about her family history and even more startling what she learned from her research. A terrific alternate history and memoir.

I borrowed the book from my public library.

The Other Madisons: The Lost History of a President's Black Family
by Bettye Kearse
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published March 24th 2020  
ISBN132860439X (ISBN13: 9781328604392)

from the publisher

For thousands of years, West African griots (men) and griottes (women) have recited the stories of their people. Without this tradition Bettye Kearse would not have known that she is a descendant of President James Madison and his slave, and half-sister, Coreen. In 1990, Bettye became the eighth-generation griotte for her family. Their credo—“Always remember—you’re a Madison. You come from African slaves and a president”—was intended to be a source of pride, but for her, it echoed with abuses of slavery, including rape and incest. 

Confronting those abuses, Bettye embarked on a journey of discovery—of her ancestors, the nation, and herself. She learned that wherever African slaves walked, recorded history silenced their voices and buried their footsteps: beside a slave-holding fortress in Ghana; below a federal building in New York City; and under a brick walkway at James Madison’s Virginia plantation. When Bettye tried to confirm the information her ancestors had passed down, she encountered obstacles at every turn. 

Part personal quest, part testimony, part historical correction, The Other Madisons is the saga of an extraordinary American family told by a griotte in search of the whole story.

I had read Things We Lost in the Fire and quickly requested this new book. I was unsettled by the early stories, then became squeamish and finally had to walk away. The horror was too much for me. That being said, I will admit that the writing is amazing.

The Dangers of Smoking in Bed: Stories
by Mariana Enriquez
Random House Publishing Group - Random House
Hogarth
Pub Date 12 Jan 2021 
ISBN 9780593134078
PRICE $27.00 (USD)

from the publisher

Following the "propulsive and mesmerizing" (New York Times Book Review) Things We Lost in the Fire comes a new collection of singularly unsettling stories, by an Argentine author who has earned comparisons to Shirley Jackson and Jorge Luis Borges.

Mariana Enriquez has been critically lauded for her unconventional and sociopolitical stories of the macabre. Populated by unruly teenagers, crooked witches, homeless ghosts, and hungry women, they walk the uneasy line between urban realism and horror. The stories in her new collection are as terrifying as they are socially conscious, and press into being the unspoken—fetish, illness, the female body, the darkness of human history—with bracing urgency. A woman is sexually obsessed with the human heart; a lost, rotting baby crawls out of a backyard and into a bedroom; a pair of teenage girls can’t let go of their idol; an entire neighborhood is cursed to death when it fails to respond correctly to a moral dilemma.

Written against the backdrop of contemporary Argentina, and with a resounding tenderness toward those in pain, in fear, and in limbo, The Dangers of Smoking in Bed is Mariana Enriquez at her most sophisticated, and most chilling.

Pan-American Exposition Redwork Quilt Top Compete

Years ago I purchased reproduction fabric of Pan-American penny square Redwork blocks reproduced by Blue Hill. I embroidered the blocks and then created additional ones by tracing blocks on my antique Pan-American Redwork quilt. 

I am finishing up UFOs and decided to set these blocks with fabric from my stash. It is not what I envisioned when I started, but it is another quilt top done!

The blocks are set with plain blocks from Buttermilk Basin fabrics left from my Hospital Sketches quilt.

Note President McKinley ant President Theodore Roosevelt are on the quilt along with their wives Edith Roosevelt and Ida McKinley. There were also blocks for George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Buffalo Bill, and a Native American. And, a Buffalo which I suppose stood for the city that hosted the Exposition.

The reproduction blocks included common motifs from the era of children, a mother and child, and natural motifs.

Here is the quilt made with the penny squares sold at the Exposition in 1901.

President McKinley was shot while standing on the steps of the Temple of Music. At his death, Theodore Roosevelt became president.

Buildings for the fair are depicted. Below is the Johnstown Flood.

The Temple of Music "Where President McKinley was shot"

Bostock's Trained Wild Animals was on the Midway

Learn more about the Pan-American Exposition at "A Guide to Buffalo's 1901 Pan-American Exposition" here.

See Thomas Edison's films of the Exposition and President McKinley's death at the Library of Congress here.

Read  my review of The Electrifying Fall of Rainbow City by Margaret Crieghton here. Learn about Tesla's contribution to the electric lighting of the Exposition in Tesla by Richard Munsen.

The Last American Aristocrat: The Brilliant Life and Improbable Education of Henry Adams by David S. Brown

 

Henry Adams was born in 1838, the year the telegraph was first demonstrated. Native Americans were  forced to relocate and the Underground Railroad was being established. Meanwhile in Britain, slavery was abolished, Victoria was newly on the throne, and Dickens published Oliver Twist. Adams died in 1918 during WWI, the year of the Spanish Influenza and the first time airplanes were used by the USPS. 

Henry was the grandson of President John Quincy Adams, 'the Governor' of Henry's childhood, and the great-grandson of founding father President John Adams. His own father Charles Francis had served as ambassador to England, as had generations of Adams men.

Unlike his predecessors, Adams did not committ his life to public service. He never had children and his wife committed suicide when he was in his late 40s. He spent some time teaching at Harvard, and was popular with the students, but it did not suit him.

Henry became a historian, a world traveler, and an insider Washingtonian socialite. 

"What could become of such a child of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when he should wake up to find himself required to play the games of the twentieth? " he wrote in the first chapter, continuing, "As it happened, he never got to the point of playing the game at all; he lost himself in the study of it."~ from The Education of Henry Adams

It was his book The Education of Henry Adams that introduced me to him. It is a strange book, self-published and shared with his friends. He writes about his childhood in Quincy and his later life, skipping the death of his wife and his most regarded histories. He writes about the changes in society, the rise of capitalists and industry and the power of money.

Like his predecessors, Henry was intellectual, high-minded, and could be contrary. Like his predecessors, he believed one should be called to public duty, not seek it, an 18th c concept dated by his time. Unlike his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, he was not called to serve as an ambassador, although he was his father's private secretary in London. 

Instead, he wrote. He wrote an eight-volume history of Jeffersonian America, he wrote political commentary, he wrote travel pieces and about architecture and medieval history.

John Adams and John Quincy Adams were men of  their time, men of action, called upon to serve their country. Henry was an observer and an outsider, out of sync, never at home.

John Adams was against slavery and John Quincy Adams fought Congress over the ban to discuss abolition.  His father Charles Francis was involved with the anti-slavery Whig party. Henry was uninterested and unengaged with the problems of African Americans. 

As capitalism and business men rose to power, Anti-Semitism became mainstream, and Henry was not immune. He despaired to see that the big money of the 'northern plutocracy" was the rising power in Washington. He railed against corruption and the patronage system, and despaired that too many 'good men' avoided politics as a dirty business. He railed against the rise of the Boston Irish. 

He married a cerebral woman overly attached to her father, a woman liked by few.  After her early death, Adams built her a enigmatic memorial, the details of which he left up to the famed sculpture Saint-Gaudens while he went on a world tour while claiming he died to the world with her. 

The arc of Adam's life crossed a part of American history and politics I was not well versed on, and I found this aspect of the biography to be very interesting. The problems we see today in American politics have deep roots.

Some trivia tidbits from Adams life:

• Henry James wrote in a letter to Edith Wharton that Adams read Jane Austen's Persuasion aloud in the evenings.
• F. Scott Fitzgerald's character Thornton Hancock was inspired by Adams; he had met him when a boy.
• Adams studied under geologist Louis Agassiz at Harvard, saying his class was "the only teaching that appealed to [my] imagination."
• Adams wrote two novels, including Democracy about Gilded Age Washington DC politics; Teddy Roosevelt found it "essentially mean and base."
• Adams fell in love with an unhappily married, beautiful and intelligent socialite who counted on his friendship but rejected him as a lover. She did not find him physically attractive.

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

The Last American Aristocrat: The Brilliant Life and Improbable Education of Henry Adams
by David S. Brown
Scribner
Pub Date: November 24,  2020
ISBN: 9781982128234
hardcover $30.00 (USD)

from the publisher

A revelatory biography of literary icon Henry Adams—one of America’s most prominent writers and intellectuals of his era, who witnessed and contributed to America’s dramatic transition from “colonial” to “modern.”

Henry Adams is perhaps the most eclectic, accomplished, and important American writer of his time. His autobiography and modern classic The Education of Henry Adams was widely considered one of the best English-language nonfiction books of the 20th century. The last member of his distinguished family—after great-grandfather John Adams, and grandfather John Quincy Adams—to gain national attention, he is remembered today as an historian, a political commentator, and a memoirist.

Now, historian David Brown sheds light on the brilliant yet under-celebrated life of this major American intellectual. Adams not only lived through the Civil War and the Industrial Revolution but he met Abraham Lincoln, bowed before Queen Victoria, and counted powerful figures, including Secretary of State John Hay, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, and President Theodore Roosevelt as friends and neighbors. His observations of these men and their policies in his private letters provide a penetrating assessment of Gilded Age America on the cusp of the modern era.

The Last American Aristocrat details Adams’s relationships with his wife (Marian “Clover” Hooper) and, following her suicide, Elizabeth Cameron, the young wife of a senator and part of the famous Sherman clan from Ohio. Henry Adams’s letters—thousands of them—demonstrate his struggles with depression, familial expectations, and reconciling with his unwanted widower’s existence.

Presenting intimate and insightful details of a fascinating and unusual American life and a new window on nineteenth century US history, The Last American Aristocrat shows us a more “modern” and “human” Henry Adams than ever before.