Karen
August is seen as unmanly because he's not a farmer, and seen as an outsider because his parents were excommunicated and he was raised mostly outside of his Mennonite community. Perhaps for those reasons, he is asked by Ona, his childhood friend, to take minutes for a group of Mennonite women who are meeting to decide how to respond to their repeated assault and rape by men in their community. August is the narrator of this novel, which records the deliberations of the women as they struggle to come to agreement about what they will do, and what reasons support their decision.
The novel is dialogue interspersed with narrative about what the women are doing as they talk, so we get a physical sense of the women and their characters. Some are full of rage, some sad, some cynical and sarcastic. They are young and old and they are family to each other, literal mothers, daughters, and sisters, as well as cousins and neighbors. Their conversation digs into the conditions of their life and their culture and exposes their vulnerability to harm at the hands of the men in their community, as well as their earnest desire to be true to their faith—to cultivate love and forgiveness, and to forgo violence. These are heavy themes, but no one makes long speeches. One woman's habit of using stories about her two elderly horses, Ruth and Cheryl, to illustrate her points is met with eye rolling and impatience from the other women. One of the powers of this book is that the characters are full enough to make what is essentially a theological and philosophical argument feel like a natural conversation.
August himself comes to participate in the conversation and in the action the women end up taking. His additions of his own thoughts to the narrative of the meeting adds important background and deep poignance to the novel. I loved this book.
A spooky short novel about a pair of children who turn out to have an ancient, magical stone that holds the key to the freedom and happiness of the world. It has themes of sacrifice and bravery, and also of people being connected to their place in the world through generations. It was reminiscent of the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings for me, but with a different flavor that I identify with Alan Garner.
This is a riveting story of the reporting Ronan Farrow did for the story on Harvey Weinstein's predatory assaults on women that was ultimately published in the New Yorker. Of course, it includes the story of finding witnesses and sources for his information and persuading them to talk to him candidly, when many of them had signed non-disclosure agreements. It also covers the story of how NBC, his news agency and employer, tried to get him to stop covering the story, and how he was followed and watched by private investigators with ties to Mossad.
This book is very readable. Farrow has an engaging voice and an excellent sense of pace. Since he was an active part of the story he's telling, he includes his own thoughts and actions from the time in his narrative, so it's a bit like a memoir. It's also a bit like a hard boiled detective novel or a crime thriller, because the crimes are so egregious, the lengths Weinstein was willing to go to cover them up were extreme, and his influence seemed to reach everywhere. The whole story is horrifyingly over the top.
A semi-biographical novel based on the author's grandfather, who fought Arthur V. Watkins' attempt to terminate government recognition of Indian tribes. Set in 1953 on the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation in North Dakota, the story brings together the experiences of Thomas Wazhask, the night watchman of the book's title, and Patrice Paranteau, a young woman who works at the jewel bearing factory where Wazhask is the watchman.
Thomas has a wife and kids, and memories of his education at the state Indian boarding school. He finds out about Watkins' bill to “emancipate” Indians from their reservations, and is troubled enough to organize some action to try to stop it.
Patrice is a recent high school graduate who was lucky enough to get a job at the jewel bearing plant. Her paychecks support her mom and younger brother as well as herself. However, she is troubled because her older sister, Vera, moved to Minneapolis and then disappeared. She arranges to take time off from her job to go to Minneapolis and look for her.
Surrounding Thomas and Patrice is a tight knit community of whites and Indians who know each other and look out for each other, even though they might not always understand each other very well.
This is a great story for descriptions of Ojibwe culture on a reservation and the challenges that tribes faced in the mid 20th century and still face today.
I somehow didn't notice when I picked up The Porpoise, that it is based on the ancient story of Antiochus, who “fell in love with” his daughter as a substitute for his dead wife. When I realized that was what I was reading, I very nearly stopped. I did not want to read about male adventures based on the suffering of a female rape victim. I kept reading, though, and found that the male adventure was far from happy-go-lucky, and in fact carried a lot of its own suffering. No one gets through this story unscathed. Is that a recommendation? I don't know.
The Porpoise is a labyrinth of stories, winding inwards and outwards in time, with three different (but intimately related) narratives. The outermost part of the story is set in modern times. The infant Angelica survives the plane crash that kills her mother Maja, and is raised, and subsequently abused by her fabulously wealthy father Phillipe. A would be rescuer/suitor, Darius, shows up, is nearly killed by Phillipe, and has to go on the run...when he morphs into Pericles. The story continues with the adventures of Pericles of Tyre, with brief breaks to an encounter between William Shakespeare and George Wilkins, the (putative) writers of the play, Pericles. The struggle between Angelica and her father makes brief appearances throughout. Finally, the labyrinthine story winds back outward to end with Angelica.
The structure of the story is confusing. What do these three narratives have to do with each other? Why does the author intermingle them instead of telling each one straight through? Where am I in relation to what I read a few pages before? I can't say that all my questions were answered, but I was satisfied with the resolution of the problems.
Also, there's a bibliography of sources. As a librarian, I appreciate that.
Weather features Lizzie, a librarian who fell into her job at her university through the recommendation of her former mentor, Sylvia. I was gratified to see that Lizzie admits she doesn't have the usual credentials to be a librarian (a Master's degree in Library/Information Science). The author, Jenny Offill, must be acquainted with some librarians to have thought it important to include this detail. One of the pleasures of this book, for me, is the many anecdotes Lizzie includes in her narrative about the library patrons she encounters at her work. People are quirky and have odd interests and obsessions which come out when they need help at the library. So, the librarian aspects of this book were an invitation to me to come in and feel at home with Lizzie (even though I did wonder how many job candidates with LIS degrees she beat out for her job, and on what basis).
Lizzie's mentor, Sylvia, hosts a climate change podcast called Hell or High Water, and she hires Lizzie to answer the correspondence the podcast generates. It is through this side job that Lizzie becomes a bit obsessed with climate change and preparing for disaster. Or, at least, that's what I've read in other people's reviews. The climate change aspect of this book didn't stand out for me enough that I would call it a major theme. I would characterize it as more of a background for some of the other crises going on in Lizzie's life: her brother's descent into a deep depression and the strain that causes in her marriage. Either way, Lizzie is witness to disorienting crisis and is distressed by her inability to do much about it.
The book is written in short, 2-3 sentence paragraphs that are separated from each other by an extra line so they sit on the page like little packages. Sometimes the paragraphs flow from one to the next with obvious connection, but sometimes they don't seem connected to each other at all. Still, each one is a pleasure to read. Jenny Offill gives Lizzie a wry humor that I really liked. The style makes this an easy book to pick up and put down again, but it also makes it a little harder to remember everything that happens in the book as part of a whole.
I read this Philip K. Dick classic after watching the Amazon series that was based on it. Whew! It's a completely different experience, and reaffirms my commitment to reading the books that films and TV shows are based on.
The premise is that Franklin D. Roosevelt was assassinated in 1934 and the Axis powers won World War II. Thus, what used to be the United States is divided into the Eastern two thirds which is ruled by Nazi Germany, the Pacific States which are ruled by Japan, and a buffer zone of Western non-coastal states which are a kind of free for all where agents of both super powers roam.
There are several plots underway in this dystopian world. One involves the Japanese trade minister in San Francisco, Tagomi, who is drawn into hosting a secret meeting between a German official and a supposedly retired Japanese general. Tagomi is a contemplative man who consults the I Ching regularly about his decisions. He experiences a crisis in his world view, partly as a result of the situation with the German official and the Japanese general, and partly through his dealings with Robert Childan, an antiques dealer.
Robert Childan, Frank Frink a skilled metalworker, and Julianna Frink his ex-wife, all have pieces of the plot which lead them to crises in their lives, both physical and spiritual. They are all touched, to some degree, by a popular and subversive book called The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, which shows the Allies winning World War II. The I Ching is also in wide use in this novel, even being said to have written The Grasshopper Lies Heavy.
The book ends without wrapping everything up in a bow or answering many questions. So much is left to the reader's imagination. I've read several Goodreads reviews where people were frustrated by that, but I think it is pretty effective. I am prompted to speculate about what this book means, if anything. What are the consequences or next steps for these characters? What will they value differently in their lives? In the Amazon TV show there is a fully fledged resistance movement, but there isn't one in the book. Could a Resistance arise out of the experiences of these characters and others?
This book, which is more of collection of mini-essays than a continuous narrative, looks at the function of forgetting in human society. We might think that memory and remembering are far more important to us, but Lewis Hyde shows us how many things we need to forget in order to be able to live with other people, to tell a coherent story, to simply get on with things. In the Hyde style that I love, he uses stories and examples from ancient and modern civilizations, literature, and his own life to illustrate.
I was sceptical about the form of the book at first. I prefer longer narratives to short vignettes–I like to have time to orient myself in a piece of writing, and it's hard to do that if the piece is too short. However, in the sections on Myth, Self, Nation, and Creation, the page-long reflections are interrelated if not continuous, so I never felt myself floundering to understand where I was in the process of the book.
Aphorisms accompany each section. There is a good sized bibliography and an index. I came away from this book with a new appreciation for forgetting in all its forms: allowing old stories to change, leaving details out to allow a particular story to emerge, letting things go that no longer serve any use, and more. The copy I read was from a library, but I am going to buy one for myself.
If you read this book thinking that Masha Gessen is going to give tips for how to survive autocracy, you will be disappointed. Instead, they analyze the Trump presidency as an autocratic attempt. The chapters on political language and journalism in the Trump era are particularly fascinating. Gessen contends that Trump has rendered a lot of political language that we are used to hearing meaningless now, and that legacy journalism (New York Times and the like) has helped to normalize Trump's behavior by covering it neutrally as though this were a normal presidency. The only parts of the book that come close to advice on surviving autocracy come late in the book, when Gessen writes about healing and rebuilding after Trump. What will be needed, they say, is leaders who can bring us back to a discussion of what American moral values and ideals are, and help us move in the direction of those ideals.
This is a great summer/pandemic read. It moves along like a light beach novel, but it handles serious issues with sensitivity.
Emira is a young Black woman, a recent college graduate who hasn't yet found a career path she wants to follow. She takes a part time babysitting job for Alix, a white “influencer” who has a 3 year old daughter, Briar, and an infant, Catherine. Emira connects deeply with Briar, and comes to love taking care of her. In a late night incident in an upscale grocery store, Emira is accused by a security guard and another customer of kidnapping Briar. Kelley, a white male bystander, captures the incident on his cell phone. He and Emira begin seeing each other, unaware that Emira's boss, Alix, also has a history with Kelley. When that history comes to light, the “fun” begins.
I loved how this novel portrayed issues of autonomy and becoming an authentic person in the characters as they dealt with their situations. Power dynamics in employer/employee relations were also a theme, as well as authenticity between Black and white people. Emira emerges as a very likeable, capable young woman with a reliable inner compass and you'll find yourself rooting for her to find her way through the confusion that surrounds her.
I didn't know what to expect with this novel–or pair of novellas–other than that it was an unfinished story about the German invasion of France in World War II, published by the author's daughter long after her death in Auschwitz.
What I found was two linked stories. The first, Storm in June, takes place as German troops are advancing on Paris, and follows several groups and individuals as they flee into the countryside. We get to know these people intimately as we see the details of their flight: the things they bring with them, their attitudes towards other people fleeing, their responses to being stuck in traffic, bombed en route, stranded in towns with no food, gas, or shelter. Not surprisingly, many of them become laser focused on themselves and their own well being, with little concern for other people. One mother forgets her elderly father in law as she flees a little town that is bombed overnight. While Nemirovsky's eye is unsparing, there's the sense that she is just reporting what happens. While there are sudden and startling deaths, they don't necessarily happen because the person was bad or had done something to deserve it. The universe Nemirovsky shows is merciless, and the terrible things that happen are not happening for any moral reason.
The second story, Dolce, takes place in a country village that comes under German occupation. The story begins as the soldiers march into town and ends as they march out. Officers are lodged with citizens, the soldiers mix with the townsfolk, and they come to know each other somewhat as human beings. Lieutenant Bruno von Falk is lodged with Lucile Angellier and her disapproving mother in law. The son and husband of the house is a prisoner of war, and both women wonder if von Falk or any of the other occupying soldiers could have had a hand in taking him prisoner. Von Falk is polite and he and Lucile strike up a friendship/nascent romance. Another Lieutenant, Bonnet, is lodged at a neighboring farm, where he makes passes at the farmer's young wife. When he is killed by her angry husband, a crisis in relations between the townspeople and the occupiers occurs. This story is not told as a romance, but as a tale about people dealing with the conflict between their shared humanity and their opposing interests and obligations.
Following the two novellas are two appendices. The first one contains Nemirovsky's notes for her work on Suite Francaise, where you can read about her plans for 2-3 more pieces of the work, and understand that what happened in her novel depended on what happened in the war. She was writing her war novel as the war happened around her and to her, using what happened to tell the story. The second appendix contains wartime correspondence from her up to June 1942, and then correspondence from her husband documenting his attempts to find out what had happened to her after she was arrested and taken away. Here you can learn about the difficulties and dangers she was facing as she wrote her novel and have your heart broken as you contemplate what happened to her and her family.
I enjoyed this book about a nurse enjoying a post WWII holiday with her recently discharged husband who falls through some standing stones at the top of a hill in Scotland and winds up in mid-18th century Scotland. I couldn't help but see many echoes of Dorothy Dunnett's Francis Crawford of Lymond, though, and of the two, the Lymond Chronicles are less domestic, more prickly, and more interesting. I'm not convinced I'll read another book in this series.
A thoroughly enjoyable and eye opening memoir about growing up as a black man in St. Paul, MN in the 60's, going into the Navy during the Vietnam War, and then working as a police officer. Mr. Carter has an exuberant voice throughout the memoir. It sounds like he dealt gracefully with the racism he encountered daily, but he also conveys a strong sense of his frustration with it. The stories he has to tell of his treatment by fellow police officers and superiors in the police force are the most appalling of all, and he doesn't shrink from showing the indifference with which they repeatedly exposed him to unnecessary danger and then rebuked him for complaining.
I found reading this book to be a little like reading the adventures of a superhero— on the edge of my seat when he was facing danger, with the tiny spark of knowledge that things would turn out OK held safe in a back corner of my mind. I cheered Carter on and admired his irrepressible spirit as I read.
Another plus for this book is that it was a great way to learn a little recent history about my city, Saint Paul, and the Rondo neighborhood which was leveled to make way for Interstate 94.
Say Nothing starts out with the disappearance of Jean McConville, a 38 year old widow and mother of 10, who was dragged from her home in Belfast by a group of masked men and women in 1972 and never seen by her family again. But in order to tell the story of what happened to Jean McConville and her children, it's necessary to tell the story of the IRA, the Royal Ulster Constabulary, and the British Army in Belfast in the 20th century. So, after giving us the mystery of McConville's disappearance and the terrible plight of her children, Patrick Radden Keefe spends the bulk of the next 200 pages writing about the history of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, and the individuals who played important roles in the Provisional IRA through the 1970's and all the way up to the Good Friday Accord. This was not what I expected, but it was riveting, so I happily went along for the ride. Of course, the story does make its way back to Jean McConville, and other people who were “disappeared” during the Troubles.
As an American who knew about the Troubles growing up and romanticized the IRA, especially as a teenager, I appreciated how Keefe acknowledges that there was a sort of glamour associated with IRA fighters. His book shows clearly, though, how very brutal and unglamorous the conflict was, and many of the people in it as well. The present is equally complex. There is peace, but survivors are traumatized, the past has not been fully dealt with, and as more than one person in the book says, the IRA has not gone away.
Say Nothing has 65 pages of notes, a bibliography, and index. It is well researched and reads like a great piece of longform journalism, which it is.
Here's the basic premise: An epic battle is forming between a newly “born” New York City and an entity from another dimension in this novel. As a part of the birth process, the city of New York is suddenly personified by five people who represent, or embody, each of its five boroughs, and a mysterious sixth who is supposed to bring them all together. The city of Sao Paulo (the city's avatar, or personification, that is) is on the scene to manage the struggle and help New York come through its birth unscathed.
In this first volume of a planned trilogy, the people who personify the five boroughs of New York have the fact thrust upon them. It just happens while they're going about their business doing other things, so they have to adjust and figure out what it means and how they should proceed. Much of this book is about the process of discovery and banding together of these New York super-heroes. The characters are distinct from each other and meant to be representative of the boroughs they personify: Manhattan, a young, charming guy of uncertain heritage who comes to the city to start grad school. Brooklyn, a black city councilwoman with a past as a rapper, now a single mother to a 14 year old daughter. Bronx, a Native woman in her 60's who runs an arts foundation in her neighborhood, is a Lesbian, and deeply connected to the Native past of the land New York occupies. Queens is an immigrant from India, living with relatives, working a job while she also goes to grad school. Staten Island is the Irish American daughter of a domineering cop and a homemaker, brought up to be suspicious of the city and of foreigners. Some of these characters are more fully developed than others. I found Queens to be pretty thin, for example.
The enemy in this book is pretty creepy, and there are plenty of enemy encounters, even though the team of superheroes isn't fully assembled yet. There is a nod to (and critique of) H.P. Lovecraft, and the evil that the enemy brings is entangled with white supremacy, misogyny, and anti-semitism.
Overall, this was an enjoyable book that was especially timely to read during a global pandemic and in the midst of a struggle for justice for people of color in my home city and my country. I've never read anything by N. K. Jemisin before, but I will be putting her other books on my reading list post haste, and watching for the second volume of this series.
I saw/heard DeRay McKesson speak at the Library Technology Conference in 2019 and was so impressed with his knowledge of statistics about policing and race, and his perspective on that subject, that I bought his book there. Reading On the Other Side of Freedom is different from hearing him speak–it is much less about statistics and how to interpret them, and much more like a memoir, a letter to fellow activists, and a history of the Black Lives Matter movement and the protests in Ferguson, MO after the murder of Michael Brown. At times it is meditative, making distinctions between faith and hope and explaining the importance of each and how they relate to each other in resisting a racist society. At times it is analytic, explaining how the use of Twitter gave the Ferguson protests a power that other protests hadn't had before. At times it is a memoir of McKesson's childhood and teenage years and how experiences he had then inform his thoughts about activism today. And at times there are statistics, duly footnoted.
Although this book has a little bit of everything, it does not meander or trail off and lose its way. It has a definite shape and purpose, and a firm, clear voice. It's really a delight to read, especially if you have activist tendencies yourself.
Yoruba Girl Dancing is a story of a young girl who was being raised in the heart of a large, warm, vibrant extended family in post WW II Lagos, Nigeria being transported suddenly to rural England to attend school. 6 year old Remi is brought to England at her father's behest and unceremoniously dropped off at school (abandoned would not be too strong a word) to be educated as an English girl. She's the only Black girl in her school, and she endures the prejudice and ignorance of her teachers, other adults, and some of her schoolmates. Luckily, Remi has a strong spirit and a few people who are on her side, so she adapts to school, makes friends, and excels. The novel follows her progress through primary and secondary school to graduation as a period of exile that resolves into a kind of homecoming.
Remi is in the English literary tradition of little girls who are left to fend for themselves among strangers and grow up to be smart, talented, witty and beloved. Remi's case is a little different, since she is not deprived of the things she needs for basic physical well being and is in fact attending a school for privileged children. This isn't a Cinderella story. But she does feel herself to be in exile, away from her home and her people, however gracefully she deals with it. It's satisfying, at the end, to see her reunited with family and friends from Nigeria.
I did feel the end was a little too pat, though. I had all kinds of questions about whether she was able to carry on friendships with the girls she knew at school, whether she felt completely at home with her African friends, whether she was able to pick up her mother tongue again, and more.
This is the book that the 2016 movie Hidden Figures was based upon. It's a fascinating and highly readable history of the black women mathematicians who worked at NACA/NASA beginning in WWII 1940s. It tells the stories of some of the individual women who went to work as “computers” and made their way into careers as mathematicians and engineers. The book also looks at the social forces in the United States that made such careers possible at a time and a place where segregation was violently enforced in all areas of life.
The book has extensive notes and a bibliography.
This lovely novel knows what most people expect from a story about a young Hawai'ian boy who falls overboard into the ocean and is delivered carefully back to his mother by sharks. It is happy to allow those expectations, maybe even to subtly encourage them, even in its own characters, all the while undermining them until they finally crumble.
Sharks in the Time of Saviors is a story about a Hawai'ian/Filipino family, Malia and Augie Flores, and their children Dean, Nainoa, and Kaui. Malia and Augie struggle to make ends meet with their working class wages, but they have great hopes for their kids' abilities to go farther than they were able to. The kids are all brilliant in their chosen areas, and go off to the mainland to pursue their talents, but struggle to find their identities or purposes in life. Nainoa, in particular, carries the burden of his talent for healing and his family's expectations for him as the boy who was rescued by sharks.
The story is told through alternating voices of Malia, Dean, Nainoa, Kaui, and Augie. We get to know the different characters through their voices and their interactions with family members–friction between mother and daughter or brother and brother, tenderness between husband and wife, sibling rivalry, inability to break a silence. Mixed in with the family drama, there are themes of colonialism, reconnecting with land and indigenous spirituality, and being able to live as one truly is.
It took me about 2 days to read this, and I was absorbed almost right away. I did go through a process of feeling some friction between my expectations for the story and what was actually happening, but in the second half of the book I let go and just went where it took me without struggling. In retrospect, I think this process was likely deliberate on the part of the author (since the characters undergo a similar process), and I'm impressed with that.
I read this book as an introduction to the complexities of living respectfully and humanely in a world where people do not all value the same things or organize their lives the same way. Appiah takes time in the beginning of the book to illustrate how values and ways of living can differ, while people still share some foundational beliefs. Later chapters show how difficult it can be to put a commitment to respect for other peoples and cultures into practice, and suggest alternative ways of going about it.
None of the analysis is in depth (the book is less than 200 pages), which is why I call it an introduction. It is very readable, with great anecdotes and examples from Appiah's own life to illustrate the concepts. I recommend.
Long, slow moving novel about three brothers and their unworthy father in 19th century Russia. Full of philosophical and theological arguments about guilt, atonement, and forgiveness, as well as whether people are better off being happy or understanding truths about God. The last third of the book is a bit of a murder mystery. The characters represent all levels of Russian society and they are operatic in their feelings and their behavior. I feel I would understand this novel better if I started over from the beginning and read it through again–but I need to rest from it first!
Memoir of discovering and coming to terms with her bipolar disorder, by an Iranian American Muslim. The subtitle, A Bipolar Life refers not only to her medical diagnosis, but to her Iranian American Muslim identity.
The tone of the book gives you a strong sense of the author's personality: colorful, exuberant, full of energy and ideas. Amid the entertaining storytelling, it was easy for me to gloss over some of the subtleties of what she was saying, particularly about being Iranian American and Muslim at this time in our history and how that is related to being bipolar medically.
It's also eye opening to think about how difficult it was for her to get a diagnosis and accept it, when as readers we already know the outcome so it seems obvious to us.
This was a very worthwhile read.
A great piece of journalism. Mary Losure of MPR tells the story of the Earth First activists and Native Americans who formed a coalition to try to stop the rerouting of Highway 55 in South Minneapolis from destroying a residential area, a stand of old oak trees, and a spring that the Mendota Dakota believed to be sacred. In the course of the story, she gives the background and perspectives of officials from the MN Dept of Transportation, the Earth Firsters, and the members of the Mendota Dakota community as she documents each phase of the protest. The style is very close to radio journalism, and the book includes black and white photos from the Minneapolis Star Tribune, so you can picture it all as it happens.
I had just moved to the Twin Cities when this protest was happening, and I remember hearing about it on the radio, but not knowing what it was all about. I read this book a couple of years later, and it helped me to get to know my new city a bit better. Reading this book a second time, almost exactly 20 years after the events it depicts, I'm struck by how much has remained the same here. Adversarial relationships between police and activists, “regular folk” who may not like what the state or industry is doing but think resistance is futile, a small group of dedicated and resourceful activists (who may be scruffy and drive elaborately painted buses) holding out as long as possible until they are removed by force.
These stories of elfin kingdoms (all ruled by queens) are charming, witty, and dark. The fairies, as Warner writes about them, are thoughtlessly cruel and fickle, and the consequences of their behavior can be disastrous for fellow fairies, as well as for humans and other creatures. At the same time, they are deeply devoted to upholding the social structure of their societies, court traditions, and manners.
Warner's writing is wonderful. At times she writes like a court observer, highlighting the absurdities of fairy society in an understated way. At other times she is more matter of fact, which serves to highlight fairy coldness. These stories are always precise and elegant, which also makes them a bit shocking.
These may not be the fairies you hoped for when you picked up the book, but they are satisfyingly strange and very disconcerting.