Hauntingly beautiful and demonstrating the power of memory, The Fox Wife by Yangsze Choo makes it easy to suspend disbelief about creatures who transiHauntingly beautiful and demonstrating the power of memory, The Fox Wife by Yangsze Choo makes it easy to suspend disbelief about creatures who transition between fox and human form in Manchuria, 1908. The author doles out just enough detail in this magical tale, foxes are charming, clever and ageless, for readers to understand the differences with humans while preserving a sense of mystery. Foxes are sly in getting what they want. The more impulsive ones are ruthless, impatient predators while others are more self-disciplined, resisting their nature and striving to live a full millennium.
Nico, separated from his family early in the Holocaust, learns that some lies are treacherous and others are essential for survival. Absolute truth isNico, separated from his family early in the Holocaust, learns that some lies are treacherous and others are essential for survival. Absolute truth is a luxury, impossible for people desperate for survival, controlled by those who have no compunction about lying.
Julia Lambert relishes what seems like a perfect life - a college professor, landscape painter and mother, she strives to observe and appreciate detaiJulia Lambert relishes what seems like a perfect life - a college professor, landscape painter and mother, she strives to observe and appreciate details in everyday routine: “The extraordinary loveliness of the world, how it was infinite and generous in its reach, how it could be soft and glistening, tangled and dense, velvety and bright.” That beautiful life spirals out of control when she must confront her youngest son's addiction to heroin head-on.
Those corruptly enjoying power strive to craft rules that control a population’s behavior and very thoughts. Rigid rules in a small community aim to rThose corruptly enjoying power strive to craft rules that control a population’s behavior and very thoughts. Rigid rules in a small community aim to reinforce that power, ensuring hypocrisy, deceit and guilt.
In The Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne bears a child out of wedlock while her husband is away, and she refuses to divulge the father’s identity.
Baumgartner by Paul Auster is about the final years an elderly philosophy professor and the poignant love story with his poet wife. S.T. Baumgartner rBaumgartner by Paul Auster is about the final years an elderly philosophy professor and the poignant love story with his poet wife. S.T. Baumgartner reveres Anna, a woman for whom even the most ordinary words were “imbued with some mesmerizing, transcendent quality.” That quality emerged “not just in her voice but in her power to transform the most ordinary movements of the body into acts of sublime self-expression and grace, the eloquence of her fingers as she turned the pages of a book, for example….”
Four novellas tackle pivotal moments for four young characters - a man who commits check fraud and tries an acting career, a wealthy writer who endureFour novellas tackle pivotal moments for four young characters - a man who commits check fraud and tries an acting career, a wealthy writer who endures a no-knock warrant, a woman who interviews elderly survivors of a building collapse for her first book attempt, and a high school student who works part-time and becomes enthralled with the wrong co-worker and neglects the one who comes to his rescue. Life moves swiftly, and the characters tend to reflect on the pivotal points long afterward....more
Londoners Reg and Millie Thompson disagree but ultimately decide to protect their daughter at the start of WWII, sending Beatrix to live with a familyLondoners Reg and Millie Thompson disagree but ultimately decide to protect their daughter at the start of WWII, sending Beatrix to live with a family they do not know. The mother is less sure about this plan, sending the teen to the United States. and the couple frequently argues. Beatrix feels a distance: “I stopped being a child on the day war was declared,” she thinks. “And you both disappeared even as you stayed by my side.”
The novel follows the connections between two families - the choices, mistakes, dreams and regrets - and all find themselves wrestling with their shared past.
This is truly the most exquisite novel I've read so far this year.
Two women document flora of the Colosseum in Rome, one in 1854 and the other in 2018. The first toils for Richard Deakin, a botanist, and the second iTwo women document flora of the Colosseum in Rome, one in 1854 and the other in 2018. The first toils for Richard Deakin, a botanist, and the second is a grad student from Mississippi, struggling to win respect from her advisor and approval to conduct similar research in the Coliseum and fairgrounds of Jackson, Mississippi. Detailing how male superiors belittle the women's observations, the book may upend assumptions about adequate feminist responses across cultures and time periods....
Both narrators remain anonymous, so often the case for women in science.
Childhood. Religion. Nature. Love. Each have a magical, spiritual quality, the memories of which can haunt for a lifetime.
This story of early 20th-ceChildhood. Religion. Nature. Love. Each have a magical, spiritual quality, the memories of which can haunt for a lifetime.
This story of early 20th-century Florida, loosely based on true events, has the feel of a documentary. The book begins with a journalist rescuing a set of reel-to-reel tapes from the trash at a library in St. Cloud, all that is left of the life of Harley Mann. Two decades earlier, in 1971, Harley used a tape recorder to recount his unusual childhood. Lonely, old and unsettled, the narrator/protagonist warns that he is well practiced at masking his identity. “It’s as if I never learned to speak like the man I have in fact become, one of those White, lifelong, small-time Florida businessmen with no noticeable religious or political enthusiasm and no discernible class affiliation.”
.... The book ends with Harley’s childhood, the loss of innocence and community. Childhood, with all its potential, curiosity, and magic, is our only real utopia.
The Guest Lecture describes one sleepless night for a young economics professor, scheduled to deliver a guest lecture the following day. The book mimiThe Guest Lecture describes one sleepless night for a young economics professor, scheduled to deliver a guest lecture the following day. The book mimics patterns of insomnia and a mother's angst over career stagnation, partisan politics, climate change, personal identity crises and “how my daughter’s generation will never know the sense of well-being my own took for granted, the limitless security we felt but never realized we were feeling.” Abigail lays awake in her hotel bed, imagining a conversation with the subject of her talk, John Maynard Keynes, and his essay “Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren.” http://www.econ.yale.edu/smith/econ11...
In Lessons, Roland Baines regards an abusive relationship from when he was 11 years old as the source of his many desires and failures. A piano teacheIn Lessons, Roland Baines regards an abusive relationship from when he was 11 years old as the source of his many desires and failures. A piano teacher at his private boarding school pinches his inner thigh, hard, after he repeatedly makes a mistake during their music drills. He has fantasies about her, and she invites him to her home for lunch. Months later, Roland shows up at the cottage, and the two have intercourse. Memories of the strange teacher haunt him years later in this novel about parenting, abuse, ambition and lost potential.
From the start, the novel analyzes how memories repeatedly shape our choices, serving as lessons in guiding one's life.
Three girls lose their parents – the mother to illness, the father murdered – a maternal uncle takes control, not because of love or duty but rather hThree girls lose their parents – the mother to illness, the father murdered – a maternal uncle takes control, not because of love or duty but rather he covets the government social security checks issued to each month.
The uncle prohibits the girls from meeting his wife and two sons and instead sets them up in a small, filthy room in an apartment building that he owns, assigning equally vulnerable neighbors to provide day-to-day care. That daughters are less valued than sons is apparent from the start, and the girls sometimes maintain they are brothers or mother-sisters.
The story is told from the point of view of the youngest, Kausar, who idolizes her two sisters, literally referring to them as gods. In turn, they regard her as useless and annoying. The young protagonist relays life disappointments, her serial abandonment and grief in a matter-of-fact way.
At one point, the youngest asks whether a sister still a sister when a mother dies? Kausar increasingly struggles to communicate fears, dreams and identity issues with sisters who are not much older than her. Each daughter dreams of escape, a better life, but the youngest has far less experience with love, motivation, trust – with basic routines and normality. She readily accepts chaos and cruelty from her interactions. At one point, she notes that Allah asks us to make language: “We assumed we meant the same thing when we spoke, because we said the same words. But. We were wrong. We were so wrong.”
The book follows two children, one in Germany and the other in France, mostly between 1934 and 1944. Marie-Laure LeBlanc is blind and depends on her fThe book follows two children, one in Germany and the other in France, mostly between 1934 and 1944. Marie-Laure LeBlanc is blind and depends on her father who works for the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, for constant directions in moving about their home in Paris. Werner Pfennig, an orphan in the coal region of Essen, relies on books found in the trash to study mathematics and physics.
The two characters spend only one terrifying afternoon together, but there are earlier connections. Werner and his younger sister find a broken radio, which he repairs, so they can listen to broadcasts from around Europe, including a science program for children hosted by Marie-Laure’s grandfather. Ambitious, longing to do anything but work in the mines that killed his father, Werner tries to overlook the horrors of fascism, fearful when his sister speaks out. After the Nazis ban devices that access foreign programming, he smashes their radio, incurring his sister’s wrath. Passing competitive exams, Werner is sent to a national political institute run by Nazis, a place where “every ounce of their attention has been trained to ferret out weakness.” Werner is protected by helping a professor research use of radio waves to locate transmitters, and a friend advises, “Your problem, Werner, is that you still believe you own your life.”
Werner is curious, keeping a notebook and logging all the questions he wishes to explore. Yet the fascist system, like extremist religions, is intent on control and preventing people from thinking for themselves. One instructor suggests: “Minds are always drifting toward ambiguity, toward questions, when what you really need is certainty. Purpose. Clarity. Do not trust your minds.” Marie-Laure, unable to see, is understandably fretful and anxious, full of questions about the impending invasion of France, and the writer is skilled in describing her surroundings through only the senses of taste, smell, sound and touch. Her father makes a model of their neighborhood and drills her on using her cane, counting drains and curbs, touching fences and tree trunks, to find her way home from unnamed locations and she views the world as complex mazes: “The branches of trees, the filigree of roots, the matrix of crystals, the streets her father re-created in his models…. None were more complicated than the human brain… one wet kilogram within which spin universes.”
The two children eventually connect in person and help one another. One survives and the other perishes….
To Paradise, set in four time periods, reads as two distinct novels about a United States in decline, increasingly fragmented over social and politicaTo Paradise, set in four time periods, reads as two distinct novels about a United States in decline, increasingly fragmented over social and political issues, environmental degradation and limited resources. I would not have imagined enjoying this story by Hanya Yanagihara, yet am glad I gave it a chance.
Each of the four parts follows imbalanced partnerships among characters who share a mix of names: David who rejects an approved marriage proposal from steady Charles in 1893, and instead takes up with Edward, rumored to be a scoundrel; partners Charles, a lawyer, and David, from Hawaii, in 1993; partners Charles, a renowned expert on emerging diseases, and Nathaniel, knowledgeable about Hawaiian artifacts, who struggle with a radical son, David, in the mid-21st century; and Charles with his granddaughter, Charlie, in the dystopia of late 21st century. Connecting the four tales is a Washington Square home in New York City.
The first two parts read as a series of gossipy anecdotes - wealthy men feeling angst over lacking a sense of purpose....
By the third story, society is in rapid decline. Nathaniel and son David resent Charles for his role in creating tighter restrictions on society to prevent the spread of disease, and Charles is upset that the boy does not finish high school and impregnates an older woman. “It takes a special kind of cruelty to make a baby now, knowing that the world it’ll inhabit and inherit will be dirty and diseased and unjust and difficult…. What kind of respect for life is that?” After David and Nathaniel die, Charles raises the child on his own.
Granddaughter Charlie, developmentally delayed, must navigate an increasingly rigid, impoverished society in 2094 that has endured a series of pandemics, but perhaps her limited understanding is a blessing....
Those controlling the dystopia hope that people forget not only historic freedoms and rights but how “technology was once applied, and what it was once capable of doing, and how many ways we once depended on it, and what information it could provide.” Charles acknowledges his contributions to dystopia and wonders how people in places like Germany, Phnom Penh or Saigon knew when to leave: “I had always imagined that that awareness happened slowly, slowly but steadily, so the changes, though each terrifying on its own, became inoculated by their frequency, as if the warnings were normalized by how many there were. And then, suddenly, it’s too late.”
As society evolves, the characters transform from aimless to resigned, defeated and surrendered. Each tale is left hanging, each character confronting mortality, about to make a decision in changing the trajectory of his or her life story.
Finishing this novel was like saying farewell to a good friend. Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov may seem like a wealthy dandy, but time and time again pFinishing this novel was like saying farewell to a good friend. Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov may seem like a wealthy dandy, but time and time again proves himself to be a calming force – charming and deliberate, observant and generous, optimistic and kind, all the while under house arrest at the Hotel Metropol in Moscow from 1922 to 1954. Rostov, fond of Russia, left London to face charges by the new government. The offense? A short poem that Russian authorities have deemed as a dangerous “call to action.” If Rostov leaves the hotel, he will be shot on sight.
The trapped man may be imperfect, but he inspires because he never stops striving for improvement and he is always open to friendship.
Penniless, depressed, Mara heads for a seaside town in the middle of winter, barely surviving day to day, suggesting at one point, “I feel like a trasPenniless, depressed, Mara heads for a seaside town in the middle of winter, barely surviving day to day, suggesting at one point, “I feel like a trash can emptied out.” Her childhood was marked by an angry mother and a loving father who abandoned the family; a beloved brother later marries a woman who resents the close sibling relationship. She chose a town similar to one her mother grew up in such a town, an attempt “to rewind, to return to a time before she was born, before everything was set in motion, in stone.” Instead, the stay reinforces the worst memories of her mother, the coldness and unending criticism that eroded any shreds of self-esteem Mara might have found along the way.
Mara struggles with relationships, using others and expecting to be used. With few close friends or possessions, she falls into a pattern of grasping what belongs to others. She is highly skilled at sensing and practicing rejection, and after her own affair with a married man followed by marriage, she pushes him away with cruel words. She recalls how her husband would admire elderly couples on a stroll and comment, “’We’ll be old like that someday.’ He used to say there was nothing she could do to make him unlove her. ‘We’ll see about that,’ she thought.”
Alone, in the town, she finds a job in a cheese store run by a man separated from his wife, and he tolerates her sleeping in a storeroom. When his wife and child return, he hurriedly wakes Mara to chase her away: “her life’s suspicion neatly met: kicked out, evicted, disappeared.”
At times, the spare book is more mood than story. The book, a fast read told with a series of brief anecdotes, would serve well for a class on close reading of literature, packed with sentences that present layers of meaning. At the library Mara finds that she can handle only the brevity of photo books and poetry, intense impressions that quickly fade: “It’s the echo she wants more than the sound.”
When Mara arrives and leaves the small town of Rome, the sign reports the population as 2,353, and it’s almost as if she had never lived there or mattered. ...more
The book becomes a thought experiment as one must stretch imagination and science to become involved with the plot. Two women go to bed one evening anThe book becomes a thought experiment as one must stretch imagination and science to become involved with the plot. Two women go to bed one evening and one who is both pregnant and ill with cancer insists that an ant has burrowed its way into her eye.
And I was surprised to most enjoy the point of view of the ant, receiving waves of new sensations and information, what it calls the “Encyclopedia of Rachel,” hence forever changing its way of life. “Every single idea that has passed through her at any time in her life, is available to me.” Even while fascinated with learning about humans, the ant misses its old partner and way of life. Still, the ant is coded to work. “The question is not whether you would like or dislike such an existence…. Your life just is. But one day some flaws or fault, or perhaps some greater code, in the genetic lottery leads you astray. You receive an unknown signal, call it a gut instinct, to change the pattern and leave everything you have known behind….
“You have heard that call…. There is no right or wrong to it….”
(view spoiler)[After Rachel’s death, her partner and friends raise the child and he becomes an astronaut – tangling with artificial intelligence and a parallel life in which his mother did not die. For him, it’s not one life or the other, but “He saw his life, all life, with a clarity he had not known since childhood. He had been asleep, lulled into an existence that flowed quite easily along the troughs and gullies that had come before him.”
People have multiple versions of life they might live, and the son, Arthur, can see the links between himself and the multiple lives of his ancestors. My only complaint is that these insights are crammed into the book’s final pages. (hide spoiler)] ...more
The family saga begins with the 1947 Partition of India. Deepa, a teenager, observing and worrying how New Delhi and neighborly relations can change vThe family saga begins with the 1947 Partition of India. Deepa, a teenager, observing and worrying how New Delhi and neighborly relations can change violently in a short period of time, recalls a comment from her mother: “People are inherently good… they’re just not inherently good all of the time.” The comment ominously foreshadows the ethnic hatred and violence of the Partition. Overnight, India became two countries - Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan. Neighbors turned against neighbors, with 2 million deaths and millions more forced to migrate.
The book begins sweetly, taking on the tone of a young adult novel in describing the happy life of Deepa, the only child of two progressive physicians. But violence and chaos mark the summer of 1947 with India on “the verge of a war with itself.” The brutality and forced separations haunt survivors long afterwards, lingering generations later.
Time has a pivotal role in this collection that examines relationships over many years and across generations.
Some stories hinge on memory as in “A MTime has a pivotal role in this collection that examines relationships over many years and across generations.
Some stories hinge on memory as in “A Map of the Simplified World,” in which a teen recalls an act of small cruelty committed to a friend during grade school, impulsively sharing an insult, part of an effort to side with more popular children. (view spoiler)[The incident unfolds soon after her mother disparages the friend’s Indian ethnicity. The teen reflects on her childhood, using the friend yet again as the subject of her college application essay. (hide spoiler)]
Others are confined to a single afternoon, void of memory, as in “The Art of Losing,” in which busy young parents leave their young child in the care of a grandfather with dementia, never realizing how close they came to tragedy.
The characters create their own worlds, by lying, self-delusion or imagination. In "Skinship," the character describes walking school hallways and repeating, “I had no desires, no desires, no desires – and believe it.”
Lack of shared memories leads to a loneliness for characters, yet also highly observant and capable of detecting precise details. As the protagonist of “Skinship” notes: “You did not feel lonely or alone if you were observant. You could make a little nest for yourself in your observation. To watch what others were doing. To notice things they didn’t notice.”...more
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