Archive for the ‘families’ Tag
Most parents, whether with young children or those who remember when their kids were small, are familiar with meals being a time for whining and dining. Herman Koch’s The Dinner applies the concept at a very different level.
In Amsterdam, where the story takes place, two couples meet one evening at an upscale restaurant. The novel is narrated by Paul who is unhappy about the location, the companionship and, ultimately, the reason for getting together. Paul whines, a lot. He, with his wife, is joined by his brother and sister-in-law. The dining establishment is pretentious and so is his brother, Serge. Paul’s lack of enthusiasm is understandable, although none of Koch’s characters are worth embracing.
Initially, Paul’s attitude seems justified. Serge comes across as shallow, and the food does sound haughty: “The ‘grapes’ were lying beside a deep-purple piece of lettuce, a full two inches of empty plate away from the actual main course — ‘filet of guinea fowl wrapped in paper-thin German bacon.’”
As the novel and meal progress, it’s evident that the story is less about the five courses than about Paul, in addition to his son and nephew. The latter are the impetus for the couple getting together; the parents share a lot of responsibility when it comes to dealing with a criminal act committed by their boys.
By meal’s end, what has been served are layers of rationale that demonstrate how far some parents go to protect their children. Thankfully, there’s no to-go box for this repast.
The Dinner
Three-and-a-half Bookmarks
Hogarth, 2012
292 pages
Isabel Allende is a master storyteller. Her characters have depth; their lives are full of mystery, love and befuddlement. Her most recent novel, Maya’s Notebook, is no exception. Well, it is, because it’s exceptional – even for Allende.
Maya is a 19-year-old girl on the lam on a remote island off the coast of Chile, her grandmother’s homeland. Maya was raised in Berkeley by her grandparents, a couple remarkable in their differences and their passion for life. Maya’s father floats in and out in a minor role; her mother doesn’t even rate that distinction. Several stories are told through Maya’s journal. She recounts her magical childhood, her arrival in Chiloe’ and counters these almost idyllic recollections with the explanation of why she is in hiding. The book’s first sentence, while seemingly melodramatic, creates suspense: “… if I valued my life at all, I should not get in touch with anyone I knew until we could be sure my enemies were no longer looking for me.”
Maya writes of her past and present in chronological order until the two eventually intersect. She begins with how her grandparents met and moves into how, as an infant, she came to live with them. Allende builds tension through Maya’s descriptions of her avalanche of mistakes made as an adolescent. Grief and environment contributed to one bad decision after another. Yet, a sense of calm surfaces as Maya relates her life in Chiloe’ while learning to appreciate the world around her and her place in it.
Maya’s Notebook
Five Bookmarks
Harper Collins, 2013
387 pages
I’m a sucker for a Maeve Binchy novel. Yeah, I know her books are predictable, mushy and fast reads, but she gets me every time. Say what you will, Binchy is a marvelous story teller, and I was saddened to learn she died last summer. A Week in Winter was published posthumously.
Her last work has the requisite characters: independent women who are misled by handsome but unreliable men; ne’er do well young men who, despite the odds, turn their lives around; well-meaning parents who misunderstand their adult children; and, well, many more. For the most part, they are all quite lovely — young and old alike.
Chicky Starr left her family home on Ireland’s west coast as a young twenty-something, only to return some 20-plus years later to renovate an old mansion overlooking the sea as a hotel. Each of the book’s chapters focuses on a different character, while continuing the thread established in getting the hotel ready for guests. Of course, the guests figure prominently in the story. A few names from some of Binchy’s other works find their way into A Week in Winter, which only makes sense: Ireland is not that large a country.
Family relationships, friendships and learning to navigate life are the themes Binchy weaves into her novels; and the Irish landscape is always as important as its inhabitants in her hands.
Binchy has authored 22 books, of which two are nonfiction; I’m glad there are still several I have yet to read.
A Week in Winter
Three-and-a-half Bookmarks
Alfred A. Knopf, 2013
326 pages
I’m not entirely sure how I feel about The Twelve Tribes of Hattie by Ayana Mathis. Mathis has created a family, beginning in 1925 continuing through 1980, of which Hattie is the matriarch. The tribes, her 11 children and one grandchild, are revealed in single, captured episodes (chapters) reflecting a lifetime of longing and emotional neglect. On one hand Hattie is a mother who loves her children too much; yet, she doesn’t love them well.
Parents are not always infallible, and Hattie makes no apologies for her shortcomings. The first chapter, about her twins, and later that of her daughter, Rosie, are told through Hattie’s eyes; the rest of the stories are shared from her children’s perspectives. These include looks back on their childhoods and a glimpse of them as adults. No one fares well, and the question surfaces: how much is a parent’s responsibility? Except that’s not the only issue here.
Hattie and her husband, August, share the burden of poverty and heartache. Their relationship, however, is grounded more in the physical than sentimental realm. Consequently, her nine offspring struggle with everything from sexuality to religion, from addiction to mental illness. How would life had been different if Hattie’s first two children, twins Philadelphia and Jubilee, not died in infancy? It’s possible they would have grown up to be just as miserable as their siblings.
Mathis’s writing is the redeeming element: evocative and haunting. What she writes may be difficult to read, but how she does it is memorable.
The Twelve Tribes of Hattie
Probably Four Bookmarks
Alfred A. Knopf, 2012
243 pages
Hazel, the insightful narrator of John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars, is a 17-year-old who’s fought cancer most of her life. While talking about another book, she could just as easily be talking about this one: “But it’s not a cancer book, because cancer books suck.” Green has written much more than that, and it comes nowhere close to sucking.
This is about living with the knowledge of death’s inevitability loitering closer than it does for most, especially the young. Hazel meets Augustus at a cancer survivor’s support group. Eyes meeting across a semi-circle of young adults in varying degrees of bad health may not sound romantic, yet it’s the beginning of a beautiful relationship between two young adults who teeter alarmingly near to death’s grasp.
Hazel is an endearing character: intelligent, witty and aware of what she has in life, versus what she might be missing. She does not want to be defined by her diagnosis. Although Augustus might be a little too good to be true, he is fun and expands Hazel’s world.
Through a shared passion for the book that is “not a cancer book,” which simply stops with no real ending, the pair find a way to look toward the future. They want to know what happens. Yes, this may be a metaphor for their lives, but it’s far less dismal than that.
A few plot twists help overshadow the novel’s predictability. The story’s beauty is based not on what’s lost, but is grounded on what’s gained.
The Fault in Our Stars
Four Bookmarks
Dutton Books, 2012
313 pages
Living Out Answers – Twelve Trips of a Lifetime by Dave Jackson, is one of two indie books I recently read for pleasure (others I read for one of my few paid writing gigs). In the interest of full disclosure: I almost know the author. We’ve never met, but Jackson’s the father of a good friend who gave me the book as a gift.
This is a memoir based on trips, yup 12 of them, that he began taking when he turned 50 in 1979. He kept journals of the adventures which are the book’s foundation supplemented by recent afterthoughts. The trips include finding a way to spend time on the Mississippi River, to working for a circus, to learning about coal mines in West Virginia, along with nine others. He hitchhiked, hopped trains, hiked, rode in the cabs of big rigs and developed sea legs on boats.
Nearly as interesting is how the book evolved: Jackson’s granddaughter was prompted by a photo which led to discussions about the travels. Others entered the picture offering advice and encouragement. Although the book became a family endeavor of sorts, the stories are Jackson’s.
Jackson embraced the new opportunities and experiences no matter how exciting, frustrating or unpleasant, but there was always the safety net of a comfortable lifestyle awaiting him after each exploit. What’s most impressive is that Jackson made these journeys at a point in his life where many think self-reflection is either unnecessary or inconvenient. He demonstrates neither is the case.
Living Out Answers – Twelve Trips of a Lifetime
Three and a half bookmarks
Brokey’s, 2012
281 pages
Anna Quindlen’s Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake is a poignant, yet cheerful perspective on getting older. This is the kind of book to share with friends, particularly if they’re around the age of what is now considered to be the new-40s.
As in most of her writing, Quindlen relies on personal experience to make her points. Her writing career includes several stints as a columnist (at the New York Times and later Newsweek) as well as authoring several works of fiction, nonfiction and children’s books. She has a keen sense of observation. Better still, she’s an extraordinary wordsmith. Those two skills result in crafting pieces readers can easily make connections with. Of control, she writes: “I thought I had a handle on my future. But the future, it turns out, is not a tote bag.”
Quindlen examines the important aspects of life, which can be applied to most people, women in particular: friendship, family, love, parenting, and more. She’s humorous and honest. She writes of near-misses, both good and bad. She reflects on how much her younger self was sure she knew and how her older self readily acknowledges what she doesn’t. Without citing the tired phrase that youth is squandered on the young, it’s a major thread. Quindlen puts a new spin on it.
Yes, this is a memoir, but it is much more. It’s a guidebook to accepting that each morning we wake up is a gift – even if we’re older than we were the day before.
Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake
Four Bookmarks
Random House 2012
182 pages
I’ve read a few books by Louise Erdrich, but none has captivated me as much as The Round House. I was hooked from the opening sentence, which in retrospect isn’t much: “Small trees had attacked my parents’ house at the foundation.” Yet, this simple statement reveals much about the narrator whose life is shaken at its roots by a violent crime against his family.
Thirteen-year-old Joe Coutts lives on a reservation in North Dakota. On an ordinary Sunday afternoon, his life is changed forever after his mother is brutally assaulted and refuses to reveal the identity of her attacker. Joe, his friends, and several family members do what they can to help each other heal, but at the core of that process is naming the man responsible.
Erdrich writes with a sense of determination, there is a need for this story to be told. The crime is complicated by the fact the location of the crime determines which law enforcement jurisdiction oversees the investigation: tribal police, state patrol or local police – entities not known for working together.
The story is full of wonderful characters, each richly developed, particularly Joe and his pals. Within the parameters of the novel are several sub-stories, Indian lore and personal histories, that strengthen those portrayed.
In her afterword, Erdrich notes, “1 in 3 Native women will be raped in her lifetime (and that figure is certainly higher as Native women often do not report rape).” This sobering statistic adds another dimension to an exceptionally well-crafted story.
The Round House
Four-and-a-half Bookmarks
Harper, 2012
321 pages
When I first picked up Faith by Jennifer Haigh, I almost immediately put it down. I was afraid it was going to further magnify the bull’s eye on the back on the Catholic church, which is already too easy a target for many. Yes, Haigh’s book is framed by the possibility of a priest molesting a young boy, but it’s much more than that. It is, indeed, about faith in its many manifestations: belief, conviction, trust, reliance and loyalty.
Old school Catholics, priests, families and perceptions are all deftly portrayed by Haigh as she tells the story of Father Art Breen, a quiet, unassuming parish priest whose primary vice is that he smokes like a steam engine. Father Art’s story is told through his sister’s eyes. Sheila begins with her step-brother’s progression through school, details his seminary years, his parish assignments and how he came to be accused of molesting a second-grader. Sheila also shares details about her family background: her mother who is a staunch Catholic unable to find fault with her church; her younger brother, Mike, who immediately believes Art is guilty; and her own conflicted thoughts as she discovers she is unsure who and what to believe.
The setting is Boston in the spring of 2002, just as the news of numerous molestation cases begin to emerge. The reader is asked to consider Art’s innocence or guilt just as his family struggles with this question. It seems so unlikely, and that is exactly what makes the possibility real.
Faith
Four Bookmarks
Harper, 2011
318 pages
Beautiful Ruins is a cinematic novel. It’s easy to imagine this story playing on the silver screen. It spans years and continents, relies heavily on the relationship between Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, and features a strong connection to the movie industry. At its core, this is a love story, and a beautiful one at that.
Jess Walter’s tale involves a young actress, Dee, who arrives in an isolated Italian fishing village on the Ligurian Sea, where she meets Pasquale the owner of the Adequate View Hotel. Dee has been sent from Rome, where she had a bit part in the filming of Cleopatra. Dee is also pregnant with Burton’s child. Although it may sound like a blurb from People magazine, Walter imbues his narrative with deep feelings, humor, interesting characters and a clear passion for romance.
However, just when it seems the story will settle in the fishing village (the most interesting place) or even Los Angeles (because of the Hollywood scene), several miscellaneous locales are introduced: Seattle, London, Spokane, Florence, even Donner Pass in Northern California. Walter includes an assortment of characters, none of whom, surprisingly, are superfluous. Added, to this mix are different time periods: the early 1960s, the 1800s, and something more contemporary. The myriad of people, places and eras at first seems disparate, but they actually are essential what makes this such an engaging work.
Ruins are most often associated with architecture. Here Walter incorporates them into the erosion, but not extinction, of human emotions.
Beautiful Ruins
Four Bookmarks
Harper, 2012
337 pages
The Blue Page Special 