Booklog for Charlotte

Chemistry of Tears by Peter Carey

I do like books with multiple storylines and setting them in different centuries is appealing. A woman working in a London museum of clocks and other mechanisms learns her long-time lover died suddenly. Catherine must grieve secretly as he was married and had children. Her boss who knows the secret finds a project for her that will isolate her from colleagues as she recovers.

The project comes with volumes of notebooks written 150 years previously that purport to describe how her current project came about. The British man who wrote them, Henry, travels to Germany with plans for a mechanical duck (the Vaucanson Duck you may want to read about). He is willing to do what it takes to have the creature created for the amusement of his tubercular two-year-old son. He is immediately at sea in Karlsruhe and then things take a turn and he is spirited away to Furtwangen and then I'm at sea. I realize now I read much of this book while I was feverish with the flu and I was comfortable reading along.

By today, however, though I am still sick, the fever is gone and the book has made me feel quite queasy. I finished it and find myself uncertain just what it is I've read. It turns out that I am not alone in that situation. I will say the duck turned out to be a swan and there is a mechanical swan in the Bowes Museum in England. 

For a couple of views of this book, here's Tony's take on it and Lisa's review.

Peter Carey, Chemistry of Tears, Alfred A. Knopf, 2012, 229 pages. Available at the UVa and public libraries and from Amazon.

The Ninth Hour by Alice McDermott

I have enjoyed two books by this author (Someone and After This), both of which I admired and appreciated. 

This one, as I read in a description, begins with a suicide and ends with a possible murder, so the reader is prepared for grimness. The Catholic Church always figures in McDermott's books whose characters are generally Irish. In this one we see the church in both a good light and in a terrible light. 

The suicide of a young man unable to keep his job and overwhelmed by news of his wife's pregnancy begins the story set in the early Twentieth Century. Sister St. Savior, an elderly nun is passing by and seeing the policemen, does not hesitate to step in and take charge. She tries her best to arrange it so the man can still be buried in consecrated ground, but though she failed in that, everyone accepts her direction gratefully. She and the other nuns show themselves to be dedicated to care of the most needy among the parishioners. Her assurance that she can ignore Church rules is Sister St. Savior's only apparent sin. In this case she arranges for Annie, the young man's wife to work in the laundry at the convent.

Annie's competence and lovely connections to the sisters makes for a good story. Sally, her baby, also brings joy to the sisters. They are happy to care for her while Annie goes out for a bit of time on her own in the afternoons. This occurs during the ninth hour after dawn, a time for prayers and psalm reading in the Catholic day. It turns out that Annie was having a tryst for years with Mr. Costello whose wife was a hopeless and unpleasant invalid cared for by the nuns.

When Sally is in her teens, the nuns encourage her to become a nun; she goes out with one of them on care-taking rounds and encounters Mrs. Costello, the unpleasant invalid wife of her mother's lover. There is a bit of framing so we know that Sally marries into one of the beautifully drawn Irish families in the parish. The nuns at their worst want Sally to become a nun, or failing that, care for Mrs. Costello, to expiate her mother's sins. Well, someone has to pay.

Though this was on Maureen Corrigan's best books of 2017 list, I rate it much lower than the other two books I've read by Alice McDermott.

Alice McDermott, The Ninth Hour, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2017, 256 pages (I listened to the audiobook). Available at the UVa and public libraries and from Amazon.

Favorite Books for 2017

I have now dropped the designation of 10 favorite books for the year as I usually have a larger number. This year I chose 11 of the 50 books I read. Four on my favorites list were among the ten books by Australians. As always these are books that I read this year, not necessarily published in 2017. 

The Boy Behind the Curtain by Tim Winton. I found this audiobook so appealing that I returned to the beginning as soon as I finished it. It's poignant, thoughtful, inspiring. This beloved Australian author writes about his youth, his work in the environmental movement, and living in the gatehouse of Leap Castle in Ireland while writing Cloudstreet. 

The Refugees by Viet Thanh Nguyen. Every sentence counts in these short stories whose characters are immigrants; some tell of immigrants who have been in the U.S. for decades, some tell of the time when they were new to the country.  Each one drops you into a different world.

I Am a Truck by Michelle Winters. I concluded the plot is so magically odd that describing it in the usual terms misses the mark. It is the characters' intense and vibrant love for the oddest things (Chevy trucks, rock and roll music, smoking, and each other) that made me love it. 

The Body in the Clouds by Ashley Hay. One of my favorite books last year has Sydney at its center and three storylines that intertwine (The Floating Garden by Emma Ashmere). Once again one of my favorites falls into that same category. Lets see if that can happen again next year. This time the three stories are in different centuries:  one fictionalizes William Dawes, who arrived with the first fleet, one has the building of the Harbour Bridge at its center, and one tells the story of a man returning to the city from London after an absence of 10 years.

One Fine Day by Mollie Panter-Downes. The picture painted of the diminished life facing the aristocracy of England after the war tells us that this is caused by the rise in the fortunes of those who previously worked to care for the upper classes. This comes not as a polemic, but a lovely recounting of a day by a woman who is not especially troubled by her new situation and at day's end has an uplifting moment of revelation of her good fortune.

Exit West by Mohsin Hamid. It is rare for a book to be so successful in both an intimate story of individuals who come alive and a dramatic global theme. Two young people must leave their country when it is engulfed in civil war; they leave by a magical method which is both like dying and being reborn. While their complex tale is told in a dispassionate voice, you come to love them. A global theme could hardly be more timely and important than that of immigration.

Purple Threads by Jeanine Leane. You have to love a book with characters known as Auntie Boo and Auntie Bubby. The narrator tells that she only became aware that her life as an Aborigine was different from others when she went to school. She grew up in the care of her grandmother and the Aunties. It was Auntie Boo who reassured her that being different was a good thing by telling Epictetus's story that he wanted to be the purple thread, "that small part which is bright and makes everything else graceful and beautiful."

Mister Monkey by Francine Prose.  All the characters are connected, sometimes only tangentially, by a play. The author, actors, audience members, and the director each have a chapter devoted to their stories. Early on, I thought this was about a sorry group of individuals who are easily skewered, but a wonderful bigger picture emerges and we begin to feel a kinship with this odd collection of humanity.

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders. A book with a mix of historical snippets and fanciful fiction has remained my favorite for the year since I read it in April. It is the fellow residents of Willie Lincoln's graveyard that makes this a wonderful book for me. Three of them tell us the story, along with short quotes from books written at the time of the child's death. I am now more aware that the Buddhist concept of the Bardo speaks to the concept that turns up everywhere, this place between not being alive and a final resting place.

Everywhere I Look by Helen Garner. This book of essays is both moving and very funny; I found the 12-page recounting of Pride and Prejudice alone worth the price of the book. In writing about United 93, the movie about the 9/11 plane that passengers commandeered from the hijackers, she says, "why do stories matter so terribly to us, that we will offer ourselves up to, and later be grateful for, an experience that we know will fill us with grief and despair?"

NW by Zadie Smith. The four main characters grew up in a council estate in a part of London that one knows is not posh. They go in different directions and then intersect in intense ways; each character is drawn in a compelling way. The audiobook was wonderful for the sounds of their dialogue and the poetry that Zadie Smith lapses into. 

 

Real American by Julie Lythcott-Haims

When I saw Jenna Wortham's tweet saying this book about mixed race doesn't a) make her cringe or b) center whiteness to talk about blackness, I figured it was a book I should read. Jenna Wortham, who writes for the NYT, was in Charlottesville this fall for a panel about race and news media. She was the most articulate speaker even with Jamelle Bouie on the stage.

Julie Lythcott-Haims previously published the NYT bestseller How to Raise an Adult, published in 2015, that pushes back against helicopter parenting. One can well imagine that such a book would be written by someone who has been a dean of freshmen and undergraduate advising.

Her father was the Assistant Surgeon General during the Carter administration. Daddy, as she calls him, had four children by a previous marriage and met her British white mother when they both lived in Ghana. They lived in New York, then Reston, Virginia, and when Reagan was elected, they moved to Wisconsin for work at the University. Though they could have lived in the multicultural city of Madison, they lived in a small town and Julie went to a high school that had very few black students.

She describes her childhood confusion of looking like neither of her parents, of other children's questions, "What are you?" and "She's your mother?" She was bewildered by her parents' answer that she was Black. As she grew up she was always a good student and participated in all the typical activities.

When she was in high school she and her best friend Diana watched Gone with the Wind and Diana thought it would have been great to live at that time. Julie pointed out she would have been a slave and Diana told her she did not think of her as Black, but as normal. Julie writes, "I knew what Diana meant. I felt very un-Black myself, even as my parents continued to insist that I was Black, even as I tried to figure out what that meant and to be that person in this white town."

When she arrived at Stanford as a freshman, she was hoping to make Black friends. When she attended a welcoming event for Black students, she felt out of place, thinking that none of those students had a white parent and none of them were the only Black kid in their high school. Throughout her college years her friends were white kids and Black kids with whom she shared activities. It was after college when she was in a workshop about institutional racism that she understood the label Mixed/Other was more accurate for her than Black. She says, "For an hour that afternoon, we feel powerful. Empowered. We are outing ourselves as mixed-race people." And later as a dean she came to feel a part of the Black community.

She describes the day a colleague, a white woman she respected, touched her hair and called it "so interesting" and "amazing." She objected, saying this was a thing white women do to Black women, treat them like zoo animals and petting them. That day she objected to being petted, she became "the Angry Black Woman." 

She married and now has two teenage children. The death of Treyvon Williams is her Pearl Harbor and she writes with clarity about the racism that results in so many deaths of Black children and men at the hands of white policemen. She recounts those deaths and shame floods in.

In thinking of the questions she wishes she'd asked her father before he died, this one stands out, "How do we coexist with these white people fearing and hating us without fearing and hating ourselves?"

Julie Lythcott-Haims, Real American:  A Memoir, Henry Holt and Company, 2017, 288 pages (I read the kindle version). Available at the  public library and from Amazon.

Books to Read

Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward

Anything is Possible by Elizabeth Strout

Two Peter Carey books:  Chemistry of Tears (not good as audiobook, Jeff-Mad has it) and his new one, A Long Way from Home.

A Hundred Small Lessons by Ashley Hay. Out Dec. 27

Several non-fiction books in the Dec 24 look good NYT book review:  The Abu Dhabi Bar Mitzvah by Adam Valen Levinson, loved the review itself too. Bethlehem by Nicolas Blincoe, the author is described as a joyful writer. 

Hoping I'll be recovered enough from the flu to actually read a book soon. 

Mr. Hogarth's Will by Catherine Helen Spence. 19th century australian classic (anz litlovers reviewed). UVa has.

The Floating World by C. Morgan Babst. Liz recommended. New Orleans during and after Katrina.

I Am I Am I Am by Maggie O'Farrell. Memoir in essays.

James Baldwin, Another Country. audiobook.

The Snowball by Alice Schroeder. Warren Buffett biography. 

A Long Way from Home by Peter Carey. According to an NPR interview, Carey takes on Australian racism.

Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan. Jen recommends. Audible.

The Shepherd's Hut by Tim Winton. June, 2018.

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones

Memory of Love by Aminatta Forna, NYT review.

First Person by Richard Flanagan, available April 3.

The Passage of Love by Alex Miller, available August 28.

Questions of Travel by Michelle de Kretser.

Men without Women by Haruki Murakami. Public Library has.

Museum of Modern Love by Heather Rose. Will be available on kindle in November, 2018.

Caravaggio by Francine Prose. Reviewed by NYT. He went to Malta!)

News of the World by Paulette Jiles. Saw this. Audiobook.

Happiness by Aminatta Forna. Tony loved it.

Jacqueline Winspear's Masie Dobbs mystery series. Laura recommended. Put a hold on Masie Dobbs audiobook. Also recommended Hazel Holt.

nicholas monsarrat's The Kappillan of Malta. Public library has it.

That Deadman Dance by Kim Scott. Audiobook.

The Woman Upstairs by Claire Messud

The title refers to women who become invisible as they live carefully, fulfilling their obligations, putting the needs of others before their own. In a superficial way this book has a connection with Barbara Pym's Excellent Women the much admired (except by me) book centered on British women characterized as spinsters who live a circumscribed life, helping others, and wearing frumpy brown clothes. Barbara Pym had a different approach to the issue, but the connection is there.

This particular woman upstairs is seething in anger at having made the choices she did. Her mother made similar choices and the irony is that because the narrator Nora cared for her mother through her long illness she became an elementary school teacher rather than pursuing her art. She tells us she was tricked into being a good girl and she is furious because she couldn't figure out how to get out of the "hall of mirrors," find an exit to escape to what she might define as real life. The story she tells us occurs over the course of a school term when she is in her late thirties when she thought she found that exit, but of course she had been tricked again. 

Little Reza Shahid showed up in her third grade classroom and while others were merely charmed by him, Nora fell in love with this little boy.  Then his mother Sirena came into her life, offering to share an art studio and friendship. And finally she fell in love with the third member of the family, the father, Skandar. She began to think of herself as a mother to Reza, an art partner and friend/potential lover to Sirena, and a friend and more to Skandar. She thought these talented and charming people would change her life and when they didn't, she felt betrayed. When she learns several years later of a further betrayal, she is apoplectic and vows she will "set the world on fire. I just might." Nora tells the story looking back on this time, so in the telling we know that she was delusional before we know the specifics. 

Nora is an unappealing and unreliable witness, wrapped up in the "reality" she creates for herself. Though she had the ability to succeed in the endeavors she took on, she tired of each one. She was very successful in the business world, she nearly married an idealized man, she became a loved and successful teacher. Her anger at herself for her choices and later at the glamorous and sophisticated family she loved might move her to set the world on fire, but she acknowledges she might go back to teaching third grade. I found her anger more wearying than enlightening.

Claire Messud, The Woman Upstairs, Alfred A. Knopf, 2013, 253 pages. Available at the UVa and public libraries, and from Amazon.

The Boy Behind the Curtain by Tim Winton

I found this audiobook of essays written and read by Tim Winton so heartening that when I finished it, I listened to it again immediately. I have never done that before, either listening or reading a book, so what is different about this one?

First he writes so beautifully, using such a literate vocabulary with the bonus of the vernacular of Australia, perhaps in particular, working class Australians of a certain age. The subjects of the essays vary widely from his (and other Australians') connections to guns, the effect of his family's evangelical religious bent, his work in the environmental movement, class divisions as he observes it, and running throughout, his love of living near the sea and surfing.

Church loomed large in his family life and Sundays were exhausting so that Monday seemed a day of rest. He tells about one poignant story of his experience:

When I was six, I approached an older gentleman called George Smith to ask him about the size of my soul. I sidled up to him after church one morning and stood at his side until he registered my presence. He was younger then than I am now, but to me he had a wise and ancient mien. Maybe it was the specs. I don't remember why, at that age, I required soul dimensions, all I know is that my need was urgent. Mr. Smith took off his glasses, gave 'em a bit of a buff. Eventually he took my hand, closed it and pressed it against my chest. He told me he'd never actually seen a human soul but his best guess was that mine was about the size of my fist. I considered this skeptically; I may have only been six, but I wasn't stupid. Then I thought how sometimes my spirit ached like the aftermath of a sucker punch, burning right there, where old George Smith had his hand in mine like a thump in the chest whose afterglow left a feel and shape of a fist. And so his answer rang true. In the years since, my satisfaction with it has only deepened not because it convinces me in the literal sense it once did, but because there's such humanity and imagination in the image. What moves me most is that he bothered to answer my question at all.

It's a pleasure to read personal essays by someone who is so unconventional in that he doesn't fit any stereotypes. He makes me think of my father's assessment of my sister in 1967; in trying to puzzle out what she might be up to in college, he concluded she was too weird to be a hippie. Winton is a Christian, but not in any predictable sense. He doesn't own any guns, but has a complicated connection with them. He is a brilliant writer, but seems uneasy in any literary establishment sense.

I was unnerved to realize that it took a second listening to recognize that an experience in my own life was surprisingly similar to one in his. When he was six years old, his father was in an accident that nearly cost his life and required a long convalescence and later surgeries. He tells how much this affected his life and shook his sense of safety.

A week before my seventh birthday my mother drove her car into the path of a train where there was no crossing arm. I remember the moment we were told and my father was whisked away. My teenage older sister took charge and assured me everything would be fine. My mother was terribly injured:  her broken neck alone made it seem unlikely that she would survive. But she did and though she was a different person, she eventually recovered to manage our household. The community, particularly the church community, stepped in and cared for us in countless ways. I grew up feeling the great kindness of all those people and always loved that church family even through my teenage years when I had lost my faith. That accident made me conscious my family was different from others as my mother was so marked physically by it. 

This is a wonderful book that I will return to for comfort and relief in the face of the trials that continue to come our way in this country.

Tim Winton, The Boy Behind the Curtain, Picador, 2017 (I listened to the audiobook). Only available from third party sellers through Amazon.

Independent Review of the 2017 Protest Events in Charlottesville, Virginia by Tim Heaphy

In the last few days I have been focused on the novella-length report of the summer's awful events, especially the one I wrote about that occurred on August 12. Though I was skeptical about the report, given that Heaphy seemed to be buddies with various people in City government and that he requested to undertake this project paid for by the City. I believe he did a creditable job. As I said at the time, we were failed by government at every level and this report documents all those failures. Besides City government, the appalling actions of the Virginia State Police were brought into the light.

Heaphy criticizes the City for its failure in two areas vital to our civic life:  failure to insure free expression of ideas (however repugnant) and ensuring public safety. The most common reaction everyone had to the events of August 12 was that police did not intervene in violence between the Alt-Right White Supremacists and the Anti-fascists opposing them. Though the police -- both City and Virginia State Police -- deny that they had a "stand-down" order, that is exactly what they did, including failing to respond to pleas for help from people. It seems to have been their plan to let the violence escalate until they could give the order to shut down the event, thus denying free expression requested by the Alt-Right group.

When I read about one of the earlier events of the summer, a visit by the silly-looking Ku Klux Klan who have lost their terrifying clout, I remembered how discouraged I was by the apparent unwillingness of some in our community to recognize their right to free speech. I believe their speech, with the help of their pointy hats and purple robes, discredits them rather than giving them a platform to intimidate people. I recognize that it's not always so simple, but having grown up in the time when protesters against the Vietnam War were struggling to have the right of free speech, I am not comfortable shutting it down.

It's been poignant in the last few days to walk and drive the streets where these terrible things happened. This summer after the murder of Heather Heyer to honor her I walked to the street where she died almost every day as long as the street was closed to traffic. It was heartening to see the flowers and many other offerings of tribute people left there.

A healing for this community seems a long way off, but it is a good start to see an honest accounting of the events in print. 

Timothy J. Heaphy, Hunton & Williams, LLP, Independent Review of the 2017 Protest Events in Charlottesville, Virginia, 2017, 207 pages.