Paradais

 Paradais

By Fernanda Melchor

Well, that was an intense one. I can across the title as part of comedian Anthony Jeselnik's book club,
which he launched this year. He's a pretty dark comic; this is a pretty dark tale.

It takes place in Mexico on the grounds of a gated community called Paradais -- Paradise, though the day laborers who work there can't pronounce it. It tells of the connection between the haves, who live in the community, and the have-nots, who work at the place.

Representing the latter is a teenager named Polo. He has dropped out of school and wants desperately to drop out of the life that has followed. He hates his work as a gardener at Paradais as well as the residents there. And yet he forms a "friendship" with who he refers to as Fatboy so often that I can't actually remember his name. Fatboy is rich. He lives with his grandparents, away from his abusive, lawyer father. Polo and Fatboy take to bouts of drinking after Polo's shift. Not only does Polo love drinking, he desperately wants to avoid arriving at home while his mother and cousin are up.

That's because his cousin is pregnant. For the first two thirds of the book, we are led to believe that the father could be anyone; "everyone" knows she sleeps around. But then we learn that it is probably Polo's, though he won't admit it was his "fault" because his cousin kept following him around and "begging" for it. Polo is searching for any way out. He tries to contact his older cousin, Milton, who has been abducted by the local drug cartel, asking him to vouch for him in the group, but he receives only sermons about how that life is no life for anyone.

Fatboy's problems are more internal. He is addicted to porn, as well as to one of his neighbors, the glamorous wife of a television personality. During their drinking sessions, he goes on and on and on about what he wants to "do" to this woman. And then one day, a plan forms. The family, Fatboy discovers, does not lock their house. So why don't they go in there and kill the husband. Fatboy can rape the wife while Polo robs them of their riches. It is unclear exactly what Polo thinks of this plan. But, nevertheless, he finds himself at Walmart buying face masks, condoms, and "kidnapper's" (ie duct) tape.

Next thing you know, they are in the house. The husband is dead. The children are bound and gagged. Polo is sampling the high-end booze, and Fatboy is desperately trying to get it up so he can fulfill his fantasy. He ends up with fatal knife wounds that don't kill him until he is able to shoot the wife. It is a grisly scene, and Polo runs, swimming the river that separates the gated community from the real community Polo lives in. The river is symbolic for Polo: it's the one place that holds positive memories for him. He used to fish the river with his grandfather, had spoken of building a boat together one day.

Polo goes to sleep. Wakes up. Heads back to work like every day. Everything is normal. No one has noticed -- because no one behind the gate can fathom that their paradise could be lost. Turns out, it was gone way before they knew it.

The God of the Woods

 The God of the Woods

By Liz Moore

I heard this author on Fresh Air. She sounded good, so I picked up the book.

It tells the story of a wealthy family, the Van Laars, who have established an estate in the Adirondacks.

Attached to it is an unconventional summer camp, named after Ralph Waldo Emerson, designed to teach young people to love, respect, and -- and survive -- nature. One of the hallmarks is a survival week, where campers are taken to the woods and left to fend for themselves.

All is not well with the Van Laars. Alice Van Laar married her husband, Peter (Peter III, actually, since the name has been passed down through generations) at the age of 18, and is way in over her head. It is curious why Peter asked for her hand when, afterwards, he seems so annoyed with her. Perhaps he thought he could mold her into the woman he wanted to marry? No such luck. Alice is miserable except for one bright spot -- her son, Bear. He is, by all accounts a wonderful child, and Alice throws herself into him. So it is beyond catastrophic when, one day, Bear disappears. Despite mobilizing the whole surrounding town and state police, he stays missing.

And then, fourteen years later, it happens again. This time, it is the Van Laars daughter, Barbara, who goes missing. Alice does not share the same maternal bond with Barbara that she did with Bear; there is, really, no bond at all. She is a shell of a human, addicted to some sort of pill her doctor prescribed her during a stay at an institution following Bear's disappearance. She could hear him speak, she said. And Peter doesn't have the time of day; she is, after all, a girl, and so won't do the chief duty of his offspring: take over the family banking business.

Still, there is an outcry. There is mobilization. There are interviews. In them untangles quite the web of lies meant to uphold the appearance of upper-class respectability. It is infuriating as a reader to see Barbara's disappearance almost pinned on one of the "help" -- must as Bear's was in the 1960s. 

Then, a breakthrough. The New York State Police's first female investigator somehow develops a level of trust with an escaped sexual predator, one that encourages him to open up about the whereabouts of young Bear, or his remains anyway. They find them. Then the truth comes out. Alice Van Laar, drunk, capsized a rowboat with Bear in it. He drowned. But in order to keep up appearances, her husband and father-in-law conspired to pin the deed on a groundskeeper. Alice, kept drugged up, never finds out the truth. 

Meanwhile, it turns out Barbara is just fine. She had developed an escape plan with the camp's director and ends up alone on an island cabin. The investigator, Judy, knows the truth, but also knows enough to keep it to herself.

That's really just a small synopsis of the book. It's lengthy and spans several decades. The author did a wonderful job of bringing this world to life. The narration switches between many characters. Sometimes, I find this hard to follow, but in this book I had no trouble keeping up. Embedded in the story are other themes, primarily an investigation of the role of women in society, high and low, at the time. A wonderful, page-turning read.

Heart the Lover

 Heart the Lover

By Lily King

My reaction to the first part of this book was: Ugh. It is set in the late 1980s in a Pennsylvania college,
where there develops something of a love triangle between characters named Jordan (the girl) and two best friends, Sam and Yash. It is an angsty time for all of them as they fall into and out of love with one another. There comes a time when Jordan and Yash are on the cusp of a future together. Jordan moves back from Paris to New York, thinking she is going to meet Yash there. But he never shows. Never even calls. 

The "ugh" is because it recalled similar times of my own, thinking I had met "the one", only to have that fall through, and generally feeling like a happy life partnership -- like the one I have now -- was an impossibility. I didn't like that feeling, and didn't particularly care for the process that got me to where I am today.

Erin, who read this book before me, had her own ugh, which was similar to the reviewer on NPR. It recalled for her the misogyny baked into higher education, where males are seen as the true possessors of knowledge and women objects who should bow before their knowledge. I saw this only when it was pointed out to me, perhaps proof of its existence.

But I made it through that first part. And that's when the novel picked up for me. It fast forwards several decades to when Jordan, whose actual name is Casey, is in her 40s, married in Maine, with a house and two kids. Her old flame, Yash, drops by on his way through a tour up the state's coast. Reading this part felt like home. Like I was reading about my own life. 

I hope I wasn't, because there is, of course, a twist. Casey's son develops a brain tumor, and domestic bliss turns into a nightmare of waiting for a surgery that may give him a new lease on life, kill him, or, worse, turn him into a vegetable. Meanwhile, Yash, too, is suffering from cancer. Casey visits him at his hospital deathbed. They hash some things out, and Casey reveals that she'd been 5 months pregnant when Yash stood her up in New York. She is, briefly, torn out of her life and into the past. 

It's no less excruciating than the beginning of the novel, and yet: it's middle aged. I don't often think of myself that way, but, since I identified so strongly with that portion of the novel, perhaps I should.

South of the Border, West of the Sun

 South of the Border, West of the Sun

By Haruki Murakami

It's been a while since I've read a Murakami book, and Erin happened upon this one at the library. So I was

excited to pick it up.

This one features a very classic Murakami man. Self-centered, in a dead-end job, haunted by past women in his life. In this case it Shimimoto, who he bonded with in elementary school because they were both only children, apparently a rarity in those days. He was close with her until his family moved and they lost touch. 

As an adult, the man is adrift working as a textbook editor until he meets the woman who becomes his wife. Her father is a wealthy businessman, and backs his opening of two very successful bars/jazz clubs. All is going well: two kids, plenty of money. Then Shimimoto, drawn by the press coverage of the bars, shows up. And all of a sudden the guy can't stop thinking about her; he loves her. He takes a strange journey with her to a river, in which she dumps the ashes of her stillborn baby. The two carry on a platonic affair until, one night, it is consummated. 

In the morning, though, Shiminoto is nowhere to be found. She is gone without a trace. There is a suggestion that perhaps she was merely a figment of the man's imagination. Either way, he is distraught, and all but confesses to his wife, who is beyond understanding, telling him she will stay or go -- whatever he wants. Eventually, he stays.

It's hard to read this as anything other than some weird fantasy. Maybe Murakami wants to be able to sleep around without consequence? Maybe I'm missing something? I don't know, but this book didn't live up to my expectations. The main problem was that magical realism never really crept in. It never got truly weird. Which is what I look for in Murakami. Ah well.

Murder in Constantinople

 Murder in Constantinople

By A.E. Goldin

Set in the 1850s, this book follows the adventures of Ben Canaan, a Jewish resident of England -- at the
time, one couldn't be fully British and Jewish -- who, after accidentally crossing a local gangster, suggests he lay low half a world away in Constantinople, where he hopes to solve the mystery of a long-lost love whose picture mysteriously appeared in the suit of a high-ranking official hoping to secure his tailor-father's services. 

That was a long sentence. Too long, some might say.

Constantinople had a reputation at the time of being a dangerous city and Ben, having nowhere else to turn, finds himself at a local synagogue. The rabbi there offers him a few rooms. But things soon turn sticky, and Ben is thrust into the center of a plot to take down the Sultan, who then led the Ottoman Empire. He risks his life many times, but is able, with the help of some new friends, to foil the plan and ensure the continuity of an important British ally in a war against the Russians. The Crimean War, I believe.

To be honest, the book felt stilted and full of tropes. The plot was good enough to keep me reading, but I don't plan to pick up any of its sequels. The most interesting part was the exploration of the Jewish community at the time and its place in society.

Indian Country

 Indian Country

By Shobha Rao

One of the best books I've picked up in a while!

This tells the story of an Indian couple who find themselves in rural Montana. They also find themselves
together. Janavi is a younger sister who acts like an older one -- until her mother dies. She is listless to the point of drowning herself in the Ganges, but holds back until she remembers the promise she made: to take care of her older, meeker sister Rajni. Her decision to live puts her back in the world, and she finds a meaningful path as a worker for an NGO trying to help street children in her city, Varanasi. But that is upended one day when her sister is set to meet her arranged betrothed. Rajni, it turns out, has a beau, one chosen for love. She convinces Sagar, to whom she has been committed since birth, to claim he wants to marry Janavi, who is aghast but unwilling to face the consequences of refusing the proposal. And so she is married.

She must also move. Sagar, a hydraulic engineer, has taken a  job in eastern Montana, in part to flee from his brother, who is a living reminder of the biggest mistake he has ever made: pushing him into a swimming hole, where he injured himself and became disabled for life.

At first, things go well -- at least professionally. Janavi is furious at her situation. But Sagar has been obsessed with rivers since a kid, and is excited at being a lead engineer on a project for the first time. His job is to remove a dam on the Cotton River. It's a project that has the support of the local native tribe, but not some of the most powerful men in town. The day that the first drainage notch is cut in the river, tragedy strikes. A co-worker, who has become a close friend, is found dead. Sagar's engineering work is blamed. He is fired and given six weeks to leave the country.

But Sagar knows his numbers, knows that it's not his work that cause the death. And so he and Janavi set out to find answers. In the process, they grow closer together -- while the Rajni's marriage in India falls into abuse. 

The book touches on lots of themes, including gender roles, race, and colonialism. It was a great read.

The Rider

 The Rider

By Tim Krabbè

I actually bought this book. It was recommended to me by Mark Ericson, a new teacher at our school with

whom I've gone a few bike rides. He is a die-hard. He came to Vermont from LA, where he commuted to work everyday, a tradition he's kept up in Woodstock.

The book is a 150-page account of a 150-kilometer bike race through the mountains of France. It is told from the perspective of one Tim Krabbè; it is a little unclear how autobiographical it is. It is almost stream of consciousness, toggling back and forth between the rider's "sporting history" as a child and young man and thoughts about racing strategy. Krabbè very much wants to win this race. 

It is a slim novel, but I will say that I found it a bit of a slog at times. It is filled with suffering, emotional and physical as Krabbè tries to pull off his first win at a well-known race. But while reading the last thirty pages, I found my palms sweating and my heart racing. I, too, desperately wanted Krabbè. Spoiler alert: He doesn't, falling 10 cm short after a sprint to the finish. It is heartbreaking, and the reader is left wondering: will Krabbè get back on the bike?

This one left me: A) Pretty firm in my belief that bicycle racing isn't for me; and B) Wanting to read some of Krabbè's other work.