Interior Chinatown

 Interior Chinatown

By Charles Yu

This one was nothing if not unique. This book tells the story of Willis Wu, a bit-actor trying to make his way

up the ranks to the pinnacle of Asian acting: Kung Fu Man. But, of course, it is not simply the tale of Willis; it is also, in a way, the story of all Americans of Asian descent. The idea that Yu posits is that America is a black and white world that does not know what to do with this "other" category of people, which, despite centuries on American soil, therefore cannot shake the idea that they are somehow foreign. Asian stereotypes run so deep that Americans in this category are expected to play a role, what Yu dubs Generic Asian Man (or woman). 

He emphasizes this point by writing the book as if it is a movie script. Often times, Willis' acting jobs blend into real life. He will be playing "Special Guest Star" on a cop show, for instance, when he starts chatting with a fellow actor about the humiliation of having to do an accent when he was born and raised in the US. It's often a humorous, if disorienting, effect.

I found out after I started reading that the book won the National Book Award. It's easy to see why. It is inventive, funny, and, at times, powerful. I do wish, though, that it had been a bit heavier on plot. Often times, the book reads less like a novel and more like an essay. The blurring of "reality" and TV show -- which, I know, was part of the point -- added to this. So it was hard to commit to the characters. But a good read nonetheless.

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

 The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

By David Mitchell

Set in the Dutch trading post of Djimi outside of Nagasaki, Japan, at the turn of the 19th century, this story

tells the tale of (as the title implies) a young clerk named Jacob de Zoet, who has signed on with the Dutch East India Company in a bid to win his fortune -- and the hand of a better-to-do Dutch woman he hopes to marry. He tries, and partially succeeds, but his rectitude proves an impediment to true wealth.

But what he finds instead might be more valuable. He falls in love with a young medical apprentice named Dr. Aibagawa, or Orito, and accidentally proposes. it is nearly accepted when fate, in the form of a near-demonic local lord, intervenes and banishes Orito to a strange mountain-top abbey.

The historical nature of this book is fascinating. I loved the way Mitchell recreated the Dutch-Japanese relationship of this period. It provides much dramatic tension in and of itself, particularly with the backstabbing politics of the DEIC and the arrival, toward the end of the book, of a British naval frigate (or some other navy-type boat). It raises lots of questions, such as: Was Japan better off as an isolated nation? What does it mean to be rich? Is it possible to be honest and successful? Can two people of such different backgrounds fall in love? What are the benefits and drawbacks of a strictly hierarchical society?

There is a supernatural element to this novel, though, that I found off-putting and, frankly, unnecessary. It involves a powerful Lord Abbot who is in charge of the Abbey to which Orito is banished. I'm not exactly sure why the author included this bit, ad it seemed to undermine the otherwise enthralling plot. 

State of Wonder

 State of Wonder

By Anne Patchett

Anne Patchett must have a penchant for South America. (I cannot be the only one who has delighted in the

paring of Patchett an penchant.) The last novel of hers I read, Bel Canto, told the story of an attempted coup in an unknown South American country. This one, though it starts in Minnesota, has as its climactic backdrop the Amazon basin. Patchett's bio reveals little about any time spent there, so she must have one heckofa imagination.

The basic plot is this: An American pharmaceutical company has heavily invested in a researcher who appears to have found a compound that would extend fertility well into a woman's 70s in the Amazon. But that researcher is fairly prickly and not prone to answering calls/e-mails/letters. So to protect that investment, they send down an eager employee, likely drawn there by his love of birding, who reportedly dies as a result. The president of the company, Jim Fox -- also a name of a former Valley News editor -- therefore turns to his employee-turned-lover Marina to find the researcher and the truth about what happened. Complicating Marina's trip is not just the danger and remoteness of the Amazon, but also the fact that the researcher, Dr. Annick Swenson, was her former medical school teacher, whose gruffness in the wake of a botched c-section led her to eschew working with patients in lieu of pharmacology. 

What Marina finds in the Amazon is, of course, not what she expects. I wouldn't want to give too much away to my phantom readers, so I'll just say that the most important surprise to Marina is her own competence. So when Swenson, in a plea to keep her in the Amazon, tells Marina, "Trust e, you won't fit in there anymore. You've changed," she's right. I suspect there is more to this story, particularly around fertility as a symbol for...something. I can't say my critical reading eyes are as sharp as they should be.

All in all, a great read.

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

 Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

By Olga Tokarczuk

Hard to believe more than a month has passed since I last finished a book. School has drained so much of

me. It is only October, and it is hard to imagine spending another eight months with these kids. Then again, it is Monday and I've been up since 3 or so. For many reasons, perhaps more life circumstance than anything to do with the book, this was a slog.

The novel is set on a remote Polish plateau near the border with the Czech Republic. I hadn't noticed it, but a review I read after-the-fact pointed out that borders are one of the central motifs, if not themes, of the book. It is a study in lines, the ones we hold dear, but others do not, and what it takes to cross the ones that others take for granted.

The protagonist is Janina, though she insists that it is a name that does not suit her. Given names are a line for her. She gives names to the other characters in the book based upon her impression of them, which is often backed up by her astrological research. Oddball. Big Foot. Black Coat. 

Another important line for Janina is the killing of animals. She cannot stand it, which is problematic in a culture that, if this book is to be believed, worships hunting. She takes down illegal snares and bothers locals out for a day of shooting. When some of those hunters start winding up dead, Janina is convinced that it is the animals taking revenge. She tries to convince others of the same. But the truth -- that she has convinced herself that she is acting upon the animal's behalf -- is not far beneath the surface of her deceit. 

It all sounds like a good read. Perhaps when I've figured out how to leave school at school and leave some brain for home, I might take up some of Tokarcuk's other novels. Flight in particular has been lauded and helped her earn the Nobel Prize for literature. In the meantime, I might look for something that is a quicker read.

The Last Policeman

The Last Policeman by Ben Winters

It has been a long time since a book sucked me in like this. Like since I first picked up John Grisham in

middle school and read a book in a day. I didn't quite achieve that level of gobbling, but I did devour this one in two days, no small feat with little kids running around. I'm beginning to think I'm more of a fan of mysteries than I thought.

So here's the premise: As we learn in the first few chapters of the book, an asteroid is going to hit earth in 6 months, which is pretty much guaranteed to kill at least half of humanity on the planet and leave the other half in pretty dire straits. Civilization will be gone. 

Given this future, many people are committing suicide. It's become so common that police aren't even investigating deaths that even suggest that the person took their own life. Except for one. Newly minted detective Henry Palace stumbles upon a so-called hanger in the bathroom of a Concord, NH, McDonald's one day and something about it seems off. Like it might just be a murder. It causes an itch that he just has to scratch, and so he, alone among his colleagues, sets off on the case.

All this leaves the reader wondering not just who killed the victim, Peter Zell, but whether he was a victim at all. Could it be that Palace just needs this case to keep his mind off the impending doom? Where some on planet earth have reacted to the asteroid by checking out and checking off so-called bucket lists, others have descended into drug-induced oblivious, still others by doubling down on religious faith, and more by ending it all, Henry's philosophy is to just keep on keeping on. There is no exotic vacation for him, no philosophizing on what is about to come. There is only daily routine, as he makes clear to a colleague who can't stop obsessing over the news:   

With a quick flat chop I knock over the cup of coffee on Andreas's desk, and the cold brown liquid gushes out, rushing over the pamphlet, flooding his ashtray, his paperwork and computer keyboard.

Hey," he says dumbly, pushing back from the desk, turning all the way around. "Hey."

 "You what I'm doing right now?" I say, watching the muddy liquid rush toward the edge of the table. "I'm thinking: Oh no! The coffee's going to spill onto the floor! I'm so worried! Let's keep talking about it!"

And then the coffee waterfalls over the side of the desk, splashing on Andreas's shoes and pooling on the ground beneath the desk.

"Oh, look at that," I say. "It happened anyway." (174)

And so the book becomes not just a murder-mystery, but a rumination on how to live life when we know that life is short. Sure, we don't have a sure date when it will all end, but we do know where we're all going to end up, asteroid or not. So what do we do with this time? I like Henry's outlook, but it is hard to achieve sometimes.

Winters sure knows how to write suspense. He reveals the story little by little, but he knows when and what information to withhold so it doesn't feel cliche or obnoxious. And I must say that I found all of the Concord references pretty fun. Winters goes out of his way to name-drop local landmarks -- Penuche's, The Barley House, Eagle Square, Rollins Park. Good fun. 

The book ends with five more months to go before the asteroid hits. Apparently it is part of a trilogy. I look forward to the next installment. 

The Anthropocene Reviewed

 The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Greene

Ever wanted to give a Yelp review to some of the strange facets of modern life? John Greene did. And

because he's John Greene and has sold millions of copies of books, he got to do so in a book. Must be nice. 

Then again, it's pretty nice for readers too. In a collection of short essays, Greene tackles topics as diverse as Diet Dr. Pepper (4 stars) to Plague (1 star) to the weather phenomenon Wintry Mix (4 stars). But the book isn't really a review of life in the Anthropocene. Tucked into each essay, which is supposedly about the common human experience, are revealing tidbits about John Greene's personal journey through the Anthropocene. It's not about our lives -- it's about his life. Which is fine. Because I came away liking John Greene even more than I already did. Like the characters in his novels, Greene is quite vulnerable here. He talks about his social awkwardness, his bouts of depression, his family, his quirks. It is easy to look at a guy like Greene and feel nothing but envy. He's wealthy, beloved, celebrated. But he makes clear here that he's just a weirdo human trying to make sense of it all just like the rest of us. 

Bottom line -- this was a great read. There was some banality, sure, but also some very interesting stuff. I particularly liked the last essay, which was about a famous (but not to me) photo called Three Young Farmers on Their Way to a Dance, taken in pre-WW I Germany. In the essay, Greene riffs on the meaning of historical artifacts in our lives, and how they aren't so much a reminder of the past as a mirror of the present. 

There are some annoyances. He quotes people a lot. A LOT. We get it John: You are well read and there are people who put your ideas more eloquently than you can. And you are well read. But it's a minor annoyance. I give The Anthropocene Reviewed four-and-a-half stars.

Spindle City

 Spindle City by Jotham Burello

Joseph Bartlett never really wanted to be a mill owner. His rise to the position was accidental, the result of a

fire started when a paid spy dropped a kerosene lamp while attempting to steal a set of crooked books kept by his ne'er-do-well brother-in-law. It's an event that could be looked at two ways. On the one hand, perhaps it suggests that ownership was Bartlett's fate. On another, it is indicative of the skeletons that every mill owner had in their closet, skeletons invisible to all but the workers they exploited and the rare labor activists trying to help them. 

Joseph Bartlett seems to think it is the latter, which is why he, alone among Fall River, MA, owners, cozies up to labor activists trying to procure better working conditions for mill workers. But Joseph never can quite atone for his role in the fire. In the opening pages of the book, his wife dies. And then his eldest son is caught sexually abusing a mill worker. The family, it is clear, is in decline -- just like the New England textile industry itself.

This event also follows its perpetrator, Hollister, who is sent away to a New Hampshire military academy and who seems like he will at least make good in the army -- only to fall victim to a mustard gas attack that, at the end of the book, leaves him a shell of a man. 

In the end, all of the characters in the book -- including Fall River itself -- seem to fall victim to forces well beyond their control, be in the machinations of war, economics, or class. Maybe that's the real story of the book, the struggle for individuals to define their own lives in the face of apparently insurmountable obstacles.  

Set in Fall River, MA, in the early part of the 20th century, this novel tells the story of the waning days of the New England textile industry -- and the families who grew fabulously wealthy from it. The former is the result of cheaper labor, and closer proximity to cotton, in the south. The latter is a bit more complicated.

The meta-saga is told through the lens of the Bartlett family and its patriarch, Joseph. 

The 25th Hour

 The 25th Hour by David Benioff

Set on the day before he is to report to a federal prison in Otisville, NY, this book tells the story of Monty,

his friends, and family as they prepare for his upcoming 7-year absence after a conviction on a drug charge. There is Slattery, a wall-street wunderkind who not-so-secretly thinks Monty has it coming. Jakob, a pre-school English teacher who can't seem to think past his own woes. Naturelle, Monty's girlfriend who is awaiting the relief that will come when the hour finally arrives. And Doyle, a faithful pit bull blissfully unaware of it all.  The trio of friends met at the prep school where Jakob now teaches; it was there that Monty discovered the power of the "sway" earned by supplying rich kids with drugs. 

The novel is structured around each hour until Monty is report to jail. The chapters alternate between narrators. As the numbers rise, there seems to be a hint that Monty will do something dramatic to get out of his situation: Run? Rat out his superiors? Commit suicide? Or nothing at all?

This is certainly an angsty book, a bit hard to read given the impending end of summer and beginning of the work year. But it certainly was compelling. Each chapter is a little vignette that pulls you in. I will say that it all seemed a bit cliche. There is no great truth here, just some diversion and entertainment. 

The Last Equation of Isaac Severy

 The Last Equation of Isaac Severy

By Nova Jacobs

The first book of the summer! I was looking for something plot heavy -- something I could get lost in. So I

turned to a mystery, and a nerdy one at that.

The book opens with the death -- Murder? Suicide? -- of a Cal Tech mathematician named Isaac Severy. Whatever the label, turns out that his death was in some way fated. It was predicted by an equation that consumed the latter half of Severy's, an algorithm designed to predict the death (by their own hand or others because, as the book points out, how different are the two?) of people in the Los Angeles area. 

Should such an equation work it would be, of course, quite valuable. And dangerous, if it fell into the wrong hands. To prevent this eventuality, Isaac sends a note, delivered posthumously, to his adopted daughter/granddaughter Hazel instructing her how to find the equation and who to entrust it with so that it does not contribute to more evil in the world. 

Hazel's quest to fulfill this request is where the plot comes in. Given that she is adopted, she is not as mathematically minded as her brothers and sisters. Or is she? It's a question that allows the author to, rather shallowly, delve into ideas about nature versus nurture and the extent to which we are actually in control of our own destinies. 

The reviews call this a remarkable debut. It certainly was a fun book. A great jumping off point to the summer.

Kill 'Em and Leave

 Kill 'Em and Leave

By James McBride

Book three in my little foray into McBride. This one is a kind of hybrid of The Good Lord Bird and The

Color of Water: part memoir, part biography. This time the subject is James Brown. Or rather, the subject is how elusive the "real" James Brown is. Or rather, the subject is James McBride's encounter with James Brown's elusiveness. Over and over again, McBride hears from Brown's associates that he didn't want to be known.

So: How to tell the story of someone who doesn't want their story told -- and, given that he had been dead for a decade when the book came out, couldn't tell it if they wanted to? First: Make it about yourself. McBride is as central a figure in this book as James Brown. He sets the stage for this from the very beginning, relating his own brush with Brown when the singer lived in the Bronx. Or, rather, it was his sister's brush, as she was the one brash enough to knock on the Godfather's door and received an admonishment to "Stay in school Dott-ay!" But my favorite is this: "I came down here on a bum steer. No need to lie or toss that in later. No need to slip that in with the old excuse, 'I'm a musician too and I love the music," or The public needs a guy like me who can really tell it,' or whatever music critics say so the corporate-music taste makers can pump up the latest fifteen-year-old cuss artist while ignoring some real talent who's not good-looking or young enough. I needed the dough, plain and simple. The ex-wife dropped the hammer." It's honest and funny. It has personality. It's indicative of the writing throughout the book. This personal brush with the legal system, and the lawyers who navigate it, perhaps explains McBride's fixation on Brown's will, which, as of the writing of the book, had yet to be fulfilled according to the wishes of its author. Brown apparently wanted to leave the bulk of his millions to poor children in need of education. His own children, it seems, had other ideas.

Next: Portray Brown from as many angles as possible. For me, the book was most enlightening when McBride tears down the Hollywood depiction of Brown as a crazed troublemaker, exaggerating his low points so as to make him look like an addled buffoon. When, of course, the truth is much, much more complicated. But also of great interest are the many interviews that McBride conducts and relates with all sorts of Brown's associates, including ex-wives, former managers, and members of the band that made him famous. 

My own issue with the book was what I saw as distracting repetition. The same details and anecdotes popped up in two, three, or four chapters. For example, we hear the origins and meaning of the book's title, Brown's theory for how to keep his audience wanting more, over and over again. It feels at times, then, that this is a rambling tale told at a bar rather than a book. But, hey, I'd love to share a drink with a storyteller like McBride any day. 

The Color of Water

 The Color of Water

By James McBride

Inspired by Deacon King Kong, I'm thinking about going down a James McBride rabbit hole. This one was much different than the two previous books I'd read (Kong and The Good Lord Bird). It's a memoir -- autobiography? -- in which he seeks his mother's story and, in so doing, helps frame his own.

See, it always appeared that McBride's mother, or Mommy as he calls her, was "different" than the twelve children she managed to raise in New York in the 1950s and 60s. They were black. She was white. The contrast elicited stares and comments and, more importantly for this book, sowed discord within McBride about his identity. What does it mean to be white? To be black? To be "mixed"? It didn't help that McBride's mother was tight-lipped about her past, about why, at a time when it was both (or either) formally and informally illegal for people with different skin tones to marry, Ruth McBride not once but twice married a black man, choosing a path that, from the outside, meant additional hardship in an already harsh world.

When she finally opens up about who she is, though, it is clear that the difference between Ruth and her children really were only skin deep. Ruth, it turns out, was a Polish immigrant, born into a troubled family who fled Europe amidst pogroms that broke out just before World War II. They eventually settled in Suffolk, Va., where they were outsiders that locals placed just above people of color in the social pecking order. It was a lonely place to grow up as an Orthodox Jew. It was made even lonelier by a father, Tateh, who was not only unloving but sexually abusive and vehemently prejudice against the black population he exploited at the store he ran, and a mother, Mameh, whose inability to speak English and debilitating bout of polio left her almost completely dependent upon Ruth. And so, when she could, Ruth fled. And when she arrived in her new home and fell in love with a black man, she was declared dead by the family, who sat shiva for her. Eventually, it became mutual. Ruth buried her past just as her past buried her.

All of this information, of course, helps McBride see his mother in a new light. Hers is a story of extraordinary determination and adaptation. It helps explain how she could shepherd twelve -- 12! -- kids through a child of economic poverty, but emotional wealth, and into college and the professional class. As McBride writes, "I felt like a Tinkertoy kid building my own self out of one of those toy building sets; as she laid her life before me, I reassembled the tableau of her words like a picture puzzle and, as I did so, my own life was rebuilt."

McBride's family history is fascinating. But equally interesting are the question the book seems to raise about stories and the responsibility we have to share them. McBride's mother is clearly pained by her past; she doesn't want to sit for his interviews to revisit this part of her life. It is so emotional that McBride never shares with her a recorded greeting from an old neighbor in Suffolk because it might put her over the edge. I found this an interesting choice. McBride clearly benefited from knowing who his mother really was. In the end, he seems to argue that telling stories, especially painful ones, set us and those around us free. And yet he withholds this part of the story from his mother. It's a small moment, but I think the one that will stick out to me. He is in a sense taking on the parental role. His mother had decided her children didn't need to know her past and so censored it; here, he is the censor. 

The book is also, of course, a contemplation of the role that race plays in our nation. It points out the progress that has been made and the many miles of road that need to be traveled. By touching on these timeless themes, of identity and stories and obligations and race, it seems like this book will be relevant for some time.

Deacon King Kong

 Deacon King Kong

By James McBride

It doesn't take long to figure out the mystery embedded the title of this book. Spoiler alert: it has nothing to do with a giant gorilla. Rather, it is one of the many names given to Cuffy, Lambkin also known as Sportcoat, for his sartorial predilections, and Deacon King Kong, a nod both to his role at the Five Points church and to his other great predilection, a brand of moonshine called King Kong. Other mysteries in the book, though, take a bit more unraveling.

That includes the first: Why, on the day the 71-year-old is to delivery his first-ever sermon at the church around which his housing-project community revolves, did Sportcoat walk up to the most notorious drug dealer in the Cause projects and shoot him in broad daylight? And why, given his extraordinary and routine drunkeness, is it so hard for police and mafia alike to catch him in the wake of this brazen incident? 

And then there are more meta mysteries. Like: Is this a comedy or tragedy? Like McBride's last book, The Good Lord Bird, it seems to be a mix of both in equal parts. On the one hand, there are the buffoonish attempts by a hitman named Earl, who works for a drug kingpin named Bunch Moon, to take out Sportcoat in retribution for the shooting. Earl is bonked on the head with a pipe by an unknown assailant as Sportcoat and his friend help themselves to a bottle of Kong and, at another point, accidentally electrocuted during a failed attempt to revive a generator in the basement of one of the project buildings. Earl is almost a cartoonish figure in this way.

But there is also sadness and hardship everywhere. Sportcoat loses his wife, Hettie, early in the book, and spends a good amount of time in an imaginary back-and-forth with her about the hardships of black residents of New York. The drug dealer, Deems Clemons, was once a pitching prospect for St. John's University before throwing that away to deal heroin to project residents. A local cop, Potts, is just a few months away from retirement and is disillusioned by his profession and his marriage. There is even sympathy for a local mobster, The Elephant, who was brought into the business of smuggling by his father and is dismayed by the encroachment of drugs into his community and profession. For Sportcoat, all of this comes to a head 12 hours into his first sobriety in many decades. He visits a wounded Deems in the hospital, pins him down and says, "Now I know why I tried to kill you...For the life of goodness is not one that your people ahs chosen for you. I don't want that you should end up like me, or my Hettie, dead of sorrow in the harbor. I'm in the last Octobers of life, boy. I ain't got many more Aprils left. .It's a right end for an old drunk like me, and a right end for you too that you die as a good boy, strong and handsome and smart, like I remembers you. Best pitcher in the world. Boy who could pitch his way outta the shithole we all has to live in. Better to remember you that way than as the sewer you has become. That's a good dream. That's a dream an old drunk like me deserves at the end of his days. For I done wasted every penny I had in the ways of goodness so long ago, I can't remember 'em no more."

There is more -- much more. There is the Venus of Willendorf, which appears as a golden ticket for much of the cast, reinforcing one of the main themes of the book: That it is a community's women that keep it together. There are moonflowers. There is Hot Sausage. There is South Carolina. There is Harold Dean -- or, really, Haroldeen. There is Guido and The Mayor. There are bagels. There is Sister Paul. How to weave it all into a coherent summary is a bit beyond me. But James McBride makes it all sing.

The Cold Millions

 

The Cold Millions

By Jess Walter

This has got to be, by far, the best book I've ever read about organized labor. Set in early 1900s Spokane, Washington, the book tells the story of the labor movement's struggle to earn the right to organize. At the heart of the story are two brothers, Gig and Rye Dolan, drifters who, like so many, are exploited by millionaires and the job sharks -- who charge $1 for the chance to work -- in their employ. It's an exploitative world that pushes Gig toward the idealistic philosophy of the International Workers of the World. Gig is a Wobbly all the way -- until the reality of jail time and abuse at the hands of police pull back the curtain on just what the IWW is up against. 

Enter Early Reston (if that is his real name). He appears to be a drifter just like the Dolan boys. But, like so much in Spokane, he's not what he seems. He's actually working for a local millionaire, Lem Brand, who has hired him to stir up the community to make the Wobblies look bad and give the local authorities the shred of an excuse they need to run them out of town. Or is he? There's a chance he just likes violence. Meanwhile Rye is swept up in the Wobblies movement in the hopes of freeing his brother as he travels the West with organizer Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. Then again, he also has a connection to Brand. So which side is he on? 

It's a web of a plot that reads like a mystery and keeps you turning the pages. In addition, Walter does a lovely job of bringing the characters to life. In between the action, he switches points of view so that you can better understand the perspectives of each of the characters. They seem to breathe -- especially Rye.

But there is a larger musing here. At its heart, the book is about the ways in which individuals shape history and the way history shapes individuals. Rye, who later in the book takes up Tolstoy's War and Peace, reflects on how history feels like a roar of motion when you are caught in its flow but something else entirely when you are on the outside looking in. Is it better to be a rabble rouser on the vanguard, sacrificing comfort in the name of eventual progress? Or is it better to view such actors from afar, enjoying what one can from life in anonymity? Rye seems to take the latter tack. But, unbeknownst to him, it was an act of sacrifice and nobility that allowed him to take that path in the first place. 

In the Midst of Winter

 In the Midst of Winter 

By Isabelle Allene

I am returning to this book a month or so after reading it, so the details are a bit fuzzy. Here's what I remember: The book brings together three people from very different backgrounds. There is Richard, an academic from NYU whose alcoholic past resulted in tragedy and a subsequent life of obsessive attention to routine. He is also the landlord and recruiter of Lucia, a lecturer at NYU with an unfortunate level of personal knowledge of Pinochet's regime in Chile. And then there is Evelyn, who immigrated illegally from Guatemala -- and who brings the trio together when she shows up at Richard's door after a small fender bender. The issue? Turns out there is a body in the trunk of the car. 

Evelyn didn't do anything, of course. The car, and the murder, belongs to her employer. But she's scared and finds sympathetic ears in Richard and Lucia. So they embark on a plan to get rid of the body, an "adventure" that brings them closer together. In the process, Richard's heart -- frozen with loathing for himself and the world -- thaws, which is, you know, ironic given that the book takes place in an epic blizzard. Not to give too much away, but he falls in love with Lucia.

This was certainly a good read. But I'm not sure exactly what the point was. The plot seemed real thin and kind of beside the point. It was almost as if the author created these characters and then had to come up with some weird, far-fetched way to bring them together. Also, Richard's character seemed altogether unrealistic. One moment he's ornery. The next he's head over heals in love. I don't think that's how humans work. But what do I know?

Barn 8

 Barn 8

By Deb Olin Unferth

To be clear, this book was given to me as something of a joke. It arrived near by birthday from my brother as a reference to the chickens we have been keeping -- and losing to local wildlife -- since the fall. He also gave me a set of toy construction equipment to assuage my yen for a mini excavator, with which I could no doubt create excellent mountain biking trails. So I wasn't expecting much. Then again, the cover was pretty great.

The book is about, well, chickens. Specifically: egg layers caught in our pretty awful industrial farming system. It is also about the humans who want to end this system. One of them turns out to be Janey, who arrives in the midwest at the tail end of her high school career after learning that her mother, who had claimed not to know who her father was, very much did know who Janey's father was. So Janey decided to go visit him. He's a bit of a...letdown. Even more so when, just as Janey is about to return home to New York City, Janey's mother dies in a car accident. Leaving Janey to spend the rest of her high school year in Iowa. Janey thereafter distinguishes herself from "old" Janey and is in many ways her opposite. Gone are her dreams of attending college or of making anything of herself whatsoever. She seems to have lost all of her old ambition. Until.

She takes a job as an inspector of factory farms. She gets it because her supervisor, Cleveland, was once babysat by Janey's mother, who looms large in her mind. Cleveland also happens to be having something of a career crisis. She finds herself stealing chickens from farms and leaving them on the doorstep of the local anti-ag organization. When Janey learns of this, inspiration strikes and they hatch a plan to remove about a million birds from a local factory farm. This brings in a number of other characters, including Annabelle, a former activist who left the movement for untold reasons, and Dill, her former co-conspirator who also seems washed up. Together, they pull together hundreds of volunteers to carry out the mission, which does not go well. Blame it on barn 8. In between all this, the author waxes poetic about the state of the earth and the unsung marvels of the ordinary chicken.

All told, it wasn't a bad read. It was pretty funny in places. But it seemed to take forever to get to the action. And the whole book was dripping with so much foreshadowing that actually learning about that action felt anti-climactic. But -- chickens!

It Ain't So Awful, Falafel

 It Ain't So Awful, Falafel

By Firoozeh Dumas

Being an Iranian in late 1970s Newport Beach, CA, was no easy task for middle-schooler Zomorod Yousefzadeh. And then the Iranian Revolution hit. That's pretty much the plot of this YA novel. The summer before her 7th-grade year, Zomorod move to this well-to-do enclave, and all she wants to do is to fit in. She even adopts the name Cindy, hoping this nod to Americaness will endear her to her classmates. It works, kind of. But when Iranian revolutionaries take Americans hostage, there is not much "Cindy" can do. Her father loses his job, and the family is on the brink of having to move back to a homeland that, from what they have seen on tv, looks like a foreign country.

The highlight of this book is Cindy's first-person narration. She feels real -- likely because the book is a loosely fictionalized account of the author's own life. The story is quite funny and a quick read. It would be funnier if the anti-Middle Eastern sentiment expressed then didn't resonate so loudly today. 

The Pull of the Stars

 The Pull of the Stars

By Emma Donoghue

My first pandemic book about a pandemic! This novel, set during the height of the Spanish Flu, follows a

nurse in the maternity ward of a Dublin hospital over the course of two days. The nurse, Julia Power, does all she can to keep infected mothers and their children alive over the course of her two-hour shifts. Each birth gives a little insight into this world, particularly the babies born to unmarried fathers who will be forced to labor for years at homes run by nuns in exchange for shelter from the scorn that might accompany them were they on their own. But also the precariousness of life at the time. Death during childbirth was common, as the book makes all too clear. There are bright spots, though. One is in the form of Dr. Kathleen Lynn, a republican involved in the Easter Uprising, whose firm commitment to social justice and equally firm rejection of societal norms serves as inspiration for Julia to break away from her country's rigid, Catholic set of expectations. It seems that the dual tragedies of World War I and the pandemic were a catalyst for some positive change.

It remains to be seen, of course, what changes our current pandemic will bring. The main takeaway for me, though, was that whatever that fate, we are very lucky to live now. I recently made an appointment for my first dose of the COVID vaccine. To think -- in just about a year's time, we were able to develop a vaccine to inoculate millions of people. It is quite an achievement, though one we might not fully appreciate until this whole thing is over.

Other Words for Home

 Other Words for Home

By Jasmine Warga

This novel-in-verse tells the story of two Syrians, Jude and her mother, who are forced to flee their homes at

the outbreak of the conflict there and make their way to Cincinnati to live with relatives. The story itself follows a fairly predictable story line that is quite similar to Inside Out and Back Again. At first, Jude finds it hard to fit into the US, where she faces suspicion and outright hostility -- especially after she decides to wear the hijab. But little by little, she gains acceptance from others and herself. It ends with her in the spotlight of a school play,  symbol of Jude reconnecting with that part of herself that craved to be seen and heard, which came naturally in Syria but was march harder in the US.

Despite the similarities between the two books, this still feels like an important story. Maybe even more important because of the two similarities. My students, for example, attributed the discrimination Ha faced in IOBA to a specific time and place. But, turns out, modern-day Cincinnati isn't all that different than 1970s Alabama on that front. It would be interesting to have students read the two books to compare and contrast.

I have mixed feelings about novels in verse. When I began reading, it struck me that it is, in a sense, just lazy. But as I finished the book, I was struck by how much the character had come alive in my mind. With so few words, my imagination had to work overtime and fill in the gaps left unspoken. But maybe this is a case of less is more. I do wonder about the author's process. Had she always planned to use poetry? Or was this a second choice? And why are such novels so appealing right now? 

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

 Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

By Haruki Murakami

I think I might have to take a Murakami break after this one. What's familiar: A thirty-something man (Tsukuru Tazaki) is reckoning with a break up and is searching for an answer to what happened. A plot that fits The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Killing Commendatore, and A Wild Sheep Chase. What's different: In this case, the man isn't reeling from a break up with a woman but with a friend group. Back when he was in college, he was inexplicably banished from a group of five friends that were unusually close. The breakup wounded him deeply. Now, on the cusp of a new romantic relationship, he seeks to find out what happened. The answer is surprising and strange: One of his female friends told the others in the group that Tsukuru had raped her; though the others didn't really believe her, they felt they had no option but to cut off ties with Tsukuru in an attempt to salvage her sanity.

It's a rift on a familiar theme, as are the ideas that Murakami explores, namely the ability for the dream world to coincide with the "real" world. Though there is less emphasis on the magical in this book, Tsukuru nevertheless wonders about whether sexual dreams he may have had about his accuser might have actually constituted rape. There is also an emphasis on names, which I remember from the Wind-Up Bird Chronicles. The "colorless" of the title refers to the fact that the main character's surname doesn't refer to a color; his compatriots' all do. Tsukuru's name references making, which is odd given how passive he is throughout. There is also an emphasis on the underground. Tsukuru is a train station engineer, which keeps him underground a lot of the time. And there is a specific piece of classical music: Listz's "Years of Pilgriage", which echo the main character's own search.

One character I can't quite figure out is Haida. He is a young man Tsukuru meets in college. They become fast friends. Then Haida relates a story from his father's past. His father took to the road in his younger years and one day met a man at an inn in rural Japan. They connected, and the strange man revealed that he had been destined to die, which had given him the ability to see people's auras. That evening, Tsukuru felt Haida's presence in his room even though the latter was sleeping on the couch in another room. And then Haida disappears from Tsukuru's life, much like his friend group. I'm not sure how that fits into the narrative. It seems like an add on.

I will say that the ending of this book is about the least satisfying I've ever encountered. Tsukuru has finally taken initiative in his life, telling his girlfriend -- who he had recently seen with another man -- that he loves her. The girlfriend, Sara, says she'll be "honest" with him in three days. The book ends the night before their scheduled meeting. It is a horrible cliffhanger. But I guess that's life.  

Kafka on the Shore

 Kafka on the Shore

By Haruki Murakami

This is a story told in two voices. The first belongs to a 15-year-old who dubs himself Kafka when he

decides to run away from home. Kafka, he later explains, loosely translates to "crow"; he has an alter ego, more determined and tougher than he is, who he calls "Crow Boy". We don't know exactly why Kafka runs away. He alludes to an oppressive, possibly evil, sculptor of a father. However, it quickly becomes a search for his mother, from whom he was separated at 4 years old and who he has not seen since. On his journey, he winds up working and staying at a private library, where he meets Oshima, a transgendered bibliophile who becomes something of his protector, and Miss Saeki, with whom he falls in love and who may or may not be his mother. 

The other is Mr. Nakata. He is in his sixties. He suffered a mental disability after a strange event during World War II. His teacher took his class on a walk to gather mushrooms. A few minutes into the picking, all of the students suddenly collapsed into a coma-like state, unresponsive, their eyes scanning back and forth at something no one could see. While most of his classmates recovered quickly, the same was not true for Nakata, who stayed in this state for quite some time. When he came to, Nakata could not read or write nor remember any basic facts of his life. He was, however, imbued with a strange ability to talk to cats. This led to a job as a cat finder in his neighborhood. 

It was while searching for a cat that Nakata came into contact with Johnny Walker -- or at least a concept who has taken on the form of Johnny Walker. Walker is also involved with cats; he decapitates them, slices open their bellies, and then eats their hearts to capture their souls, which is using to build a magical flute. Right. Anyway, Walker performs this ritual in front of Nakata, all the while admonishing Natakata to kill him, which he does. Or does he? Kafka wakes up on the night of the death inexplicably covered with blood. The implication, I think, is that somehow Walker conjured Kafka into Nakata's body to do the killing. Walker, it turns out, is, in "real" life, Kafka's father.

The murder sets Nakata on a journey of his own. Guided only by intuition, he winds up in the same town as Kafka, where he helps to close an entrance -- to what we don't really know -- that bring some of the characters some peace. Long summary, eh? It's an involved book, and despite the zaniness, it all feels natural the way Murakami tells it. Colonel Sanders as a pimp on a back alley? Sure, I'll accept that. Two imperial soldiers alive and well a century after disappearing? Seems perfectly normal to me! I still can't put my finger on how Murakami draws you in like that. Some common themes emerge:

Pastiche/Allusion: Murakami likes to weave literary traditions from different cultures and times together. Here, for instance, there is Greek Theater, especially Oedipus Rex, as well as Japanese literature, especially the Tale of the Genji. And there are all sorts of references to music; here Beethoven's Archduke Trio plays a particularly important role. 

Cats: These animals seem to hold a special power for Murakami. They operate as emissaries between worlds. No one in a Murakami novel is allergic to cats.

Fate: Murakami keeps exploring the extent to which people really have control over their lives. In this book, Kafka's father puts a curse on him, telling him that he will murder his father and sleep with his mother and sister. Does it come true? Kinda...?

Dreams: In Murakami's novels, dreams are not separate from the "real" world. In this novel, Kafka has sex with his sister in his "dreams", but it might have actually happened. This is similar to Killing Commendatore, where the protagonist has sex with his wife in his dreams that might -- we never know -- result in her pregnancy. Dreams impact the real world; and the dreamer is "responsible" for them in some way.

Holes/Wells: Not in this one! Thank goodness. Lots of holes out there.

The Deep State: There is a sense in Murakami novels that there is another realm/dimension -- something -- operating in the shadows of the world we see. It is this world that really controls our actions. In this novel, it seems a bit different, more like an afterlife than a deep state, but still.

Sex: This book had lots of sex in it. Too many references to "cock" for my liking. Is that the best euphemism we can come up with. It made me think that there is actually a lot of sex in Murakami books. I need to pay more attention to what he might be saying with it.

A Wild Sheep Chase

 A Wild Sheep Chase

By Haruki Murakami

My second Murakami in a row. It's becoming a thing. In this story, an unnamed narrator is dealing with a

recent divorce when his life is upended again. He is in advertising and a recent pamphlet he put together has drawn the attention of a powerful, shadowy figure, known as the Boss, supposedly at the center of Japan's politics and media. At issue is a photograph of a meadow of sheep, which features among the flock a strange-looking specimen with a star on its rear. This sheep, it turns out, has some mystical powers; it can "enter" people, as it did the Boss, and guide their behavior to its own ends. Recently, the sheep left the Boss, and it becomes the narrator's job to find the sheep again. Or else. The magical and mystic aside, what ensues is a fairly straightforward detective/hero's quest story -- until the end, when those elements come to the forefront.

I was struck by how different the tone of this book was from Killing Commendatore. It is funny and fast-paced. Perhaps "sharp" is the word for it. Where Commendatore lulled me into a kind of trance, this one felt more like a page turner. I fear that the plot and pacing kept me reading at the surface level. I had a harder time keeping the ideas behind the story in my head as I read. 

But I did manage to jot down a line that I think was at the heart of the story (and which Murakami explores again and again): "My placing a photo of sheep in the life insurance company's bulletin can be seen from one perspective, (a) as coincidence, but from another perspective, (b) as no coincidence at all" (72).  And so the book is really about the extent to which we really control our own lives. Which is not to say it is a rumination on predestination. I think it is more of a caution to think about whether our individual actions, supposedly taken of our own accord, are actually the result of societal pressure designed by elites for the benefits of elites. Are we merely members of a flock blindly following an alpha sheep we don't really know is there?

Which speaks to the book's sense of humor. The word "alpha" doesn't really come to mind when thinking of sheep. This is one way in which Murakami upends the literary traditions he borrows from -- and maybe parodies? -- as he tells his tale. In place of a Chandler-type hard-boiled detective, we have a fairly passive (sheepish?) main character with no name who, though he certainly consumes his fair share of whiskey, kind of stumbles along his journey. His femme fatale is described as fairly plain -- except for her magical ears. Or instead of an Arthurian quest in search for a holy grail we have a guy looking for, well, sheep. 

Onward to Kafka on the Shore! 

Killing Commendatore

Killing Commendatore

By Haruki Murakami

It did not take long to find parallels between this novel, Murakami's latest, and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which I read last year and loved. The main character is an easy-going, quiet middle-aged man who, out of the blue, loses his wife. A New York Times review of Killing Commendatore referred to this character as "Murakami Man", not rich but not in need of money, into art and music and cats, reflective to the extreme, and confused more than afraid in the face of supernatural events. And, of course, in search of a lost mate. 

And there is a hole. In The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles, the hole serves as a type of portal to an underworld that allows the character to see the machinations that make the above-ground "wind-up" world run. A pit in Killing Commendatore plays a similar role. It is buried, and subsequently uncovered, behind the main character's rented house in the mountains when a mysterious ringing begins to emanate from it in the middle of the night. 

Which leads to the most obvious connection of all: the supernatural. In this novel, it begins with the main character's discovery, in the attic of his rented home, of a painting by the once-famous artist who lived there. It is a rendering of a scene from the opera Don Giovanni called Killing Commendatore. It turns out to be an allegory for a botched assassination plot in which the artist was involved when he lived in Nazi-era Vienna in his youth. The uncovering of the painting beckons other-worldly figures into the character's life. The main one explains that he is an Idea and he appears before the main as a miniature, two-foot version of the Commendatore in the painting. 

Not long after his first appearance, a conversation between the two reveals what I think is the premise of the book: "The question is whether or not an idea can be treated as an autonomous entity, right?" Put another way, the book explores the power that art, and the ideas it contains, has on the world. On the one hand, it seems to suggest that once art is put into the world, the artist no longer can control the ideas it unleashes. It is for this reason that several of the main character's paintings -- he, too, is an artist -- are left unfinished. He explains that it would be "too dangerous" to complete them and unleash the ideas contained within into the world. On the other hand, it explores the way that our individual ideas, the stories we tell ourselves, can end up controlling us. Across the valley from the main character, for example, lives Menshiki, a wealthy man obsessed with the idea that he might be the father of a child to the point that he moves into a a hill-top mansion just so he can spend his evenings spying on his would-be daughter through a pair of high-powered binoculars. It is Menshiki, playing the role of a winder-upper, who sets most of the book's "action", if it can be called that, into motion. He commissions the main character to paint a portrait of his perhaps-daughter, which leads to a relationship with her aunt, which leads to the daughter's resentment and curiosity, which leads to her becoming trapped in the mansion, which leads the main character's descent into the land of Metaphor to free her. Significantly, Menshiki says he doesn't want to know if he truly is a father; it is the idea that he MIGHT be that he is obsessed with -- and which causes so many problems. So what's the message here? That we need to interrogate our "truths" lest the leads us astray? But, then again, the main character ultimately reconnects with his wife, who has a baby that may or may not be his, and he, too, expresses ambivalence about the "truth" and winds up happy. So how to reconcile these?

There is, in the end, much that is irreconcilable about the book. At the end, the main character and the young girl he "rescues" talk about their experiences. They decide that the opening of the pit opened a circle that unleashed their adventure. Did they close the circle? They don't know. Neither does the reader. The main character's strange adventure and the girl's entrapment are never really connected. The book seems more like a musing than a coherent thought. 

But that is just fine by me. I wasn't after a statement -- I was after a mood. There is something about Murakami's storytelling and prose that I find mesmerizing. Reading his books is like falling into a trance. It strikes me that his books, where the real and unreal, the supernatural and the mundane mix so freely is a pretty good reflection of these pandemic times. And by immersing myself in his strange world I was, for an hour or so a night, able to escape my own.