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.