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!