Nightcrawling, by Leila Mottley

 

9780593318935

Knopf, 2022

271 pp

hardcover

Nightcrawling is author Leila Mottley's novel debut,  a book she started writing in her teens, set in Oakland, California.   At seventeen, she says in the Author's Note at the end of the novel, she was contemplating what it meant to be "vulnerable, unprotected, and unseen," and that she wanted to write a story that "would reflect the fear and danger that comes with black womanhood and the adultification of black girls..."  Her main character is Kiara Johnson, and the novel begins with a rent hike, all too common these days. 

WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS AHEAD SO BEWARE. 

 It was already difficult enough for Kiara to pay rent because she doesn't have a steady job; it's not as if she doesn't try to find one but potential employers are "so hung on the high school dropout shit" that nothing ever pans out for her.  She grabs a couple of shifts here and there at a liquor store, which helps keep her family afloat, but with a double raise in the rent, what she makes is just not enough.    She has a brother, Marcus, but he'd quit his job and now spends his time recording rap ("spitting rhymes in a studio") with the hope that someday he'll make it big like their Uncle Ty, who is now living in Los Angeles in a mansion and driving a Maserati, having left family behind.  On hearing the news of the rent hike, Marcus asks for just one more month, but what Kiara sees is "half a dozen SoundCloud tracks and no paycheck," while he waits for things to change.   Kiara's father, who had joined the Black Panthers, had been arrested, imprisoned and released, but sadly succumbed to cancer; her mother is also out of the picture.  "Adultification" indeed -- it seems that the family's survival now  depends on Kiara, who has also taken it upon herself to see to a neighbor's little boy since the mom is too whacked on drugs to care about him.  

An encounter at a strip club where one of her friends works  leaves Kiara with money in her pockets, and realizing that whether or not she consents, since her body is going to be used, she decides that maybe sex work could be a solution to her immediate problems.  Another prostitute suggests she get someone to watch out for her, but first she tries to get on with a few escort agencies, frustrated when each time she is told to call back when she's legal.  Finally,  as she says,  "I have a body and a family that needs me, so I resigned to what I have to do to keep us whole, back on this blue street," and "nightcrawling" becomes what she does. 

One of her clients decides that he doesn't need a room or a car to do business, which Kiara doesn't like, but the sex happens anyway outside against a building.   It's then that Kiara has her first encounter with the police, who shoo him off and put Kiara in their car, one of them telling her that prostitution is illegal and he has to take her in.  As one cop begins driving, the other is on her in the back.  This is only the first encounter she will have with the police, and she says nothing to anyone; soon she is pretty much on call with several members of the force, identified only by badge number, never a name.  But when one of the cops later commits suicide, her involvement is about to become a huge story, especially since the cop left behind a letter saying what he had done.   The pressure is on for Kiara at this point, as the policemen begin to hassle her about keeping quiet about the rest of them.  The harassment escalates when a grand jury is formed to hear the case, and the fallout lands squarely on the people Kiara cares about the most.  

It didn't take long at all for me to be sucked into this story; later  I discovered that the author had been inspired by a real-life case of an (at first) underage sex worker that had the same sort of encounters with some policemen in Oakland in 2016.  I have to give the author major points for not just rehashing that event but coming up with her own take, which gets into the life of this girl who has to grow up all too soon and take her family's survival on her shoulders.    At some point though I started wondering why Kiara or her brother never applied for some sort of help from various agencies, from the state or even better, from organizations like People's Breakfast Oakland (especially since her dad was a former Black Panther!) or the East Oakland Collective,  and that led me to question whether or not the author did enough research that might have made this story more realistic.    As just another example of the inconsistencies that exist in the latter part of this novel, how in the heck would Kiara have known or even cared about Pinterest (as in the remark she made about her attorney's office space looking like it came "straight from Pinterest"), especially since she tells us early on that she has no access to internet?   There were other things like this as well and after a while they just started to grate.  And speaking of her attorney, she came across flat as a character here and not very believable as an advocate.   For me, the book started strong, but as it progressed it just made me frustrated.  

I look at reviews all across the internet and everyone is just loving this book, so once again it's a case of maybe it's just me.   I realize it's her first novel, that she's young and talented, but for me it's a case of not exhibiting enough real-world knowledge and the need for more consistency that would have better tightened things up throughout the story that soured my reading experience.  Loved the story; it's the execution here that caused issues for me. 

tissues a must: Shuggie Bain, by Douglas Stuart

 

9780802148049

Grove Press, 2020

423 pp

hardcover 

(read earlier this month)

Quite honestly, had I not seen this book on the Booker Prize longlist, I may have never read it and that would have been a shame.   I nearly passed on it after reading the back-cover blurb by Sandra Newman who described the book as 

"an intimate and frighteningly acute exploration of a mother-son relationship and a masterful portrait of alcoholism in Scottish working-class life..." 

because  my initial impression was that this is yet another book about yet another dysfunctional family and I have been avoiding that sort of thing for some time.  I couldn't have been more wrong.  As it turns out, Shuggie Bain not only turned out to be a great book, but also one that now, ten days after finishing, I'm still thinking about and still talking about to anyone who will listen.  

While the novel opens in 1992, the bulk of this story takes place during the 1980s.  Hugh "Shug" Bain, his wife Agnes and their three children are all living in Glasgow, in a "high-rise flat" they share with Agnes' parents.   Agnes had been married before to Brendan McGowan, the father of Catherine and Alexander (who goes by the name of Leek); Shuggie (Hugh Jr.) came along after she'd left Brendan and married Hugh.  Agnes spends time reflecting on happier times, and  has dreams of a better life, but all too often alcohol gets in the way.   On one particular night while Shug and the older two children are out and Agnes' parents are watching TV,  she is feeling somewhat sorry for herself and decides that she and Shuggie should "have a wee party."  He dances for her, makes her laugh, and to keep her laughing, 

"he did whatever had caused her to laugh another dozen times till her smile stretched thin and false, and then he searched for the next move that would make her happy." 

The night ends with Agnes singing along with the music, "her voice cracked with the poor me's," then deliberately setting the bedroom curtains on fire.  The pattern of her "poor me's" while drinking and Shuggie searching for "the next move that would make her happy" will continue over the years, as the Bain family (minus Catherine, who's married and gone abroad) leaves Glasgow for a house Hugh had bought in desolate Pithead, and as Hugh decides he can't stay with her any longer because of her "wanting" and "All that drinking."

The remainder of the novel takes us through Shuggie's childhood and his relationship with Agnes as  her drinking becomes worse.  Although Leek tries to look out for the family, eventually he is unable to take much more and leaves Agnes to Shuggie's care, not always easy for this young boy who is also trying to deal with his own growing pains, including, as the dustjacket cover says, a feeling that he is "no right."  

This is just a thumbnail sketch, of course -- I haven't said anything about the times or the Thatcher era policies that sadly left so many people out of work, nor have I said anything about Glasgow as a setting or the bleak landscape of Pithead that mirrors the bleakness of the lives of the working-class families who live there.  That's all to be discovered  in the novel, so vibrantly and yet so achingly described. 

My worries about this book completely dissipated once I got into it, and it came to be a story not just about an alcoholic mother, but of the boy who loves her so unconditionally and so deeply despite all of her failings as a parent -- as he said to her at one point, "I'd do anything for you."  It was difficult to watch Shuggie take on so much at such a young age, having to deal with Agnes' ups and downs; at the same time, the intensity of his devotion to his mother fairly leaps off of the pages, even during the worst of times.   Agnes presents as a character in conflict, but she was also an object of my sympathy.  As frustrated as I was with her most times, there were times when I couldn't help but admire her fortitude.  As we're told in Chapter 20, 

"She was no use at maths homework, and some days you could starve rather than get a hot meal from her, but ... Everyday with the make-up on and her hair done, she climbed out of her grave and held her head high. When she had disgraced herself with drink, she got up the next day, put on her best coat, and faced the world. When her belly was empty and her weans were hungry, she did her hair and let the world think otherwise."

Shuggie Bain is the author's first novel, and it is absolutely gorgeous.  While it is bleak, there are parts here and there that will make you laugh, and the book leaves you with a small bit of hope at the end.  I made it through the story dry eyed, but I must have been holding everything inside while reading because the minute I read the last word, the floodgates opened and I had to run for tissues.   I can't stress enough the beauty to be found here, and it is a book I very highly, highly, highly recommend.  

One final thought:  From the author in The New Yorker, September 7 2020:

"Shuggie and Agnes feel like real people to me. I only hope that I can make them proud."

I'm sure you did, sir, especially Agnes.  Very much so. 

Everywhere You Don't Belong, by Gabriel Bump

9781616208790
Algonquin, 2019
advance reading copy (thank you!!)


When I began reading this novel, I was sort of taken aback at the simplicity of it all and I was a bit on the iffy side, but the truth is that the further I got into it the more I realized that it's not simple at all -- it is intelligent and works at a level of complexity I hadn't quite anticipated. 

I suppose it is what most people are calling  it, a coming-of-age story, following Claude McKay Love beginning with childhood growing up in an African-American neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago. His life is a series of people leaving, with his parents taking off first, followed here and there by his friends. The only solid thing in Claude's life is his grandmother, who along with her live-in friend Paul, brings him up as best as she can, which isn't always easy.  Although his grandmother believes that Claude is "not a follower" but will eventually become "his own man,"  by the time middle school rolls around she and Paul also see that he is "sentimental, no backbone, adrift, unspectacular."  He is not good at sports like his friends and is the kind of kid who at a lunchtime assembly at school sits in the back "behind band kids and the science club." He is an empathetic sort of kid, who cares about his friends, who cries when he sees an injured squirrel; he suffers through periods of depression, and has been called "soft" more than once.   This "unspectacular" boy, however, not only has to make his way through being abandoned, but also through other challenges that present themselves in various forms.  Everywhere You Don't Belong chronicles not only how he weathers these storms and survives and what he learns about himself in the process,   but also highlights the people in his life who help provide love, friendship, and a measure of stability as he's doing so.

What makes this somewhat atypical of a standard coming-of-age tale is in the way the author also examines different forms of oppression,  racism and ideology that find their way into Claude's life, as well as how he copes with it all.   I don't want to spoil things for potential readers but a pivotal point in this novel is a riot in his neighborhood (mentioned in the blurb so not a spoiler) caused by the wrongful killing by the police of a young African-American boy which, in the long run not only highlights ideological divisions among the people there but causes him to question his life in South Shore.   As he is finishing high school, he has decided to get out of what he calls "the toxic bubble" in which he feels trapped, believing that "the rest of the world isn't like this."  Once he's moved on to college in Missouri, leaving behind his home, friends, family and everything he's known, his past comes back to him in a very big and unexpected way.  However, he also comes to an even greater awareness from his experiences in both Chicago and Missouri, one which I'll leave readers to discover on their own. 

Do not let the simplicity of the prose or the style fool you. And think out of the box when you get to the end, which seems both simplistic and unrealistic, but the author is making a point here.  While there are a number of funny moments where I couldn't help but laugh, Everywhere You Don't Belong is a serious novel telling a serious story that needs to be heard.  Very highly recommended, and Mr. Bump should be congratulated for a first novel very well done.

***

There is an excellent interview with Gabriel Bump which I read after finishing this book at Electric Lit that opened my eyes wide, but do not read it until after you've turned the last page and closed the cover. Spoilers abound so beware. 

A Replacement Life, by Boris Fishman: I liked this one!

9780062287878
Harper, 2014
336 p.

ARC from the publisher, thank you!

So, I went to get publisher info (ISBN, # of pages, etc) from Amazon and I must say that I was floored by the negative reviews of this book.  In my opinion, they are largely uncalled for, but hey - chacun à son goût, as they say.  Personally, I had a great time with this novel and have already recommended it to a number of people; I've also put it on the list for  my book group to read in September when we return from our summer hiatus.  Obviously, I liked it.

Slava Gelman comes from a family of Russian immigrants who had settled  in Brooklyn.  He'd made a conscious decision to "become an American," to leave his grandfather Yevgeny's  "neighborhood of Russians, Belarussians, Ukrainians, Moldovans, Georgians and Uzbeks"  and set his sights on working for  Century, a longstanding and prestigious magazine, "older than The New Yorker and, despite a recent decline, forever a paragon."   Staying in the neighborhood would keep him among the ranks of those who   ". . . don't go to America," except for the DMV and Brodvei," or who "shop at marts that sold birch-leafed switches"  to "whip yourself in the steam bath and rare Turkish shampoos that reversed baldness . . ."  but this is not what Slava wants. He had to leave, in order to

"strip from his writing the pollution that repossessed it every time he returned to the swamp broth of Soviet Brooklyn."

In short, to focus on his writing for Century, he had to get away, to "Dialyze himself, like Grandmother's kidneys."  So it's off to Manhattan and a sparsely-furnished, affordable studio apartment.  As he's about to find out, getting away is not so easy.

from NY Daily News

As the novel opens, it's July, 2006, and just after 5 am, Slava  is surprised by the ringing of the telephone.  It's not  because it's so early, but rather because no one ever calls him, not even his family, since he'd "forbidden" them to call. He doesn't answer it, but the second time it rings, it's his mother telling him that his "grandmother isn't."   She'd died alone in the care facility.  He hadn't seen Grandmother Sofia for about a month, and now she's gone, and as his mother puts it, it's the family's "first American death."  After the funeral, Yevgeny asks him to write a narrative that would allow him to collect reparations as a victim of the Holocaust. He hands Slava an envelope, addressed to Sofia who was registered at  Yad Vashem  in Jerusalem. When Slava notes that this was for his grandmother, not his grandfather, his grandfather tells him to make it up.  As he states,

"Maybe I didn't suffer in the exact way I need to have suffered ... but they made sure to kill all the people who did. "

Eventually giving in, Slava starts thinking about all of the things that his grandparents  never told him, and how he really knew nothing about his grandmother's life and all she'd gone through.  What little he does know goes into Yevgeny's narrative, and the rest he invents but makes fit the story.  His work is so good that word spreads, and Yevgeny pimps him out to write other narratives for friends.   Each one builds a little more on the made-up, missing details of Sofia's life, and Slava begins to find it easier to lie, to fabricate, to make stuff up.  He gets so good at it that he even starts doing it at his job at Century  -- and it also spills over into other parts of his life as well.  However, writing these narratives produces more than just a few unintended results for Slava that he never could have predicted.

A Replacement Life is a book that shows, in part,  that life can't  always be measured in terms of absolute principles of black and white, true or false, good or bad. It's also a story about family relationships and cultural ties, history, and the Holocaust. To his credit, while the Holocaust is a very large part of this story and while Slava writes of terrible things that happened then in his reparations narratives, for the most part Mr. Fishman keeps the terrors in check so that they don't take over the modern-day story.  There are also a number of comical set pieces in A Replacement Life that made me laugh out loud,  especially when it came to the older folk in this book and the insider look at the Russian-Jewish  immigrant culture. As far as the reparations fraud angle, Mr. Fishman knows of which he speaks: I looked this up and discovered that last year, judgments had come down in a real fraud case that netted the perpetrators around 57 million dollars.

One of the most common themes in the less than complimentary reviews is Mr. Fishman's writing style. I don't understand why -- even in my own casual reader sort of way, I found it very easy to read in terms of writing and style, and I easily picked up on a number of literary references here.   Mr. Fishman obviously enjoys playing with language and playing with other writers' words and ideas and in doing so, has created something very different.   Considering that this is his first novel, I think he's done a fantastic job. This is a book I can definitely recommend.

My thanks once again to the publishers, and to TLC book tours for including me!

*Burial Rites, by Hannah Kent -- a definite yes!

9780316243919
Little, Brown and Company, 2013
314 pp

pre-release edition from Little, Brown/Hachette, thank you!

Funny thing about this incredible novel -- I preordered it eons ago, and was eagerly awaiting its arrival, and then out of the total blue, the mailman who hates me for getting so many books every day drops this one on my front porch  just last week.  Then, I wander over to Book Passage to see what the Signed First Editions Book Club entry is for this month, and it's (ta-da!) Burial Rites, by Hannah Kent.

The dustjacket description of this lovely novel of historical fiction doesn't quite do it justice. Burial Rites is based on true events that happened in Iceland in 1828, when  Natan Ketilsson and Petur Jónsson were both murdered at Ketilsson's farm in North Iceland.  Agnes Magnúsdóttir and Friðrik Sigurðsson were charged with the crimes and sentenced to be executed by Ketilsson's brother.  There was a third person involved, Sigríður Guðmundsdóttir, who was also arrested, sentenced to death but then had her sentence commuted to life in prison. Agnes was first held at Stóra-Borg, and then the authorities moved her to Kornsá, where she stayed with a family until she was taken to be executed in January of 1830.   According to the author's note, some of the historical accounts of Agnes Magnúsdóttir view her as "an inhumane witch, stirring up murder," but in Burial Rites, Kent sets out to provide Agnes with a more "ambiguous portrayal."  While the blurb inside the cover gives you a taste of the story to come, it doesn't begin to cover just how good a writer Hannah Kent really is.  She has filled this book with so much more than the story of a murder.  Through her excellent use of language,  she brings out  how nature, the seasons, and the Icelandic landscape not only defined the way that people lived and survived in this time and in this place,  but also how people were often left helpless, stranded and in the dark when nature was less than cooperative.  Above all, her writing brings out the psychological damage caused by isolation, loneliness and abandonment in an unforgiving environment.  If I had to describe this book in one word it would be this one:  haunting.

Agnes Magnúsdóttir, abandoned at an early age,  spent most of her life moving farm to farm, working as a servant. As the novel opens, she has been sentenced to die along with two others for her part in  killing two men at a farm along the sea in Northern Iceland. She'd been kept in irons and chains at the first place after her trial, but then the District Commissioner decided she should be moved to the farm of Kornsá to spend her last days, and the family will be compensated for taking her in.   The family at Kornsá is shaken by the news; Margrét, the farmer's wife, protests that she does not want to share her home with "the Devil's children."  As Agnes comes to her final home, it upsets the family dynamic, but Margrét puts her foot down, telling Agnes that she will be put to work, and if there is any "violence, lazing, cheek, idleness" or theft, Agnes is gone. A young assistant reverend, Thorvardur Jónsson  nicknamed Tóti, also receives official word --  he will be Agnes' spiritual advisor during her final days of life, and is urged to get Agnes to repent and confess before she dies.Tóti, who is inexperienced and counseled by his father not to take Agnes on, becomes the vehicle through which Agnes first starts to unspool her tale, and the rest of the book takes the reader through Agnes' story  from her childhood through the fateful day at the farm of Illugastadir, and on to Agnes' last day of life.  Each chapter begins with some form of real official document, or a poem, or in one case, an Icelandic saga, all of which have relevance to what's happening in that particular section.

Alternating voices, dreams and portents, superstitions, haunting imagery, and seasonal routines also help to shape this story.  It is filled with descriptions of the rhythms of farm life, from communal harvesting and slaughter to living in cramped quarters in a turf-walled croft.  But standing above everything that the author writes about is the way she writes it.  It's a book that didn't let go of  me until the very end, and even then I wasn't finished thinking about what I'd just read. You may be tempted to zip through it for the murder story, but don't.  Definitely recommended.  Considering that Burial Rites is the author's first novel, it is highly intelligent, sophisticated, and a novel that readers across the spectrum will enjoy.

 fiction from Australia

Red Sparrow, by Jason Matthews

9781476706122
Scribner, 2013
429 pp

hardcover

Just as an aside, summer reading is so liberating!

Red Sparrow is kind of like those old Cold War spy novels I used to devour.  I rarely read current spy novels -- with only a few exceptions, American spy fiction these days is all about al-Qaeda, some splinter terrorist groups, Navy SEALS, or Army special ops type stuff, etc -- none of which I really want to read.   So, when I heard about Red Sparrow, I bought it in a hurry, because once again, the espionage action heats up between the US and Russia.  While the Cold War era may officially be over, one of the main ideas that runs through this book is that while Russia's system of government may have changed on the outside, underneath the facade the same old apparatus is still in place.  Considering that the author put in 33 years with the CIA, he obviously knows what he's talking about.  There's a really good story here, and for the most part I had fun reading this novel, but it has its frustrating moments. 

Nathaniel (Nate) Nash is a CIA field agent who for some time has been in charge of handling an important Russian department chief, code name MARBLE.  MARBLE is a terrific asset: he's a mole who for personal reasons, decided to get back at the then Soviet government and began passing Langley some "incalculably valuable intelligence," none the least of which are the names of Americans who were spying for the Russians.  In Russia, Nate's job is to pick up intelligence from MARBLE; he is also in charge of his safety before, during and after their meetings.  After one such meeting, Nate's cover is blown -- and somehow the Russians figure out that he is in charge of the mole. They don't know who MARBLE is, but they decide to send in a secret weapon to take care of Nate. Their asset comes in the form of Domenika, a promising up and comer in the ballet until an accident leaves her unable to dance, who is then recruited by her uncle -- ultimately becoming a "sparrow," the name for agents skilled in the arts of eliciting secrets from high-level targets through sex.

There is  a good story in Red Sparrow, complete with amazing spycraft details, turf wars between agencies, creepy Russian characters,  and a beautiful woman (the "red sparrow" of the title). The author succeeds in developing an atmosphere of mistrust and fear, which is one of the best things about this book, along with  several intense moments where things could go one way or the other, where what's going to happen next is up in the air.  If you're a fanatic spy novel reader, you'll also notice a nod to Le Carre that's unmistakeable. Characterwise, the Russian baddies are perhaps a little stereotyped, and for me, using Putin in here as a character didn't work so well.  The portrayal of the deep cover character SWAN is a little over the top, but otherwise, the characters are drawn well and credible, especially that of MARBLE -- probably the best character portrayal in the entire novel. When Matthews writes about the CIA and spycraft in general, he's at the top of his game, although sometimes the inner monologues and dialogue tend to get a little flaky.  What really bothered me the most, leaving me wondering at the outset if I should bail,  was that it seems like every time the action was heating up toward the end of the chapter, the author inserts a recipe,  which sort of kills the suspense that's been building. I seriously couldn't help but think of all of those cozy mysteries where the author sticks in recipes and I just didn't see the point here -- for me, it was a letdown.  While the author notes in an online interview that he felt "a serious spy novel with recipes at the end of each chapter would be different and provocative," and that "The recipes are elliptical and abbreviated. They're more like clues than formal recipes," they seriously interrupted the reading flow to the point of frustration. They're also hard to gloss over or ignore (although I did end up doing just that) because  they're set apart in a box that reminiscent of an index/recipe card, so ignoring them is a little tough -- at least at first. 

 

To be really honest, the blurb on the back that says that this book should "take its place alongside leCarre's The Spy Who Came in From the Cold" led me to believe that something absolutely stunning was to be found here,  but I think the blurber (Doug Stanton) was a little overambitious in his praise.  Considering that this is Matthews' first novel, it was for the most part, very well done and I wouldn't hesitate at all to recommend it to other readers of spy fiction, keeping in mind my comments above.  I'm happy I stuck with it, because as it turns out, it's an  entertaining novel, and I'll definitely be keeping my eye out for the author's next book. 

*You Are One of Them, by Elliott Holt

9781594205286
Penguin, 2013
289 pp

hardcover

"I was partial to unhappy endings." 

Another debut novel bought for my summer readfest of peachy beachies, You Are One of Them is definitely something new and different. Ultimately I see it as a coming-of-age/self-realization story, containing an ongoing examination of friendship and loss,  loyalty and betrayal, set largely in the Cold War years but jumping on into the later 1990s. In this novel, defection is a key term, used in a political sense as well as an emotional one.  The story is told via first-person narrative from the viewpoint of  Sarah Zuckerman, presently in Moscow as a journalist.  While it's  not my favorite novel this year, it's definitely a good read and absolutely perfect for summer.

I said to myself: three days and you'll be seven years old. I was saying it to stop the sensation of falling off the round, turning world. into cold, blue-black space. But I felt: you are an I, you are an Elizabeth, you are one of them. - See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15211#sthash.DJKUqVbD.dpuf

Back in 1982 there was a little 10-year old girl named Samantha Smith, who wrote a letter to then General Secretary of the Communist Party in the USSR Yuri Andropov. She wanted to know if he was planning to vote for a nuclear war against the US.   Pravda published her letter, and some time later, she received a letter back from Andropov who invited her to come visit the USSR.  She and her parents went there in the summer of 1983 for two weeks, during which time they visited Moscow and Leningrad. Samantha also stayed at a Young Pioneer camp, where she made a good friend who spoke English very well.

from Wikipedia , Samantha Smith captured on a postage stamp

 After coming home and enjoying a great deal of press coverage as a Goodwill Ambassador, Smith and her father died in a plane crash two years later.  In You Are One of Them, set in the same time period and beyond,   two girls write a letter to Yuri Andropov -- and one goes to Russia.  That trip will have profound implications for the one left behind. 

Sarah Zuckerman has suffered a number of "defections" in her life -- starting with her sister's death.   In 1980, "the summer of the Moscow Olympics," and the subsequent boycott that signaled rising tensions between the two countries, she becomes friends with the little girl who moves in next door in the Washington DC neighborhood where she lives. To Sarah,  Jennifer Jones has a normal family life compared to hers -- Sarah's father had moved out a year earlier (the second defection).  Her mother suffers from all sorts of paralyzing fears, had panic attacks that could be triggered by mundane things, but most  especially by the thought of  nuclear annihilation, leading her to become an wholehearted anti-nuke activist and to convert their basement into a fallout shelter.  Sarah and Jennifer become best friends, doing everything together, and by the time they're in fourth grade two years later, both decide to write to Andropov à la Samantha Smith.  It isn't long before Jennifer is invited to the USSR, leaving Sarah behind.  After Jennifer's return, as the two girls get older, Jennifer becomes the popular girl while Sarah is once again left behind, and one day in 1985, in seventh grade,  Sarah learns that Jennifer and her entire family have been killed in a plane crash.  Fast forward ten years later, and Sarah receives a letter from Russia from a woman who claims to have been good friends with Jennifer during the USSR visit.  The woman invites Sarah to come for a visit to Moscow, and tells her she can organize a "special tour;" later, an email to Sarah in response to her questions asks Sarah how does she know Jennifer is really dead?  After all, in Russia,  "news is not truth."  As Sarah makes her way to and through Moscow,  she reveals the stories of the girls' friendship, her own life growing up, and ultimately what she discovers about herself during her journey.

There are some wonderful moments here, especially in the author's descriptions of Moscow (although I do have to say that if you've ever read Snowdrops by A.D. Miller, he does it much more vividly).  She is also very effective in linking together both personal and political suspicions on both sides during and after the Cold War.   Her best work, however,  is found in terms of Sarah's character. She comes across as a person believably pained, unmoored, filled with loneliness and loss, and exuding a kind of vulnerability that never lifts throughout the novel.  But somehow, I was left a little unsatisfied --  towards the end I felt like the author was rushing to get to the end of the story, and  after the big buildup of the girls' friendships during their childhood years, I'd expected much more in terms of the novel's climax, for reasons that I can't explain without giving away the show.  All in all, though, the book was a good summer read, one I probably wouldn't have picked up had it not been beach read season, but one that I'm glad I did.  Amazingly, it's the author's first novel, and one I can recommend, especially to readers who like keeping it casual. 

The Death of Bees, by Lisa O'Donnell

9780062209849
HarperCollins, 2013
309 pp

Let me start my brief discussion of this novel by saying that I predict that it will be a runaway bestseller once word gets out about it. The Death of Bees is very easy to read, it moves very quickly, and it will capture the attention of people who are fascinated with stories about severely dysfunctional families or stories with young, teenaged characters at the center of it all.  From what I can tell by perusing the star ratings of this book, it is probably going to sell like hotcakes. 

Personally, I had heard of this novel and had planned to give it a pass, but it arrived from Powell's (along with an incredibly tasty jar of honey) in my latest Indiespensable shipment so I thought, well, okay, I might as well give it a go. I was admittedly mildly intrigued by the opening lines:

 "Today is Christmas Eve. Today is my birthday. Today I am fifteen. Today I buried my parents in the backyard.

Neither of them were beloved."

Hmmm, I thought, perhaps it's something along the lines of McEwan's Cement Garden.  As it turns out, it isn't.   After a few chapters, I came to the conclusion that this is definitely not my cup of tea and I  thought about putting it away unfinished, something I rarely do.  I'd even reached for another book before thinking that all of these 5-star ratings must mean something, so I picked it up again and read through to the end. It still wasn't my cup of tea, but overall, not because of the author, although I do think she missed the mark in a couple of places. The plain and simple truth is that I just don't like these kinds of novels -- especially ones geared (imho) more toward a mature young-adult audience or toward those who like women's fiction.  While it may be trendy, it's not my thing.

Set in Glasgow, the story is told through alternating points of view.  The two sisters at the heart of this story, Marnie and Nelly, take turns; Lennie, the next-door neighbor who takes the girls in when he thinks their parents have just gone off and left them also has a voice.  The story begins with the deaths of the parents and Marnie's realization that if the authorities discover their absence, the girls could be taken into care, so they construct a story that the parents have gone away and left them alone, but that they're planning to come back. After all, when Marnie turns 16, she can legally care for her sister and herself.   Meanwhile, they bury the bodies in the back yard, planting lavender over the graves.   Lennie has his own issues -- he was caught with a young male prostitute and now lives by himself; he's a very lonely old man who feels better being needed by someone. Both sisters deal with their childhoods and their parents' deaths in different ways; Lennie doesn't know the truth and tries to understand what it is the girls aren't telling him.  There are several twists to this story that gets darker as time goes on and as more players are introduced.  Thematically, the story looks at families and at grief; it also examines what it means to truly care about someone. 

To be fair, aside from the target audience thing, I felt that the story moved along very quickly,  never getting boring and the author throws in some dark humor at times. Some of the families other than Marnie and Nelly's also threw a light on different types of dysfunctionality -- for example, people who have well-paying jobs and live in nice houses who neglect their kids, a woman in a state of post-prison  religious mania who turns her back on her wayward son so he has to sleep on the streets, and a daughter who turned to her father in a serious time of need but was refused because the father had a reputation to maintain --  all make their appearances here.  Bringing all of this out was something the author did well.  But I discovered two major issues that I would consider problematic writing wise: first, I saw the big twist toward the end coming a mile off (sadly, I can't reveal what it is) and second, the end was just too pat, too sweet, too nice, too happy, whatever you want to call it. I get that she's offering a small glimpse of hope, but come on! That was just too way out there. 

As I said at the beginning, this book is probably going to sell very well.  I personally know people who LOVED this book -- all of them  YA and women's fiction readers so if that's where your reading interests lie, this is probably  the perfect novel.  I've seen it categorized in reviews as "depressing," which it could be, I suppose. I just wasn't that into it so I didn't really have that sort of connection to the story felt by most readers who lavished the book with heaps-o-praise.  Oh well!

*The Light Between Oceans, by M.L. Stedman

9781451681734
Scribner, 2012
343 pp
hardcover ed.

Considering I chose for this month books you might want to take to the beach if you happen to be in Australia right now, enjoying a nice summer, I picked the perfect title in The Light Between Oceans, by M.L. Stedman.  For me, this book is the epitome of beach read for several reasons which I'll get to momentarily.  

Tom Sherbourne left Australia in 1915, setting out to serve his country in World War I.  The last he saw of Australia as he left was the five-second flash of light beaming out from the lighthouse at "his homeland's furthest reach," Janus Island.  That light became a memory that stayed with him during the war "through the years of hell that followed, like a farewell kiss."  Back in Australia at war's end, Tom first takes a six-month posting at Byron Bay, where he learned the "basics of life on the Lights." 

Byron Bay Lighthouse, Cape Byron, NSW, Australia

 (from Wikipedia)

In June, 1920, he gets wind of a vacancy at the lighthouse on Janus Island, a remote location that suits him perfectly, as does the island's isolation.  The supply boat comes on a very limited schedule; the chance to return to the mainland is even more limited.  At first Tom is there to relieve the current lighthouse keeper, but the situation eventually becomes permanent, and he eventually brings a young woman Isabel (Izzy) there as his wife.  Tom is a very principled, moral, by-the-book man, until one day when a small boat washes up on the beach that Izzy begs him not to report.  Because of multiple tragedies that Izzy has endured on Janus Island,  Tom acquiesces to her request, although his failure to report the boat incident constantly eats away at him inside.  But it will also have unforeseen consequences for both himself and Izzy, not to mention other innocent people when they return to the mainland.  It will also become a decision that will haunt both of them the rest of their life.  I won't say any more, not wanting to spoil it for anyone else who may want to read this book.

Stedman's evocation of a time and place is very realistic, and she is also skillful at developing  the moral/emotional dilemma so central to this novel and then bushwhacking the reader with a twist that adds even more intensity to Tom and Izzy's predicament.  It is pretty much impossible for anyone reading this book to not come to some sort of a judgment about what is right and what is wrong, and this novel will probably also make for some pretty intense book group discussions (my own group will be reading it later this year and I can already hear the thoughts of some of the people in my head right now).    Her depiction of people in a town who can't forgive or forget, in some large part the cause of all of the problems that follow, is also very well composed. The first part of the novel up until the return to the mainland really engaged my attention -- I was caught up in the descriptions of the lighthouse, Janus Island and the isolation of being cut off from other people as well as Tom's angst over his conflicting ideas of duty, all of which kept me reading and interested.   At the same time, The Light Between Oceans has the feel of what I'd consider a beach read, verging on the edge of chick lit.  Once the dilemma and the added jolt present themselves, the rest of the book became rather predictable and the outcome just sort of  fell flat.  When I figured out what was going on, I really didn't feel like I needed to read any longer because I knew just what was going to happen. I did finish it, though, and well, I was right. I figured it all out.  I also want to figure out my own emotional reaction to the books I read; this one is a guided tour with plenty of gut-twisting choices being made along the way,  pretty much guaranteeing a certain response.

To be extremely fair, readers everywhere are LOVING this book; as for me,  I'm not overly fond of pre-constructed emotional sentimentality and chick-lit material in the novels I read. So you might want to read the 5-star reviews from Amazon to see the glowing praise being heaped on this book to get more of a feel for why people loved it.  Once again, I'm swimming upstream from public opinion, but well, that's how it goes sometimes.

fiction from Australia

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