Category: What I’m Reading

My Amazon and Goodreads review of Educated: A Memoir (Rating 5) – Breaking Free of the Ties that Bind. In Educated: A Memoir, Tara Westover recounts an isolated and ultra conservative Mormon upbringing that most of us would find bizarre. She nevertheless makes her story universally relatable by focusing on her deep attachment to family. Readers understand why it was so hard for her to break free of her towering, conspiracy-fueled father; resourceful yet compliant mother; and smart but abusive brother. Westover survives nearly insurmountable setbacks, or “pullbacks,” to home by facing the disappointments and embodying the strengths of those who raised her: her father’s determination, her mother’s faith, and her brother’s resolve. That the unschooled girl emerges as an intelligent and above all empathic woman is a testimony to the resilience of love and the power of truth. As a fiction writer who welcomes the challenge of making an unlikable character sympathetic (see my Amazon author page  and Goodreads author page), I applaud Westover’s success in accomplishing this feat with her family.

My Amazon and Goodreads review of Transcription: A Novel (Rating 3) – Slapstick When Sincerity is Wanted. Kate Atkinson seamlessly blends fact and fiction in Transcription: A Novel, a WW II tale of innocence and espionage. As a writer of historical fiction myself (see my Amazon author page and my Goodreads author page), I appreciate the deftness with which she blurs the two. At first, the wry humor of the young narrator, Julia Armstrong, is engaging. The cast of absurd characters makes one relish the folly of their treasonous and/or patriotic endeavors. However, the frivolous tone fails when events turn truly grim. After her unrelenting flippancy, Julia’s claims of distress or anxiety ring hollow. She remains too distant from the horrors she has wrought. Even when she herself is in danger, she appears to be narrating a spy movie for her own and the readers’ entertainment, rather than recounting an authentic drama. What the reader wants is sincerity, not slapstick.

My Amazon and Goodreads review of My Year of Rest and Relaxation (Rating 2) – Zzzzz. Critical accolades woke me to read Ottessa Moshfegh’s novel My Year of Rest and Relaxation. As a writer, I relish making unlikable characters interesting, if not sympathetic, and eagerly anticipated this challenge as a reader. Alas, Moshfegh’s privileged narrator has none of the above mentioned virtues. Nor does she offer unique or redeeming insights into the everyday beauty that ameliorates life’s pain. She’s as trite and tedious as the mindless state of unconsciousness rendered by her Rite Aid warehouse of medications. The reader’s boredom is not even relieved by complex secondary characters; their nastiness wallows in stereotype. While Moshfegh has a good eye for detail and is in command of her craft, the elaborate shell she creates here is hollow. Emerging from the slumber induced by this novel won’t leave readers feeling refreshed, but with a sour taste best relieved by vigorous tooth brushing and starting the new day with a more worthy book.

My Amazon and Goodreads review of Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity (Rating 3): Exhaustive but Exhausting. Defying the adage that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, Andrew Solomon explores families in which a child lands yards away. Given that all children fall at least some distance from the parental trunk, the book is also valuable to a general readership. Balancing skepticism with openness and compassion, Solomon asks whether differences should be seen as illnesses or identities, curses or blessings, limitations or spurs to growth. When, if ever, is treatment warranted? There are no easy answers for individuals or a diverse society as a whole. The book’s main drawback is that it should have been edited down. A lot. By relating each of the hundreds of stories he collected, Solomon blurs them into an indistinguishable mass. Better to have chosen a few or crafted composites. By contrast, Solomon’s last chapter, about the creation of one family — his — is the most memorable. Although he is telling his own story, it is the least self-indulgent writing in the book.

My Amazon and Goodreads review of White Houses (Rating 5): A Smooth Puree of Fact and Fiction. Fact #1 is that Eleanor Roosevelt is the famous person, dead or alive, with whom I most want to have dinner. (Although if she were setting the menu, I would follow the advice given to visitors when she was First Lady and eat beforehand.) Fact #2 is that Amy Bloom has concocted a gourmet meal in White Houses, a smooth purée blending truth and imagination that is both tender and raw, and intriguing and intrigue-filled. Eleanor’s portrayal matches the idealized figure of my dream dinner companion. The humanitarian champion comes across as authentic, compassionate, wise, and a lot looser than her elegant posture suggests. But Lorena Hickok is the star of the book. The talented journalist and First Lady’s purported lover is sharp-tongued, self-aware, and devoted, a scrappy woman who knows what it means to scrape bottom. As a writer of historical fiction myself, I urge readers on social media to “learn history through fiction.” I am also delighted if, when I finish creating a manuscript, I have forgotten what is and is not true. As a reader of White Houses, I can attest that Amy Bloom accomplishes both in this fine book.

My Amazon and Goodreads review of Let the Great World Spin (Rating 5): Vibrates Like a Tightrope. Like a tight rope stretched across 30 years, Colum McCann’s Let the Great World Spin vibrates with each air current, then settles down only to be disturbed again. Each life is rendered as individually as a sky walker silhouetted against the heavens, yet each is connected to another like the ends of the rope. In a series of twosomes — a man and his brother, a mother and her daughter, young lovers, old friends — McCann finds riches in poverty, salvages gains from unspeakable losses, and uncovers grace in disaster. A book that will both bury readers in grief and buoy them with hope.

My Amazon and Goodreads review of Hillcrest-Oakden: The Diary of a Psychiatric Nurse (Rating 3): And Then It Wasn’t So Funny – Unlike typical exposes of mental hospitals, Christine Hillingdon’s account of her years as a psychiatric nurse in Australia begins with amusing descriptions of the quirky patients and staff. Her affection for those in her care is evident, as is the need for a good sense of humor in the “loony bin.” As the story progresses, however, humor disappears in tandem with the deterioration of the government’s mental health system. Management changes, slashed budgets, and nonsensical and cruel policies become the norm, endangering patients and over burdening staff. The situation makes for a gripping story. Hillingdon is a good reporter, although, since the book is a memoir, I would have appreciated more of her own insights and analysis.

My Amazon and Goodreads review of The Female Persuasion (Rating 4): Sympathy for Slowy the Turtle – Having come of age in the women’s movement (I entered college the same year Betty Friedman’s The Feminine Mystique was published), I was eager to read Meg Wolitzer’s The Female Persuasion. Alas, my enthusiasm was dampened by the first part of the book. The main character begins as a cipher and never develops. Her progression from a student with an inside voice to a young woman with an outside voice is unconvincing. However, the depth and sensitivity with which Wolitzer portrays the other characters — from the Gloria Steinem stand-in to the less-than-upstanding rich boy supporter of her feminist foundation — makes the book worth reading. Even Slowy the turtle evokes sympathy. Rather than painting a successful big-picture of an evolving social movement, Wolitzer shines in the small enduring portraits of friendship and family.

My Amazon and Goodreads review of Lizzie (Rating 5): From Mild Anxiety to Full Blown Fugue State – In her modern day re-imagining of the story of Lizzie Borden, Dawn Ius brings a figure of childhood rhyme and folk song to life. Lizzie immerses readers in the psyche of a talented but stifled young woman, whose abusive family and conservative community hold her back. We share Lizzie’s urge toward freedom, wincing at her pain and soaring during her rare moments of joy. Building to the climax, Ius takes Lizzie from mild anxiety to a full blown fugue state. Readers will be tempted to wield a culinary knife, if not a hatchet, by the book’s end.

My Amazon and Goodreads review of The Taste of Cigarettes: A Memoir of a Heroin Addict (Rating 5): Soars with Poetry, Sears With Pain – Jon Vreeland’s memoir, The Taste of Cigarettes, is a detailed and vivid description of a junkie’s nightmare existence. Just when readers think his body can’t take more abuse, we descend into yet another graphic tale of life off the rails and in the gutter. Such is the nature of addiction and Vreeland renders the endless search for the next fix in language that soars with poetry and sears with pain. Only the haunting anguish of permanent separation from his young daughters finally pushes him across the line from overdose to recovery, from obsession to redemption. Vreeland has written a hell of a book that ends on a rushing updraft of hope.