Category: What I’m Reading

My Amazon review of The Last Castle: The Epic Story of Love, Loss, and American Royalty in the Nation’s Largest Home (Rated 5): A Sprawling Mansion of a Book – In a thoroughly researched history of Biltmore, Denise Kiernan has written a sprawling mansion of a book, as multifaceted as one of the stained glass windows adorning All Souls Cathedral in nearby Asheville, North Carolina. In lively prose, readers get full portraits of the Vanderbilt family, vivid descriptions of architecture and landscaping, the local industries that the estate fostered, and above all, a society that ricochets from the excesses of the Gilded Age, to the headiness of the Jazz Age, and into the despair of the Depression. Throughout, a privileged family’s visions of grandeur are compensated for by their unwavering commitment to charity. In sum, the book portrays a people, a home, and an era whose resonance still echoes today.

My Amazon review of Sing, Unburied, Sing (Rated 4): A Presence in the Hole of Absence – Jesmyn Ward mesmerizes readers with a haunting story about a black boy whose mother’s love for his white father, and for drugs, leaves no room for him. The novel is rich with the details of poverty and race in the Mississippi Delta, yet universal in its pain and compassion. Fortunately for JoJo, his grandparents sustain him through Leonie’s emotional and physical absence. This is the book’s reality. The book also veers into magic realism, as foreshadowed by the title. While I’m not a fan of this device, it works here … until it doesn’t, and the “undead” overwhelm the living heart of the story. Moreover, JoJo’s baby sister, who ultimately unites the two worlds, is too weakly and repetitively drawn to bear the burden. The book is rewarding, but reviews led me to expect more.

My Amazon review of Just Kids (Rated 5): Exhilarating and Heartbreaking – Patti Smith’s dual portrait of the twining and twinning between herself and Robert Maplethorpe is at once exhilarating and heartbreaking. Exhilarating because of its energetic insights into how creative ideas take material form; heartbreaking because one laments the talented artists who remain unsung and, in this story, those whose songs the AIDS epidemic silenced too soon. Smith has written a treatise on art and love, how soul mates spur each other’s creativity and caring. She paints a detailed portrait of an era, late 1960s and 1970s NYC, years of grunge and glitter, and the germination of hybrid art forms. Readers will emerge with an understanding of the importance of belief in oneself and in those we love to develop and share their talent, and to achieve the recognition we and they are worthy of. So shed a tear for Robert’s death, then pick up a brush, pen, or microphone like Patti.

My Amazon review of Manhattan Beach (Rated 5): A Timeless Dive Into the Past – Jennifer Egan takes us deep into the world of the divers who serviced Navy ships in WW 2, and just as deep into the machinations of both lowlifes and high rollers. The novel glories in the details of underwater work, and the equally complex rules that govern families. Pursuing her unlikely dream to become a female diver, Anna Kerrigan is a compelling character of determination rather than self-conscious feminism or independence. Likewise, Jennifer Egan is a writer who has conscientiously revived a little-known part of history in a meticulous and flowing narrative.

My Amazon review of What She Ate: Six Remarkable Women and the Food That Tells Their Stories (Rated 3): Too Meager to Satisfy the Reader’s Appetite – With careful scholarship, Laura Shapiro portrays the kitchens and tables of six women across a variety of times, places, and social classes. The collection is mixed. My favorites were the Edwardian cook, Rosa Lewis, whom I’d never heard of before, and Eleanor Roosevelt, a long-time idol of mine, in which I was disabused of long-held myths about her indifference to good food. Shapiro sticks close to the data, which unfortunately, sometimes makes for a spare and unimaginative meal.

My Amazon review of The Burning Girl (Rated 4): Sifting Through the Ashes of Friendship – Claire Messud captures the intensity of pre-adolescent female friendship and the pain that follows its inexplicable dissolution. As Julia, the smart protagonist, puzzles over the loss of her best friend Cassie, at once her soul mate and her opposite, readers glimpse the wise woman Julia will become. One wishes only for a few more singe marks to burn this book into memory.

My Amazon review of The Mother I Imagined, the Mom I Knew: A Hybrid Memoir by Paul Alan Fahey (Rated 5): Turbulent and Touching – Paul Fahey’s hybrid memoir – an interweaving of nonfiction, fiction, and poetry – recaps his fierce, fractious, but ultimately fulfilling relationship with his mother. Fahey takes readers on a lifelong journey from their nomadic existence in his childhood to their memorable travels in Africa (when he was in the Peace Corps) to their truce when his mother was battling terminal cancer. Fahey is at once honest and compassionate.

My Amazon review of Dinner at the Center of the Earth by Nathan Englander (Rated 5) – Three Unlikely Love Stories. Nathan Englander’s brilliant rumination on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict unfolds in three hopeless love stories: an off-the-record prisoner and his guard; a caretaker and her comatose General; and, more conventionally, a man and woman on either side of the political and geographical divide. Englander challenge readers to accept the moral ambiguity of his characters’ actions. This is a book of questions, not answers, most significantly: Is love enough to justify dreams of peace?

My Amazon review of Seasonal Roads by L. E. Kimball (Rated 5): Linked stories of three people, four characters – L. E. Kimball’s web of stories introduces readers to four characters: Norna, her daughter Aissa, Aissa’s daughter Jane, and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. The tales, at once violent and tender, otherworldly and practical, are told slant, yet they pack a direct wallop. Likewise, these unusual women are as solid as the Northern Michigan earth, as insubstantial as its air, and as fluid as its water. Each thrives on solitude, yet they cling to their tenuous connections with one another and the men in their lives as tenaciously as the last oak leaf in December. So too will this haunting book cling to you.

My Amazon review of The Zookeeper’s Wife by Diane Ackerman (Rated 4): Electrifying story of compassion and courage – Diane Ackerman tells an electrifying true story of compassion and courage. The book is filled with the joys of nature and the horrors of wartime occupation. It captures the personalities of the people and the animals who lived with and cheered them. The writing is sometimes stilted and too many details obscure rather than illuminate the setting. However, it is worth plowing through the excess verbiage for the gems of humanity.