Category: What I’m Reading

My Goodreads and Amazon review of Fire Exit by Morgan Talty (Rated 5) – Identity Crises. Fire Exit by Morgan Talty argues that we are all entitled to know our past, even if the truth is disorienting. Learning the whole story may fill in missing parts or provoke unasked questions. In Fire Exit, the issue is especially fraught because it deals with identity, namely the right to claim Native American identity if, lurking unbeknownst to a child raised as a full Indian, is a father’s non-native identity. Charles, the protagonist, was raised on the Penobscot reservation by his non-native mother and Indian stepfather with full knowledge of his story. He feels his daughter, conceived with his high school Penobscot girlfriend and now fully grown, is entitled to hers. The girl’s mother and indigenous husband, who raised the girl as his own, object. Entangled in Charles’s urge to tell his daughter her blood story is that his own mother’s memory is growing porous with Alzheimer’s. Moreover, he’s plagued by guilt that preoccupation with the girls’ birth kept him from preventing his stepfather’s death decades earlier. Fire Exit is replete with grief, remorse, mental illness, alcoholism, and death. Yet, the novel is not wholly bleak and morbid. On the contrary, Talty’s ineradicable faith in filial devotion and commitment to personal history is ultimately uplifting. As a writer myself (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I admire his refusal to shy away from difficult subjects with debatable answers. Fire Exit will make readers question their own stories. Warning: The choice not to know the truth comes at a price.

The benefits and costs of unknown identity

Why writers read: “To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.” – W. Somerset Maugham

My Goodreads and Amazon review of The Anthropologists by Aysegul Savas (Rated 3) – Bumpless. The Anthropologists by Aysegul Savas is a quiet book about the small pleasures of a self-contained couple. Asya and her partner Manu, each from different countries and living in yet a third country, are outsiders content to dwell inside their own relationship. They’ve even invented a tribal name and private language. Although they work — she as a documentary film maker, he at an unspecified nonprofit — there’s no passion behind their labors. Friends are satellites, one of whom orbits closely, but the others are props in the twosome’s routines. A plot, if one can be said to exist, is their search for a new apartment. They struggle to find one they like because they are too comfortable to imagine inhabiting a different space. Like anthropologists, Asya and Manu observe and occasionally join the action, but nothing penetrates their insular cocoon. Savas will convince some readers that a life lived this way, without conflict and drama, but also minus joy and excitement, is enough. It’s a reassuring message in a hectic world. Yet I found myself seeking more. A character-driven novelist myself (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page) , I nevertheless choose to invest my characters’ lives with significant events and challenges. Savas’s flat plain felt sad and empty. I would have preferred more bumps.

The uneventful life of an insular couple

Why writers read: “If I could always read I should never feel the want of company.” – Lord Byron

My Goodreads and Amazon review of Wrinkled Rebels by Laura Katz Olson (Rated 5) – Cross-Generational Appeal. Wrinkled Rebels by Laura Katz Olson is a nostalgia trip for those who, like me, were “Children of the 60s.” In fact, in an uncanny match, I’m the exact same age as the novel’s six New York City protagonists, entering college in 1963, becoming immersed in the anti-war and women’s movements, vowing to remain engaged as we graduated into the “adult” world. For readers of later generations, Olson’s book offers an entertaining survey course of that tumultuous era, told through the stories of its diverse cast of characters, three women and three men, who bond as freshmen and stay in sporadic touch during the ensuing decades. As a novelist myself (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I admire how Olson achieves a fine balance between detailed historical context and generous character development. The book is driven by the protagonists’ impending 50th reunion, prompting each to recall the past, assess the present, and evaluate how they shaped one another’s lives. Building toward the reunion, readers eagerly turn the pages of this skillfully written narrative with cross-generational appeal to those who reflect on life’s heady mix of predictable and unexpected outcomes.

Children of the 60s meet 50 years later

Why writers read: “Our favorite book is always the book that speaks most directly to us at a particular stage in our lives. And our lives change.” – Lloyd Alexander

My Goodreads and Amazon review of Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner (Rated 3) – Tone Deaf. Being unfamiliar with Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s previous novel, I was not prepared for the satiric tone of Long Island Compromise. In fact, having read that she’d written this book about a real-life kidnaping to understand the aftermath of a trauma in her own life, I expected the novel to be serious. Once I adjusted my expectations, I tried to get into the spirit of the sharp social commentary that is this author’s strength. Alas, it was a struggle because the tone ill-fit the topic. It reminded me of my discomfort watching sitcoms as a child, waiting for everything to turn out okay. As an adult, I’m fine with any outcome, good or bad, provided I care about the characters. I can’t say I cared about any of the born-to-wealth adult children in Long-Island Compromise. Mocking the victims comes off as cruel, not canny. The bitter ending, devoid of empathy, forecloses the possibility of insight into human nature. Worst, from a literary perspective, the writing is preachy. As a novelist myself (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I avoid didactic narratives. They neither amuse nor inform. While Brodesser-Akner is occasionally entertaining, her self-indulgent prose fails to engage or enlighten. People who inherit money may not “deserve” their wealth, but neither do they inherently deserve scorn. I wish this talented author had invested her words more wisely.

Misspent words

Why writers read: “There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.” – Joseph Brodsky

My Goodreads and Amazon review of This Strange Eventful History: A Novel by Claire Messud (Rated 3) – Barren Territory. This Strange Eventful History by Claire Messud traverses decades, continents, and viewpoints to portray the three-generation history of a French-Algerian family. The novel starts strong with memorable characters and fraught events, but detours into peripheral names, happenings, and literary and philosophical ruminations. Messud’s “erudite” writing is self-indulgent and begs for a firm editorial hand. Ultimately the book is a screed against forgetting — multiple figures have Alzheimer’s — and near the end, a dying father recollects life’s small moments, especially those spent with family. The passage would have been more poignant had the book not been stuffed with irrelevant tangents whose clutter stifles explorations into character. For example, there is a stark contrast between the patriarch besotted by his wife and the strained relations between subsequent generations whose emotional connections are as uprooted as their peripatetic family. Messud paints them with broad swaths of exposition, rarely revealing the roots beneath their feelings. Messud merely implies that love is blind or has no rhyme or reason. But as a novelist myself (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I believe our role is to spark insights into emotions. Messud’s book offers this promise initially, then migrates into barren territory.

A rambling portrait of a French-Algerian family

Why writers read: “Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed?” – Annie Dillard

My Goodreads and Amazon review of Ashes, Ashes by Fred Soukup (Rated 5) – Above the Smoldering Remains. It’s difficult for a writer to make readers care about characters whose lives are far from enviable — people who, while trying to befriend others, become their own worst enemies. Yet that is the challenge Fred Soukup sets for himself in Ashes, Ashes, and brilliantly achieves. As if surmounting that hurdle wasn’t high enough, he’s wraps his portrayal in a Rashomon-like murder mystery. The story is told from multiple points of view, each with a distinctive voice. It damns the foster care system and the callous society that looks the other way as its victims land on the trash heap. As a novelist myself (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I admire Soukup’s ability to elicit compassion for unlikable characters who seek salvation but will settle for a salvage operation. This is a bleak book and yet, because the protagonists don’t give up on themselves, readers can’t give up hoping for them. Soukup’s creations cling to life, determined to realize dreams and find redemption. They may differ from us on the surface, but underneath their scars, these throwaways embody a deep and abiding humanity. Soukup reveals the dark underbelly of the nursery rhyme we all learned as children, most of us unaware that it refers to a deadly plague. We’re not innocent children, but Ashes, Ashes challenges readers to rise above the smoldering remains.

Elicits compassion for unlikeable characters

Why writers read: “We ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? – Franz Kafka

My Goodreads and Amazon review of Absolution by Alice McDermott (Rating 5) – Don’t Look Away. Absolution by Alice McDermott turns a female lens on America’s early intervention in Vietnam. The novel is told from dual retrospectives: Patricia, now an elderly widow, and Rainey, now a middle-aged daughter, both members of military-industrial families posted to Saigon in 1963. A third woman — Charlene — Patricia’s dynamic friend and Rainey’s domineering mother, draws them together. While the book reflects on American hubris, it looks more critically at the role of women on the cusp of the women’s liberation movement. Patricia, a shy newlywed, is defined by others — her husband, her friend, the Church — to the point of accepting the nicknames they assign her. Rainey is the obedient daughter, silently emulating her mother’s stoicism. Charlene’s friend and daughter are equally enamored of, and alarmed by, this whirlwind of a woman, whose “white savior” guilt drives her to help the poor and ailing Vietnamese. Like America itself, her altruism is feeble and often misguided, but she’s adamant that looking away is worse. As a fellow writer (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I admire McDermott’s fluid writing, deft characterizations, and immersive storytelling. The novel, like the war, presents no victors, only a quagmire that demands confession and defies absolution. Don’t look away from this superb book.

The Vietnam war seen through the eyes of women

Why writers read: “No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance.” – Confucius

My Goodreads and Amazon review of Two for the Money by Steve Zettler (Rated 5) – Switcheroos Galore. Steve Zettler’s Two For the Money is a highly entertaining catch-the-bad-guys romp that induces whiplash as readers try to figure out just who the bad guys are. Multiple forces — American secret service and ex-military personnel, rogue CIA agents, South American gun runners and drug dealers — battle and/or collude as they attempt to recover millions lost during the 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama. The narrative is full of colorful characters; I was especially partial to a flashy Philly gangster and all the kick-ass women. Readers don’t know who to trust, except for the sure-handed author who delivers quick-witted dialogue and a fast-paced plot with more twists and turns than a dizzying amusement park ride. The ease with which Zettler skips from one plot complication to another belies his hard work diving into the minds of scoundrels, and unearthing the nefarious measures that the straight-arrow government employees devise to exert their will at home and abroad. As a writer myself (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I admire Zettler’s ability to deftly juggle and seamlessly integrate all these elements in this marvelously convoluted tale. Double your bet you’ll be entertained reading Two for the Money.

A cool romp in steamy Panama in search of lost millions

Why writers read: “Books are people who have managed to stay alive by hiding between the covers of a book.” – E. B. White

My Goodreads and Amazon review of Reading Genesis by Marilynne Robinson (Rated 2) – Unconvinced. Having attended weekly Torah study at my temple for 34 years, I was eager to read the Christian interpretation offered by Marilynne Robinson in Reading Genesis. Seeking enlightenment, I was confounded by frustration. The Jewish tradition is to ask questions and entertain multiple, even conflicting, answers. From her Calvinist perspective, Robinson makes the unwavering case that God can do no wrong. Evil exists, but it is part of God’s plan for Creation, and thus inherently “good,” even when humans go awry. Thus, the story of Cain and Abel is not about murderous jealousy but about the mercy and kindness of God, who allows Cain to survive and procreate under His protection. Robinson’s God is irrefutably loving, patient, and tolerant whereas the God I’ve been inspired to create is flawed and learns on the job, just like humans. Instead of “turning, turning” the Genesis scroll to reveal its many lessons, Robinson’s agenda is single-minded. She simply ignores any text that contradicts her view. As a writer myself (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page, I lost patience with her rigidity and bias. I was not convinced by her version of an all-good, straight-marching God when scripture presents an imperfect, stumbling one. The one insight I did find true was that law, not patriarchy or monarchy, is the structure that underlies the creation of the Israelites as a people. Leaders come and go, but laws remain and are passed on. For me, that is the reason we continue to study Genesis and the rest of Torah.

A simplistic take on a complex narrative

Why writers read: “A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.” – Italo Calvino

My Goodreads and Amazon review of Saving Face: A Memoir by Effy Redman (Rating 5) – Guilty Expressions. I couldn’t help but feel guilty each time my face expressed the emotions that overcame me as I read Saving Face: A Memoir by Effy Redman. Redman was born with a rare condition of facial paralysis called Moebius Syndrome. The disability affects her mouth, rendering it immobile, and eyelids, which she cannot fully close. So, whenever I smiled in response to her tender childhood memories, curled my lips in anger at those who teased her, or crinkled my eyes in gratitude at her mother’s unwavering support, I was acutely self-conscious that my face could show emotions that Redman’s disability makes impossible. She’s denied a form of communication we take for granted. Redman grew up not only hiding her feelings from others, but also from herself. Saving Face is a moving narrative of her struggle to find self-acceptance. More than that, it is her journey to find self-affirmation for her inner and outer beauty. Redman’s recollections brought to mind two classics of children’s literature. Her fascination at age ten with folding origami swans evoked memories of Hans Christian Anderson’s story “The Ugly Duckling,” a misfit waterfowl who grows up to be a beautiful swan. And I thought of E. B. White’s book, The Trumpet of the Swan, the story of a trumpeter swan born without a voice who overcomes his disability by learning to play a trumpet. Likewise, Redman finds creative ways to express herself, as a ballet dancer whose body moves with grace, and as a writer who communicates the feelings her mouth cannot. As a writer myself (see my Amazon author page and Goodreads author page), I share with Redman the inner grin that comes when the “right” words magically appear on the page. By the end of the book, my guilt at taking my facial muscles for granted was replaced by admiration for Redman, who has opened herself to others and above all, to the possibilities within herself.

A courageous journey navigating disability

Why writers read: “Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed?” – Annie Dillard